In 1792, when Sir Astley Cooper was in Paris, he attended the lectures of Desault and Chopart in the Hotel Dieu. On one occasion, during this part of his student course, Cooper saw a young fellow, of some sixteen years of age, brought before Desault complaining of paralysis in his right arm. Suspecting that the boy was only shamming, "Abraham," Desault observed, unconcernedly, "Otez votre chapeau."
Forgetting his paralytic story, the boy instantly obeyed, and uncovered his head.
"Donnez moi un baton!" screamed Desault; and he beat the boy unmercifully.
"D'ou venez vous?" inquired the operator when the castigation was brought to a close.
"Faubourg de St. Antoine," was the answer.
"Oui, je le crois," replied Desault, with a shrug—speaking a truth experience had taught him—"tous les coquins viennent de ce quartier la."
But enough for the present of the barber-surgeon and his pole. "Tollite barberum,"—as Bonnel Thornton suggested, when in 1745 (a year barbarous in more ways than one), the surgeons, on being disjoined from the barbers, were asking what ought to be their motto.
Next to his cane, the physician's wig was the most important of his accoutrements. It gave profound learning and wise thought to lads just out of their teens. As the horse-hair skull-cap gives idle Mr. Briefless all the acuteness and gravity of aspect which one looks for in an attorney-general, so the doctor's artificial locks were to him a crown of honour. One of the Dukes of Holstein, in the eighteenth century, just missed destruction through being warned not to put on his head a poisoned wig which a traitorous peruke-maker offered him. To test the value of the advice given him, the Duke had the wig put upon the head of its fabricator. Within twelve minutes the man expired! We have never heard of a physician finding death in a wig; but a doctor who found the means of life in one is no rare bird in history.
"Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,
Had on a large, grave, decent, three-tailed wig;
His clothes full-trimmed, with button-holes behind,
Stiff were the skirts, with buckram stoutly lined;
The cloth-cut velvet, or more reverend black,
Full-made, and powder'd half-way down his back;
Large decent cuffs, which near the ground did reach,
With half a dozen buttons fix'd on each.
Grave were their faces—fix'd in solemn state,
These men struck awe; their children carried weight,
In reverend wigs old heads young shoulders bore,
And twenty-five or thirty seemed threescore."
The three-tailed wig was the one worn by Will Atkins, the gout doctor in Charles the Second's time (a good specialty then!). Will Atkins lived in the Old Bailey, and had a vast practice. His nostrums, some of which were composed of thirty different ingredients, were wonderful—but far less so than his wig, which was combed and frizzled over each cheek. When Will walked about the town, visiting his patients, he sometimes carried a cane, but never wore a hat. Such an article of costume would have disarranged the beautiful locks, or, at least, have obscured their glory.