CHARLES DICKENS.
This is not the case, however, when from the full-blown medical practitioner, adding to his name the initials M.D. or M.R.C.S., we descend to the “sawbones in training,” as the facetious Sam Weller designates the young men qualifying themselves for the exercise of the profession by “walking the hospitals.” The medical students of the novelist’s early days were—it would perhaps be fairer to say that a large proportion of them were—a turbulent and disorderly element in the social life of the metropolis. The newspapers of the day record their frequent appearances at the Bow Street and Marlborough Street police-courts on charges of rowdyism in the streets at or after midnight, when they came out from their favourite places of amusement, the Coal Hole, in the Strand, the Cider Cellars, in Maiden Lane, and the Judge and Jury Club, in Leicester Square, the latter presided over by Renton Nicholson, who edited a vile publication called The Town. Their after-amusements were found in strolling through the streets in threes and fours, singing at the top of their voices comic songs, that often outraged propriety, ringing door bells, and chaffing the police. Dickens must often in his reporting days have witnessed the next morning appearances of these young men at Bow Street police-court.
The first appearance of two specimens of this variety of the immature medico in the humorous pages of the “Pickwick Papers” is described as follows in the low cockney vernacular of Sam Weller. “One on ’em,” he tells Mr. Pickwick, “has got his legs on the table, and is a-drinkin’ brandy neat, vile the tother one—him in the barnacles—has got a barrel of oysters atween his knees, vich he’s a-openin’ like steam, and as fast as he eats ’em he takes a aim with the shells at young Dropsy, who’s a-sittin’ down fast asleep in the chimbley corner.” The latter gentleman is Mr. Benjamin Allen, who is described by the novelist as “a coarse, stout, thick-set young man, with black hair cut rather short, and a white face cut rather long. He was embellished with spectacles, and wore a white neckerchief. Below his single-breasted black surtout, which was buttoned up to his chin, appeared the usual number of pepper-and-salt coloured legs, terminating in a pair of imperfectly polished boots. Although his coat was short in the sleeves, it disclosed no vestige of a linen wristband, and although there was quite enough of his face to admit of the encroachment of a shirt-collar, it was not graced by the smallest approach to that appendage. He presented altogether rather a mildewy appearance, and emitted a fragrant odour of full-flavoured Cubas.”
This gentleman’s companion is Mr. Bob Sawyer, “who was habited in a coarse blue coat which, without being either a great-coat or a surtout, partook of the nature and qualities of both,” and “had about him that sort of slovenly smartness and swaggering gait which is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious description. He wore a pair of plaid trousers and a large rough double-breasted waistcoat: out of doors he carried a thick stick with a big top. He eschewed gloves, and looked, upon the whole, something like a dissipated Robinson Crusoe.” The conversation of these budding surgeons is perfectly in harmony with their outward aspect. Their discourse, when it assumes a serious character, is of the “cases” at the hospital and the “subjects” at the time being on the dissecting tables of the anatomical lecture-rooms. When relieved from attendance at the hospitals, they lounge at tavern bars, and flirt with barmaids and waitresses, to whom their attentions are not unfrequently of an objectionable character, and less agreeable than they imagine them to be.
The contrast between the graphic power displayed by Dickens in his delineation of the characters of Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen, and the indistinctiveness, as to profession, of his presentments of Allan Woodcourt and Dr. Jeddler, may help us to understand the causes which render his doctors so much less effective than his lawyers. The legal profession presents more variety than the medical, and comes before us more prominently in conjunction with incidents of a striking character, as may be seen every day in the newspaper records of the courts of law and of police. The physician and the surgeon stand as much apart, in these respects, from the busy barrister or solicitor as the clergy do. Dickens has not given us a clerical portrait, and probably for a similar reason. Mrs. Oliphant, on the other hand, excels in her delineations of every grade of the Anglican hierarchy; but her genius as a writer of fiction runs in a groove essentially different from that of Dickens.
Famous Literary Doctors.
By Cuming Walters.
Medical men have not so commonly made literature an extra pursuit, or adopted it as a serious calling, as have the members of the other liberal professions. It is quite expected that a clergyman should write poems, philosophical essays, and perhaps even a novel with a purpose; and it is usual to recruit the ranks of critics extensively from the law, and to trust to briefless barristers for a continuous supply of romances. No detail is more frequently discovered in the biographies of eminent authors than that they were called to the Bar, and either never practised or forsook practising in order to engage in literary labours. Indeed, it might almost seem that failure in law was the most important step towards success in authorship. No such rule applies, however, to medical men, and no such comment would be justified in their case. Not only do we find the writing of books—otherwise than text-books and technical treatises—rarer with them, but it curiously happens that in most instances it has been the successful practitioner, not the man walking the hospitals or waiting for calls, who has turned author. And we shall find that these medico-literati (if I may coin the phrase) have often been among the most hard-working in their profession, and the wonder is that they were able to enter upon a second pursuit and to follow it with so much zeal. For, in most of the examples I shall advance, literature was more than a pastime with these men who indulged in it. It was chosen by some for its lucrativeness, and by the majority for its capacity to enhance their reputation or to bring them enduring fame. This much may be safely said, that the names of many excellent doctors would have faded from public remembrance ere this, and would have passed away with the generation to which they belonged, had not literature given them lasting luminance. In not a few instances the fact is already forgotten or wholly ignored that certain successful writers once wrote “M.D.” after their names. Who cares that the author of that classic “Religio Medici” took his degrees at Leyden and at Oxford, and dispensed medicine to the end of his life? Who cares that the author of “The Borough,” “Tales in Verse,” and “The Parish Register,” was apprenticed to a surgeon? Who cares that the writer of such dramas as “Virginius,” “William Tell,” and “The Hunchback,” was trained for a physician? Who cares that the author of “Roderick Random,” “Peregrine Pickle,” and “The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker” was a surgeon’s assistant and acted as surgeon’s mate in the unfortunate Carthagena expedition, before trying (unsuccessfully) to obtain a practice in London? And, above all, who cares that the author of “The Deserted Village” and “The Vicar of Wakefield” studied physic in Edinburgh and on the Continent, and, as Boswell was informed, “was enabled to pursue his travels on foot, partly by demanding at Universities to enter the lists as a disputant, by which, according to the custom of many of them, he was entitled to the premium of a crown, when luckily for him his challenge was not accepted?” Such are a few of the examples which immediately occur to the mind when the whole subject is contemplated.