Inter Mathematicos Euclides.
He read the lecture founded by Dr. Caldwell, at Barber-surgeons’ Hall, for many years; where he was the first who attempted to account for muscular strength and motion on geometrical principles. He was a man of amiable manners and great vivacity of conversation. Seeing the Duchess of Portsmouth eat to excess, he said to her, with his usual frankness, ‘Madam, I will deal with you as a physician should do; you must eat less, use more exercise, take physic, or be sick.’
DR. PITCAIRN
“Was a great enemy to quackery and quacks, of whom he used [p332] to say that there were not such liars in the world, except their patients. A relation of his, one day, asking his opinion of a certain work on fevers, he observed, ‘I do not like fever curers; we may guide a fever—we cannot cure it. What would you think of a pilot who attempted to quell a storm? Either position is equally absurd. We must steer the ship as well as we can in a storm; and in a fever we can only employ patience and judicious measures, to meet the difficulties of the case.’”
Turn we now to the second article in our list,—Nugæ Canoræ; and we are satisfied that our readers will agree with us in the correctness of our guess. It is the production, at any rate, of one who has lived much in the medical world, and no unobservant spectator of the vices and virtues, the feelings and failings of contemporary practitioners, possessing tact to “catch the manners living as they rise.” In short, it is a pleasant jeu d’esprit; and we hail it as an omen, that in these “piping times of peace,” the days of Garth, Goldsmith, and Darwin may be revived, and that the medical fraternity may again employ their leisure hours in amusements for which their education and intercourse with society so well qualify them.
After a humorous preface, in which the removal of the College of Physicians to Pall-mall East is lamented, the work, for very satisfactory reasons, is dedicated to the Presidents of the two Colleges and to the Master of the Company of Apothecaries, for the year 1927—and as a character in one of Foote’s farces wishes he were to be born “fifty years hence,” so should we like to have a peep at the “Clines and Coopers,” the “Halfords and Warrens,” of that day. We wish, with the author, that they may be as distinguished ornaments of their profession as those of our own.
That the old college should still be preserved for medical purposes, it is proposed to turn it into a “Medical Mausoleum,” where the “Medical Fraternity” are to be buried on the same terms as the Parisians are at Père la Chaise—and then follow the supposed Epitaphs of the present race of the “Medici.” Due honour is done to learning and talents; while quackery, in all its ramifications, meets with just castigation. The names of Heberden, Turton, and Baker are noticed with the respect to which their virtues and acquirements entitle them.
Passing from these, we are introduced to an eccentric of the old school. [p333]
“SIR RICHARD JEBB, BART. M.D.
“Here, caught in Death’s web,