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Title: Sketches from the history of medicine, ancient and modern: An oration delivered before the Hunterian Society
Author: Saunders, W. Sedgwick (William Sedgwick)
Language: English
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MEDICINE, ANCIENT AND MODERN ***
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SKETCHES
FROM
THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE
Ancient and Modern.
=AN ORATION=
DELIVERED BEFORE
THE HUNTERIAN SOCIETY,
AT THE LONDON INSTITUTION,
ON THE 13TH FEBRUARY, 1867,
BY
W^M. SEDGWICK SAUNDERS, M.D.
LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, EDINBURGH.—VICE-PRESIDENT
OF THE HUNTERIAN SOCIETY.—TREASURER TO THE NEW SYDENHAM SOCIETY.—
EXAMINING PHYSICIAN TO THE EAST INDIAN—SCINDE AND DELHI—BOMBAY
AND BARODA—GREAT SOUTHERN OF INDIA—CALCUTTA AND SOUTH EASTERN
—AND OUDE AND ROHILKUND RAILWAY COMPANIES.—MEDICAL OFFICER
TO THE CITY OF GLASGOW LIFE ASSURANCE CORPORATION AND THE
METROPOLITAN FIRE BRIGADE, &c.—AUTHOR OF THE “CAUSES
AND PREVENTION OF CHOLERA” AND “REPORTS ON
CHOLERA IN THE CITY OF LONDON, 1866.”
PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE COUNCIL.
_For Private Circulation._
LONDON:
PRINTED BY M. & W. COLLIS. 50, BOW LANE, CHEAPSIDE, E.C.
1868.
Mr. President,
I purpose to devote the time, which your indulgence has placed at my
disposal this evening, to laying before you the results of some
inquiries into the origin and history of medicine and of the medical
profession; regarding the subject rather from a _social_ than from a
_scientific_ point of view.
My scheme will introduce you to some of your old acquaintances; not for
instruction, but to remind you of those passages in their lives which
may have been pressed out of your memories by the sterner realities of
professional duties.
An inquiry into the origin of medicine must begin with the history of
man himself, since pain and death are the inevitable conditions of his
existence; and the desire to mitigate the former, and postpone the
triumphs of the latter arose from, and has kept pace with, the
development of the various diseases to which time and circumstances have
subjected him.
The _primal man_, we know, was created pure and innocent, free from
liability to pain, and possessed of unmixed capacity for the enjoyment
of the pleasures that surrounded him; glowing with health, and with
every emotion redolent of new delight. At sight of him,
Each hill gave sign of gratulation,
Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs
Whisper’d it to the woods; and from their wings
Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub:—
Apprehension of the miseries to which his progeny were doomed, would
have marred this happiness; hence his ignorance of evil, and his belief
that the felicity he enjoyed would be as permanent as it was perfect.
But our business is with man in his _actual_ condition; the sport of
“All maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone, and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac phrensy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus and wide wasting pestilence,
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums,
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike.”——
Undertaking to examine the subject _ab initio_, we must take into
account the sources of our information, and as our knowledge of every
event _antecedent to the discovery of writing_ must have been
transmitted by oral or traditional agencies, we have to settle, in some
degree, how far such evidence is worthy of credence.
According to popular belief, the Noahic flood destroyed the whole human
race, with the exception of Noah and his family; who were therefore the
sole depositories of the traditions of the events which had occurred
between the time of Adam and themselves. The great longevity of these
antediluvian fathers made this oral transmission easy; and we know, that
the sons of Noah lived to see the birth of Abraham, whom, as the founder
of circumcision, we claim as the first operative surgeon on record.
In dealing with dates, I adopt the commonly accepted chronology, unmoved
by those refined speculations so much in favour at this time.
I begin with Moses, for whatever evidence may be urged upon us in the
shape of marbles, or monuments, claiming an antiquity anterior to the
advent of the Jewish lawgiver, it is a positive and unimpeachable fact,
that no _writings_ are in existence, which in point of age reach within
many centuries of the Pentateuch; indeed, as we shall presently see, the
oldest of the Greek writers are, in comparison with Moses, but as the
children of yesterday.
