Though Dingwall is only twenty-one and a half miles to the northward of Inverness, so little travelling was there in those days, that scarcely anything was known by the one place regarding the other. It is at this day a subject of jocose allusion at Inverness, that they at one time sent a deputation to see Dingwall, and inquire about it, as a person in comfortable circumstances might send to ask after a poor person in a neighbouring alley. Such a proceeding actually took place in 1733, and the report brought back was to the effect, that Dingwall had no trade, though ‘there were one or two inclined to carry on trade if they had a harbour;’ that the place had no prison; and for want of a bridge across an adjacent lake, the people were kept from both kirk and market.[[64]]
July 23.
Licence was granted by the Privy Council to Dr Andrew Brown to print, and have sole right of printing, a treatise he had written, entitled A Vindicatorie Schedule about the New Cure of Fevers.[[65]]
1691.
This Dr Andrew Brown, commonly called Dolphington, from his estate in Lanarkshire, was an Edinburgh physician, eminent in practice, and additionally notable for the effort he made in the above-mentioned work to introduce Sydenham’s treatment of fevers—that is, to use antimonial emetics in the first stage of the disorder. ‘This book and its author’s energetic advocacy of its principles by his other writings and by his practice, gave rise to a fierce controversy, and in the library of the Edinburgh College of Physicians there is a stout shabby little volume of pamphlets on both sides—“Replies” and “Short Answers,” and “Refutations,” and “Surveys,” and “Looking-glasses,” “Defences,” “Letters,” “Epilogues,” &c., lively and furious once, but now resting as quietly together as their authors are in the Old Greyfriars’ Churchyard, having long ceased from troubling. There is much curious, rude, hard-headed, bad-Englished stuff in them, with their wretched paper and print, and general ugliness; much also to make us thankful that we are in our own now, not their then. Such tearing away, with strenuous logic and good learning, at mere clouds and shadows, with occasional lucid intervals of sense, observation, and wit!’[[66]]
Dolphington states in his book that he visited Dr Sydenham in London, to study his system under him, in 1687, and presently after returning to Edinburgh, introduced the practice concerning fevers, with such success, that of many cases none but one had remained uncured.
Some idea of an amateur unlicensed medical practice at this time may be obtained from a small book which had a great circulation in Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century. It used to be commonly called Tippermallochs Receipts, being the production of ‘the Famous John Moncrieff of Tippermalloch’ in Strathearn, ‘a worthy and ingenious gentleman,’ as the preface describes him, whose ‘extraordinary skill in physic and successful and beneficial practice therein’ were so well known, ‘that few readers, in this country at least, can be supposed ignorant thereof.’[[67]]
When a modern man glances over the pages of this dusky |1691.| ill-printed little volume, he is at a loss to believe that it ever could have been the medical vade-mecum of respectable families, as we are assured it was. It has a classification of diseases under the parts of the human system, the head, the breast, the stomach, &c., presenting under each a mere list of cures, with scarcely ever a remark on special conditions, or even a tolerable indication of the quantity of any medicine to be used. The therapeutics of Tippermalloch include simples which are now never heard of in medicine, and may be divided into things capable of affecting the human system, and things of purely imaginary efficacy, a large portion of both kinds being articles of such a disgusting character as could not but have doubled the pain and hardship of all ailments in which they were exhibited. For cold distemper of the brain, for instance, we have snails, bruised in their shells, to be applied to the forehead; and for pestilential fever, a cataplasm of the same stuff to be laid on the soles of the feet. Paralysis calls for the parts being anointed with ‘convenient ointments’ of (among other things) earthworms. For decay of the hair, mortals are enjoined to ‘make a lee of the burnt ashes of dove’s dung, and wash the head;’ but ‘ashes of little frogs’ will do as well. Yellow hair, formerly a desired peculiarity, was to be secured by a wash composed of the ashes of the ivy-tree, and a fair complexion by ‘the distilled water of snails.’ To make the whole face well coloured, you are coolly recommended to apply to it ‘the liver of a sheep fresh and hot.’ ‘Burn the whole skin of a hare with the ears and nails: the powder thereof, being given hot, cureth the lethargy perfectly.’ ‘Powder of a man’s bones burnt, chiefly of the skull that is found in the earth, cureth the epilepsy: the bones of a man cure a man; the bones of a woman cure a woman.’ The excreta of various animals figure largely in Tippermalloch’s pharmacopœia, even to a bath of a certain kind for iliac passion: ‘this,’ says he, ‘marvellously expelleth wind.’ It is impossible, however, to give any adequate idea of the horrible things adverted to by the sage Moncrieff, either in respect of diseases or their cures. All I will say further on this matter is, that if there be any one who thinks modern delicacy a bad exchange for the plain-spokenness of our forefathers, let him glance at the pages of John Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, and a change of opinion is certain.
In the department of purely illusive recipes, we have for wakefulness or coma, ‘living creatures applied to the head to dissolve the humour;’ for mania, amulets to be worn about the neck; and a girdle of wolf’s skin certified as a complete preventive of |1691.| epilepsy. We are told that ‘ants’ eggs mixed with the juice of an onion, dropped into the ear, do cure the oldest deafness,’ and that ‘the blood of a wild goat given to ten drops of carduus-water doth powerfully discuss the pleurisy.’ It is indicated under measles, that ‘many keep an ewe or wedder in their chamber or on the bed, because these creatures are easily infected, and draw the venom to themselves, by which means some ease may happen to the sick person.’ In like manner, for colic a live duck, frog, or sucking-dog applied to the part, ‘draweth all the evil to itself, and dieth.’ The twenty-first article recommended for bleeding at the nose is hare’s hair and vinegar stuffed in; ‘I myself know this to be the best of anything known.’ He is equally sure that the flowing blood of a wound may be repelled by the blood of a cow put into the wound, or by carrying a jasper in the hand; while for a depraved appetite nothing is required but the stone ætites bound to the arm. Sed jam satis.
In Analecta Scotica is to be found a dream about battles and ambassadors by Sir J. Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, who at his death in 1714, when eighty-six years of age, believed it was just about to be fulfilled. The writer, who signs himself William Moncrieff, and dates from Perth, says of Tippermalloch: ‘The gentleman was, by all who knew him, esteemed to be eminently pious. He spent much of his time in reading the Scripture—his delight was in the law of the Lord. The character of the blessed man did belong to him, for in that he did meditate day and night, and his conversation was suitable thereto—his leaf did not wither—he was fat and flourishing in his old age.’[[68]]