Phlebotomy, Venesection—terms to signify bleeding—are not often heard in our day, because we have ceased to believe that the best way to make a bank or a body healthy is to squander its capital; but in our author’s time the physician went around with a hatful of lancets on his person all the time, and took a hack at every patient whom he found still alive. He robbed his man of pounds and pounds of blood at a single operation. The details of this sort in this book make terrific reading. Apparently even the healthy did not escape, but were bled twelve times a year, on a particular day of the month, and exhaustively purged besides. Here is a specimen of the vigorous old-time practice; it occurs in our author’s adoring biography of a Doctor Aretæus, a licensed assassin of Homer’s time, or thereabouts:
‘In a Quinsey he used Venesection, and allow’d the Blood to flow till the Patient was ready to faint away.’
There is no harm in trying to cure a headache—in our day. You can’t do it, but you get more or less entertainment out of trying, and that is something; besides, you live to tell about it, and that is more. A century or so ago you could have had the first of these features in rich variety, but you might fail of the other once—and once would do. I quote:
‘As Dissections of Persons who have died of severe Headaches, which have been related by Authors, are too numerous to be inserted in this Place, we shall here abridge some of the most curious and important Observations relating to this Subject, collected by the celebrated Bonetus.’
The celebrated Bonetus’s ‘Observation No. 1’ seems to me a sufficient sample, all by itself, of what people used to have to stand any time between the creation of the world and the birth of your father and mine when they had the disastrous luck to get a ‘Head-ach’:
‘A certain Merchant, about forty Years of Age, of a Melancholic Habit, and deeply involved in the Cares of the World, was, during the Dog-days, seiz’d with a violent pain of his Head, which some time after oblig’d him to keep his Bed.
‘I, being call’d, order’d Venesection in the Arms, the Application of Leeches to the Vessels of his Nostrils, Forehead, and Temples, as also to those behind his Ears; I likewise prescrib’d the Application of Cupping-glasses, with Scarification, to his Back: But, notwithstanding these Precautions, he dy’d. If any Surgeon, skill’d in Arteriotomy, had been present, I should have also order’d that Operation.’
I looked for ‘Arteriotomy’ in this same Dictionary, and found this definition, ‘The opening of an Artery with a View of taking away Blood.’ Here was a person who was being bled in the arms, forehead, nostrils, back, temples, and behind the ears, yet the celebrated Bonetus was not satisfied, but wanted to open an artery, ‘with a View’ to inserting a pump, probably. ‘Notwithstanding these Precautions’—he dy’d. No art of speech could more quaintly convey this butcher’s innocent surprise. Now that we know what the celebrated Bonetus did when he wanted to relieve a Head-ach, it is no trouble to infer that if he wanted to comfort a man that had a Stomach-ach he disembowelled him.
I have given one ‘Observation’—a single Head-ach case; but the celebrated Bonetus follows it with eleven more. Without enlarging upon the matter, I merely note this coincidence—they all ‘dy’d.’ Not one of these people got well; yet this obtuse hyena sets down every little gory detail of the several assassinations as complacently as if he imagined he was doing a useful and meritorious work in perpetuating the methods of his crimes. ‘Observations,’ indeed! They are confessions.
According to this book, ‘the Ashes of an Ass’s hoof mix’d with Woman’s milk cures chilblains.’ Length of time required not stated. Another item: ‘The constant Use of Milk is bad for the Teeth, and causes them to rot, and loosens the Gums.’ Yet in our day babies use it constantly without hurtful results. This author thinks you ought to wash out your mouth with wine before venturing to drink milk. Presently, when we come to notice what fiendish decoctions those people introduced into their stomachs by way of medicine, we shall wonder that they could have been afraid of milk.