The five books of Moses were written 1500 years before Christ. Hesiod,
the father of Greek literature, flourished 500 years later; and Homer,
the next in succession, nearly a century after Hesiod.
Herodotus places Homer 400 years before himself; thus bringing the
“father of history,” as he is termed by Cicero, to about 500 years
before the advent of our Saviour, so that the difference of date between
the author of the Pentateuch and the oldest Greek historian cannot be
much less than 1000 years.
I pass over the pretended antiquity of the Chinese and Parsis records:
these have been disposed of very satisfactorily, and however much
_fancy_ may dwell upon the losses to literature inflicted by the Caliph
Omar, when he destroyed the Alexandrian library,[1] in the year 640, a
very little reflection will convince us that as these treasures, real or
assumed, had been ransacked for ages, by the brightest spirits of Greece
and Rome, everything worthy of note has been handed down to us.
-----
Footnote 1:
The library destroyed by the Caliph Omar, was situated in the temple
of Serapis, and consisted of 300,000 volumes; in addition to which
there existed in the Bruchion quarter of the city of Alexandria, a
second collection of 400,000 books, which was accidentally lost by
fire during the war with Julius Cæsar.
Alexandria (founded 332 B.C.) stood in an intermediate position
between the east and west, and united the commerce of Europe, Aralia,
and India; here came first into collision the Greek and Oriental mind;
here the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament was written; and
the collections formed by the ancient kings of Egypt were rapidly
enriched and enlarged by the interchange of ideas with the Greek
philosophers.
-----
The _learned_ talk about the writings of the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
and the Egyptians; but they do not produce a single scrap of tangible
evidence in support of these pretensions.
It may, however, be contended, that although there are no _writings_
extant, _traditional_ evidence is very strong; and this establishes a
high antiquity for Lycurgus, who lived 900 years before the Christian
era. The more, therefore, we inquire, the stronger the proof becomes,
that Moses as a lawgiver flourished 600 years before the highest
claimant to our veneration on the grounds of primitiveness; and thus we
are entitled to assume that the Greek legislator took much that is
excellent, in the laws ascribed to him, from his Jewish predecessor.
Lycurgus lived about the time that Shishak, king of Egypt, destroyed the
temple of Solomon, and carried away many captives: it is therefore no
very extravagant supposition, that the Pentateuch of Moses was known to
the great lawgiver. During the peaceful reign of king Solomon, the
intercourse between the Jews and the Egyptians was frequent and
extensive, for the great monarch, needing the assistance of skilful
artificers for the construction of the Temple at Jerusalem, broke down
that barrier of exclusiveness that had previously isolated his people.
Now the _learned_ of that day were seekers after wisdom wherever it was
to be found; and moreover, as the fame of Solomon was co-extensive with
the then existing world, so acute an observer as the _founder_ of the
Grecian law could not fail to use the materials which the wide spread
knowledge of the Jewish kings sayings and doings had placed within his
reach.
Every Jew was required to read the law, or hear it read, once a
year—each individual therefore became a living depository of its truths,
and, consequently, a somewhat competent teacher of those who might
desire to be instructed in such matters.
_Moses_ then comes before us as the first _writer_, and the first
_lawgiver_; and we shall now proceed to show that to these titles he
added the still greater distinction of being the first _physician_, and
promulgator of sanitary precautions.
At present, however, I will not further intrude upon your patience, but
leaving his claims where I have placed them, pass on to the
consideration of the character of the laws themselves;—and here we
arrive at a body of enactments so excellent, so well adapted, not only
to the requirements of a nomadic people wandering in a wild country, but
to that _same_ people when they subsequently became dwellers in cities,
and suffered all the encumbrances of a more advanced civilization.
_Moses_ made laws for _all_ times and for _all_ communities, _general_
as well as _particular_, reaching the _nation_ through every individual
member thereof; his rules for the preservation of health embraced the
consideration of personal cleanliness enforced as a _religious_
obligation in order that he might thereby enlist the unvarying
co-operation of the priesthood.
