While men are what they are, weak, frail, inconstant, fallible, peccable, sinful creatures,—it is in vain to hope that Peers and Commoners will prepare themselves for the solemn exercise of their legislative functions by fasting and prayer,—that so they may be better fitted for retiring into themselves, and consulting upon momentous questions the Urim and Thummim which God hath placed in the breast of every man. But even as Laws are necessary for keeping men within the limits of their duty when conscience fails, so in this case it should be part of the law of Parliament that what its Members will not do for themselves, the Physician should do for them. They should go through a preparatory course of medicine before every session, and be carefully attended as long as Parliament was sitting.
Traces of such a practice, as of many important and primeval truths, are found among savages, from whom the Doctor was of opinion that much might be learnt, if their customs were diligently observed and their traditions carefully studied. In one of the bravest nations upon the Mississippi, the warriors before they set out upon an expedition always prepared themselves by taking the Medicine of War, which was an emetic, about a gallon in quantity for each man, and to be swallowed at one draught. There are other tribes in which the Beloved Women prepare a beverage at the Physic Dance, and it is taken to wash away sin.
Here said the Doctor are vestiges of early wisdom, probably patriarchal and if so, revealed,—for he held that all needful knowledge was imparted to man at his creation. And the truth of the principle is shown in common language. There is often a philosophy in popular expressions and forms of speech, which escapes notice, because words are taken as they are uttered, at their current value and we rest satisfied with their trivial acceptation. We take them in the husk and the shell, but sometimes it is worth while to look for the kernel. Do we not speak of sound and orthodox opinions,—sound principles, sound learning? mens sana in corpore sano. A sound mind is connected with a sound body, and sound and orthodox opinions result from the sanity of both. Unsound opinions are diseased ones, and therefore the factious, the heretical and the schismatic, ought to be put under the care of a physician.
“I have read of a gentleman,” says Cotton Mather, “who had an humour of making singular and fanciful expositions of scripture; but one Doctor Sim gave him a dose of physic, which when it had wrought, the gentleman became orthodox immediately and expounded at the old rate no more.”
Thus as the accurate and moderate and erudite Mosheim informs us, the French theologian Claude Pajon was of opinion that in order to produce that amendment of the heart which is called regeneration, nothing more is requisite than to put the body, if its habit is bad, into a sound state by the power of physic, and having done this, than to set truth and falsehood before the understanding, and virtue and vice before the will, clearly and distinctly in their genuine colours, so as that their nature and their properties may be fully apprehended. But the Doctor thought that Pajon carried his theory too far, and ought to have been physicked himself.
That learned and good man Barnabas Oley, the friend and biographer of the saintly Herbert, kept within the bounds of discretion, when he delivered an opinion of the same tendency. After showing what power is exercised by art over nature, 1st. in inanimate materials, 2dly. in vegetables, and 3dly. the largeness or latitude of its power over the memory, the imagination and locomotive faculties of sensitive creatures, he proceeds to the fourth rank, the rational, “which adds a diadem of excellency to the three degrees above mentioned, being an approach unto the nature angelical and divine.” “Now,” says he, “1st. in as much as the human body partly agrees with the first rank of materials inanimate, so can Art partly use it, as it uses them, to frame (rather to modify the frame of) it into great variety; the head thus, the nose so; and other ductile parts, as is seen and read, after other fashions. 2. Art can do something to the Body answerable to what Gardeners do to plants. If our Blessed Saviour's words (Matthew VI. 27.) deny all possibility of adding procerity or tallness to the stature, yet as the Lord Verulam notes to make the Body dwarfish, crook-shouldered (as some Persians did) to recover straightness, or procure slenderness, is in the power of Art. But, 3. much more considerable authority has it over the humours, either so to impel and enrage them, that like furious streams they shall dash the Body (that bottom wherein the precious Soul is embarked) against dangerous rocks, or run it upon desperate sands; or so to attemper and tune them, that they shall become like calm waters or harmonious instruments for virtuous habits, introduced by wholesome moral precepts, to practise upon. It is scarce credible what services the Noble Science of Physic may do unto Moral, (yea to Grace and Christian) virtue, by prescribing diet to prevent, or medicine to allay the fervors and eruptions of humours, of blood, and of that irriguum concupiscentiæ, or ὁ τροχὸς τῆς γενέσεως, especially if these jewels, their recipes, light into obedient ears. These helps of bettering nature, are within her lowest and middle region of Diet and Medicine.”
A sensible woman of the Doctor's acquaintance, (the mother of a young family) entered so far into his views upon this subject, that she taught her children from their earliest childhood to consider ill-humour as a disorder which was to be cured by physic. Accordingly she had always small doses ready, and the little patients whenever it was thought needful took rhubarb for the crossness. No punishment was required. Peevishness or ill-temper and rhubarb were associated in their minds always as cause and effect.
There are Divines who have thought that melancholy may with advantage be treated in age, as fretfulness in this family was in childhood. Timothy Rogers, who having been long afflicted with Trouble of Mind and the Disease of Melancholy, wrote a discourse concerning both for the use of his fellow sufferers, says of Melancholy, that “it does generally indeed first begin at the body, and then conveys its venom to the mind; and if any thing could be found that might keep the blood and spirits in their due temper and motion, this would obstruct its further progress, and in a great measure keep the soul clear. I pretend not (he continues) to tell you what medicines are proper to remove it, and I know of none, I leave you to advise with such as are learned in the profession of Physic.” And then he quotes a passage from “old Mr. Greenham's Comfort for afflicted Consciences.” “If a Man,” saith old Mr. Greenham, “that is troubled in conscience come to a Minister, it may be he will look all to the Soul and nothing to the Body: if he come to a Physician he considereth the Body and neglecteth the Soul. For my part, I would never have the Physician's counsel despised, nor the labour of the Minister neglected: because the Soul and Body dwelling together,—it is convenient, that as the Soul should be cured by the Word, by Prayer, by Fasting, or by Comforting, so the Body must be brought into some temperature by physic, and diet, by harmless diversions and such like ways; providing always that it be so done in the fear of God, as not to think by these ordinary means quite to smother or evade our troubles, but to use them as preparatives, whereby our Souls may be made more capable of the spiritual methods which are to follow afterwards.”
But Timothy Bright, Doctor of Physic, is the person who had the most profound reverence for the medical art. “No one,” he said, “should touch so holy a thing that hath not passed the whole discipline of liberal sciences, and washed himself pure and clean in the waters of wisdom and understanding.” “O Timothy Bright, Timothy Bright,” said the Doctor, “rightly wert thou called Timothy Bright, for thou wert a Bright Timothy!” Nor art thou less deserving of praise, O Timothy Bright, say I, for having published an abridgement of the Book of Acts and Monuments of the Church, written by that Reverend Father Master John Fox, and by thee thus reduced into a more accessible form,—for such as either through want of leisure or ability, have not the use of so necessary a history.