But though full well he lov’d good cheer,
It was a venial fault;
Since Reason’s feast to him was dear,
Season’d with Attic Salt.
“He was an excellent surgeon of his day; that is, fifty years before Abernethy or Cooper was dreamt of. He was also a great oddity, but a perfect gentleman in his appearance and manner; never seen, by any accident, but in a well-powdered wig, silk stockings, and shoe-buckles. He practised in the City, when the city aristocracy resided within its walls, and Haberdashers’ “Hall, in the season, assembled all the wit, wisdom, and wealth of London merchants, in a sort of conclave of saltatory civic magnificos.”
We just remember him, and that, after a long illness, he went round in his carriage to return thanks for “obliging inquiries,” leaving his card, on which was written, “the remains of Dick Grindall.”
The third and last work we have to notice, comes more legitimately before us, and is a novelty in medical literature—a sort of Sketch Book, containing much entertaining anecdote, that makes the information it contains extremely amusing.
The work is divided into three parts, as the alliterated title quaintly informs us—Mems., Maxims, and Memoirs. The first is a chronological record, giving, as it were, a “bird’s eye view” of the most interesting events in the history of medicine, from the time of the conquest up to the [p336] present century. The second consists of comments, or short essays, illustrative of some of the most important facts; and the third of biographical anecdotes.
Under the head of “Medical Books,” we are presented with curious specimens of our earliest writers, with comments; but let the author speak for himself.
“One of the first of our English writers, is John of Gaddesden, whose ‘Rosa Anglica,’ was greatly esteemed, and he is favourably mentioned by Chaucer. John was a man to whom nothing came amiss; he had an anodyne necklace for fits, and an infallible cataplasm for gout; he was a dexterous bone-setter, and a good dentist. He was very assiduous in inventing lotions for ladies’ complexions; and was complaisant enough to cut their corns; and as for those troublesome animalcules, which, in those days, used to infest gentlemen’s heads, he had a most effectual method of destroying them; and in his celebrated book, he favours us with a whimsical cure for small-pox.—‘Immediately after the eruption, cause the whole body of your patient to be wrapped in red scarlet cloth, or in any other red cloth, and command everything about the bed to be made red. This is an excellent cure. It was in this manner I treated the son of the noble King of England, when he had the small-pox; and I cured him, without leaving any marks.’