In a climate incentive to animal enjoyments he placed strict barriers
for the preservation of _chastity_, and decreed that matters relating to
sexual intercourse should be under the surveillance of the priest;
directions were also given to the _menstruous_ woman, and for her
conduct during _pregnancy_ and in _childbed_. The ordinance of
circumcision was devised not alone for ablutionary purposes, but for
_other well understood_ objects conducive to purity. Further, it was
directed how the man should order himself in affections of the virile
organs; and more emphatically, what he was bound to observe when the
terrible _leprosy_ afflicted him. In such a calamity he was compelled to
withdraw from his house, to be separated from society, and present
himself to the priest at various periods during the progress of the
disease; he was also to remain in a cheerless exclusion, where, if by
chance any unwary passenger came in sight, the sufferer was commanded to
cry aloud, _unclean! unclean!_ When convalescence and health returned,
the _priest_ pronounced him cured of his leprosy, and he was then
permitted to return to his home; but if the leprosy was supposed to
cling to the _habitation_, _that_, too, was subjected to isolation, and
in some instances to total destruction.
The _same precautions_ obtain in our own times, although nearly 3400
years have elapsed since they were first insisted upon by Moses.
Thus, we are told by Dr. Thompson, an eminent American writer on the
Holy Land (where he resided many years), that lepers are everywhere
regarded as unclean, and that at Jerusalem (where there is always a
considerable number of them) a separate quarter in the city is assigned
to them, to which they are rigidly confined. Dr. Thompson says: “I have
seen them cast out of the villages where they resided, and no healthy
person would touch them, eat with them, or use any of their clothes or
utensils, and even the Arab tent dwellers cast them out of camp. The
leper beggars stand apart, and never attempt to touch you, even as it
was in the time of the Saviour, when the ten lepers stood afar off and
lifted up their voice of entreaty.”
The same writer furnishes us with the following graphic description,
which, as coming from an eye witness, we have deemed worthy of notice:—
“Sauntering down the Jaffa road, on my way to the Holy City, I was
startled by the sudden apparition of a crowd of beggars, sans eyes, sans
nose, sans hair, sans everything; they held up their handless arms,
unearthly sounds gurgled through throats without palates, and, in a
word, I stood horrified, when, for the first time, I found myself face
to face with a leper.” He then goes on to say: “For many years I have
sought to get at the mystery of its origin, but neither books nor
learned physicians have thrown any light upon it. I have suspected that
this remorseless enemy originates in some self-propagating animalcules,
and thus I can conceive the possibility of the contagion reaching the
walls of a dwelling. No one has spoken with authority, as to what it
proceeds from or how it is generated.
“New born babes of leprous parents are often as pretty and healthy in
appearance as other children, but the ‘_scab_’ comes on by degrees, the
hair falls off, joint after joint of the fingers and toes shrink up, the
gums are absorbed, and the teeth fall out and disappear; the nose, the
eyes, the palate are slowly consumed, and finally the wretched victim
sinks into the earth under a disease beyond the control of medicine,
which cannot even mitigate its tortures.
“To my mind there is no conceivable manifestation of Divine power more
triumphantly confirmatory of Christ’s divinity than the cleansing of a
leper with a word.”[2]
-----
Footnote 2:
The contagiousness of Leprosy was held in universal belief up to the
seventeenth century, when certain writers on the subject began to
question the validity of a doctrine which had been handed down to them
through successive ages, by all the early observers of the Jewish,
Egyptian, Arabian, Grecian, and Hindoo countries, and the view then
advanced has been confirmed by the report of the Committee recently
appointed by the College of Physicians, who state that:—“The all but
unanimous conviction of the most experienced observers in different
parts of the world, is quite opposed to the belief that leprosy is
_contagious_ or _communicable_ by _proximity_ or _contact_.”
On the other hand we have to consider the testimony afforded us by the
shrewd and intelligent teachers of ancient times. Thus, Aretæus
believed it to be as contagious as the _plague_, and like _it_
communicable by respiration; and _Œtius_, following _Archigenes_,
thought that “the air became contaminated through the effluvia of the
sores.” _Avicenna_ believed leprosy to be contagious in the _general_
sense of that term; _Avenzoar_ by contact; _Haly Abbas_ and
_Alsaharavius_ through the respiration; and _Rogerius_ “_per coitum_.”
[These interesting facts are taken from an able article in the Lancet,
February 9, 1867.]
-----
The initiatory rite of circumcision was, by Divine command, first
performed by Abraham in the year of the world 2107, or about 1897 years
before Christ:—At the age of 99 years, Abraham, together with his son
Ishmael and all his dependents were circumcised.
Ishmael at this time was thirteen years old, and, as we are informed by
Josephus, was the founder of the Arabian nation, who to this day do not
circumcise until after the thirteenth year.
Isaac, the child of promise, the heir who was to carry on the race of
the patriarch, was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, and
this, among the Hebrews, became a law, and a statute for ever.
One of the tapestries at Hampton Court, in the time of Holbein,
represents the operation being performed upon Isaac, with what appears
to be a knife made of stone, which was the instrument used for many ages
for this purpose.
By the kindness of my friend, the Rev. William Sparrow Simpson, the
learned Librarian and Minor Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral, I am enabled
to show you some of these knives of stone; and further evidence of the
employment of such implements will be found in Exodus 4th chapter and
25th verse, where it is written—“Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and
cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at his (Moses) feet.”[3]
-----
Footnote 3:
_Pliny_ tells us that the priests of _Cybele_, the mother of the gods
had sharp stones with which they cut themselves in their extasies.
_Catullus_ says, that _Atys_ emasculated himself with such an
instrument.
The Rabbinical law stands thus: “we may circumcise with anything, even
with a flint, with crystal (glass) or with anything that cuts, _except
with the sharp edge of a reed_, because the _enchanters_ make use of
that, or it may bring on a disease.” Again we have the evidence of
_Leutholf_ that the Æthopians used _stone knives_ for circumcision in
his time, 1581. Speaking of the _Alnajah_, an Æthopian race, he
says:—“Alnajah gens Æthiopum cultris lapideis circumcisionem peragit.”
Mr. E. B. Tylor in his “Researches into the Early History of Mankind,”
has suggested as the probable reason why stone was used as a cutting
instrument, that it was less likely to cause inflammation than either
bronze or iron. And _Pliny_ states that the mutilation of the priests
of _Cybele_ was done with a sherd of Samian ware to avoid the same
danger.
-----
Some writers believe that the practice of circumcision existed for ages
amongst the Heathens before the time of Abraham, whilst others have not
hesitated to date its origin as far back as our first fathers, asserting
that Adam was taught by the angel Gabriel to satisfy an oath he had made
to cut off that flesh, which after his fall had rebelled against his
spirit.
Much has been written with regard to the comparative _antiquity_ of this
custom among the Egyptians and Ethiopians; a point upon which the
erudite Herodotus leaves us in doubt.
Circumcision of _both_ sexes exists amongst the Abyssinians, Nubians,
Egyptians (both ancient and modern), Hottentots, and probably many other
nations. But in Turkey, Persia, and in the South Sea Islands, and those
of the Indian Seas, the practice is confined to the _male_ sex. The
Mohammedans adopt the rite of circumcision, and Mahomet himself was
circumcised, although no mention is made of the fact in the Koran.
Doubtless, the so-called circumcision of women, as it is practised in
some countries, is a modification of what _we_ understand by the term,
and involves structures other than the clitoris or nymphæ; and it is
equally true that the custom is adopted by many races totally
irrespective of any religious significance.
Sonnini de Manoncourt, a distinguished traveller and naturalist of the
eighteenth century “having examined a young girl of Egyptian origin,
about eight years old, found a thick, flabby, and fleshy excrescence,
covered with skin, which grew above the commissure of the labia, and
hung down half an inch, resembling in size and shape the caruncle
pendent from the bill of a turkey cock.”
Conditions of a similar nature are said to exist among the women of the
interior of Africa, and are probably due to climatic influences, but the
more common forms of disease are those of simple hypertrophy of the
external parts of generation; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that
the surgical interference necessary for their removal has given rise to
the general term of circumcision.
“Simple _excision_ of the _clitoris_ has been practised for very many
centuries by certain nations,” and I purpose quoting some interesting
observations just published by Dr. T. H. Tanner, upon the subject. His
first extract is from Strabo, the geographer, A.D. 21, who, in speaking
of the Egyptians, says:—“They _circumcise_ the males and _excise_ the
females, as is the custom also among the Jews, who are of Egyptian
extraction.” The custom appears to have been continued down to a recent
period, and Mr. W. G. Brown,[4] who resided for some time at Darfour,
North Africa, writing in 1779, thus alludes to it:—“The excision of
females is a peculiarity with which the northern nations are less
familiar; yet it would appear that this usage is more evidently founded
on physical causes, and is more clearly a matter of convenience, than
the circumcision of males, as it seems not to have been ordained by the
precept of any inspired writer.”
-----
Footnote 4:
Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria, from the year 1792 to 1798, p.
347. London, 1799.
-----
“This excision is termed in Arabic ‘_chafadh_.’ It consists of cutting
off the clitoris a little before the period of puberty, or at about the
age of _eight_ or _nine_ years.”
Again, the Nubian traveller[5] _Burckhardt_ tells us—“The daughters of
the Arabs _Ababde_, and _Djaafere_, who are of Arabian origin, and
inhabit the western bank of the Nile from Thebes, as high as the
cataracts, and generally those of all the people to the south of _Kenne_
and _Esne_ (as far as Sennaar) undergo circumcision, or rather
_excision_ (excisio-clitoridis,) at the age of from _three_ to _six_
years: Girls thus treated are called _mukhaeyt_.”
-----
Footnote 5:
Travels in Nubia, by the late John Lewis Burckhardt, p. 332. London,
1819.
-----
But perhaps the most trustworthy account of the circumcision of females
in Western Africa is that given by the late Mr. W. F. Daniel, who was a
distinguished member of our own profession. He tells us that “The
excisive process in Western Africa is variously performed in accordance
with the usages of the different districts where it is resorted to. The
operation consists either of:—
“1. Simple excision of the clitoris; 2. excision of the nymphæ; 3.
excision of both nymphæ and clitoris; 4. excision of a portion of the
labia pudendi, with either or all of the preceding structures.
“The history of the operation is involved in obscurity; that it was
secretly inculcated as one of those gloomy rites which the female
proselyte had to undergo, as a preliminary measure, prior to her
initiation into those dread mythological creeds, which, in Egypt and the
adjoining countries were swathed in the folds of an allegorical and
almost impenetrable mysticism, is the most likely inference.”
_Eventually_ the progressive decay of the religious institutions,
gradually led to its promulgation and practice among the masses of the
people; for the _priests_, who, independent of their scientific
attainments, were also well versed in medicine, might have advocated its
use both in a moral and hygienic point of view, as conducive to the
welfare of the female population.
I have been led into this digression by reflecting over the barbarous
and unphilosophical meddling of certain practitioners of our metropolis
who are, in effect, degrading our practice of surgery to the level of
that of the savages we have just described, without possessing the same
claim to our consideration on the score of ignorance, barbarism, and
superstition. The modern antic yclept “_clitoridectomy_” (to which I
refer), is, as the “Lancet” says, “a proceeding which, if it be
_useless_, is a _lamentable mistake_, and if it be _unnecessary_, _a
cruel outrage_.”
The next proposition we may fairly look for will be to imitate still
further the customs of these Western Africans who, in certain tribes,
whenever a girl shows any very strong indication of sexual feeling
(before she is betrothed), at once proceed to produce an obliteration of
her vagina by the intense inflammatory action set up by the forcible
introduction of a mass of the “capsicum fructescens,” or bird pepper—to
my mind not one shade more inhuman or barbarous than unsexing a woman
for ever, upon an assumption which grossly libels our female population.
The position taken by the early Christians in reference to the practice
of circumcision was decidedly antagonistic, so far as any value, in a
_religious_ point of view, should be ascribed to it; nevertheless, their
apostles and teachers permitted it to continue, at the discretion or
inclination of those who chose to submit to it.
It is an interesting fact to note that the Copts, whose Christianity
dates back from the persecution of Diocletian (called the era of
martyrs) in 303, and the Abyssinian Christians, who also reckon from the
fourth century, adopt the custom to this day, from a belief that it
gives them a further chance of entering Paradise, beyond the baptism
they receive as Christians. It is also singular that these sects accept
several other doctrines and precepts of the Mohammedans and Jews, among
whom they dwell.
The precise mode of operating upon males varies in different countries.
In Madagascar three separate and distinct operations are inflicted upon
the individual. In the South Sea Islands the natives simply slit up the
prepuce on its dorsal aspect, and in earlier times the practice was to
cut the prepuce all round the corona, avoiding the frœnum. In the Fiji
Islands the instrument used is a sharp splinter of bamboo.
Upon females the process of excision is performed by aged women. In
Egypt the custom is still maintained; and the women of the _Said_ travel
about from town to village, crying out “Circumcisor! who wants a
circumcisor?” In Old Calabar, Mr. Daniel had the opportunity of
witnessing the operation, which is likewise performed _there_ by aged
females. The girl having been placed on the knees of a woman, with the
legs apart, the clitoris was seized, _forceps-like_, by two pieces of
bamboo or palm-sticks, and being gently drawn forth, was severed with a
sharp razor.
Among the Jews the peculiar and distinctive mark of circumcision is
perpetuated in our days, and without any material change of ceremonial.
The _modus operandi_ is as follows:—The godfather being seated, takes
the child on his knees, and the operator (who may be the father of the
child, if capable, or some friend of the family, or a professed expert)
takes up with his fingers, or a pair of tweezers, as much of the prepuce
as he intends to cut off, and, on applying the knife, says—“Blessed be
Thou, O God, who hast commanded us to use circumcision.” He then sucks
the blood, and spits it into a cup of wine, and having applied styptics
to the wound, retakes the cup, and having blessed _it_ and the child,
pronounces the name of the child, and moistens his lips with the
contents of the cup. Various prayers are then said, and the ceremony is
concluded.
Though the modern Jews generally use a steel instrument, there is this
remarkable exception—that, when a male child dies before the eighth day,
it is circumcised prior to burial, and this is done, not with the
ordinary instrument, but with a fragment of glass or flint.
The practice extended to the Ishmaelites, and, as we have already
stated, was subsequently adopted by Mahomet, so that a very large
section of the human race are to this day, participators of a rite
established considerably more than 3000 years ago.
The subject cannot be dismissed without noticing the fact that the Jews
under their various captivities, subjugations, and persecutions,
endeavoured, in some instances, to obliterate the marks of circumcision.
This is abundantly proved, not only by contemporary writers, but by the
evidence of Epiphanius, Celsus, Galen, Paulus Ægineta, Fallopius, and
others, who have enlarged upon the means adopted for the accomplishment
of this object. It is, further, a noteworthy circumstance that the Jews
_entirely_ suspended the practice of circumcision during the forty years
of their wanderings in the wilderness.
In contemplating the sufferings of this unfortunate race, the heart
sickens at the punishments which resulted from their resistance to
foreign usurpation. Unable to discern the hand of God in their
humiliation, their struggles were, indeed, hopeless, but not the less
heroic. Captives in Babylon, after a long and cruel servitude, they were
restored only to be again scattered by the destruction of Jerusalem,
under Titus. Through the varying fortunes of the Romans, no
resting-place seems to have been vouchsafed to them; plundered and
disgraced, the fall of Rome only eventuated, as far as _they_ were
concerned, in a change of masters. Ruthless persecutors tracked them
through the dark ages, and what Heathenism spared, Christianity
despoiled; our pious ancestors praising God when they had a chance of
maltreating an Israelite.
For these reasons, and with such incentives, can we doubt that the timid
amongst them would endeavour to remove the means of identity which
circumcision afforded.
We have so refined away the simplicity of the patriarchal times, that it
is almost necessary to apologise for alluding to the reverential awe
with which all matters relating to the seed of Abraham were regarded. It
was a solemn and impressive act when the Patriarch, believing that the
time was come for his son Isaac to have a wife, sent for his chief
servant, and said, “Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and swear
by the Lord that thou wilt choose a wife for my son out of mine own
kindred;” and the servant, with his hand on his master’s genitals, took
the required oath; and we all know how faithfully he performed it.
Whilst this simple, but deeply significant ceremony was being enacted,
the heart of the father of the faithful was doubtless filled with
contemplations of the great purposes for the accomplishment of which the
organs of generation were appropriately considered as the direct agents.
This mode of taking the oath is further adverted to in the 47th chapter
of Genesis, when Jacob is taking his farewell of his children.
In our blind adoration of classical heathenism we undervalue the sublime
and not less poetical incidents which mark the rise, progress,
culmination, and decay of that people with whom our highest interests
are identified. If, for instance, the Book of Job had not been written
under inspiration, and had been accidentally discovered among the ruins
of the _first_ Babylon, our antiquarians would have regarded it as the
loftiest of epics; and especially so if, instead of inculcating the
worship of the true God, its subject had been the glorification of
whatever false deity might have been in the ascendant when this most
ancient poem was composed.
The prejudices of education subjugate the judgment, and the gross and
sensual attributes with which the Greek poets invested their deities,
are accepted with complacency, if not with admiration; even Pope, their
great panegyrist, describes their heroes thus:—
“Gods, partial, changeful, profligate, unjust,
Whose attributes were _rage_, _revenge_, and _lust_.”
This, of course, will be set down for rank blasphemy against the canons
of taste. We are exuberant in our praises of the _genius_ of Homer, and
not to worship his _inventive_ powers is an offence of the deepest dye;
but when we are barbarous enough to critically examine this wonderful
mythology, and to determine the claims to applause—say of supreme
Jove—we are rather troubled by the difficulty of reconciling the ways of
the first intelligence with our commonplace notions of decency. The
intrigues of the father of the gods, the artifices by which he eludes
the jealousy of his wife Juno, his incestuous, and, if they were not
classical, we should call them filthy debaucheries, draw largely upon
our faith in the beauties of these records of high Olympus; and our
admiration for the poet is sadly tinctured with disgust for the images
in which his creative powers are developed.
Thus much of the ceremonial laws. Of the moral law, the law of God, it
becomes me not to speak; its obligations are as eternal as its author;
the everlasting truths of the decalogue have been incorporated more or
less into every system of religion and ethics which has been enunciated
during the ages interposing between us and the period in which they were
first promulgated on Mount Sinai.
In dismissing Moses and his times, I crave your particular attention to
the manner in which the characters of priest and physician met in the
same person. As we proceed we shall find that this junction of
attributes continues through all the variations of time and
circumstances. The terrors of the _unseen_, overawing the ignorant,
placed them at the mercy of those daring minds which in every age have
assumed the office of interpreters of the will of the _demon_, or the
behests of the benign Deity. To deal as a mediator between the threats
of the terrible avenger and the awe-stricken victim of his own
bewildered imagination, to avert the consequences of the threatened
storm, or to turn aside any other manifestation of approaching evil is
the office of the _medicine-man_ of the North American Indian and the
_Obeah_ doctor of the African. Shrewd observers of nature, these
wretched impostors monopolize the whole of the intelligence, such as it
is, of the hordes of the human race upon whom the light of reason has
never dawned, or has dawned in vain.
There is yet another aspect of the medical character, infinitely more
agreeable and important, and the consideration of it will bring us to
the times immediately preceding the days of the father of medicine. I do
not propose to penetrate into the story of Esculapius and his divine
origin, which probably, in an esoteric sense, merely meant that the
Giver of all good had inspired him with a knowledge of the healing art;
but (with a passing glance at Homer, the greatest poet of his own or any
subsequent age), proceed to offer some general observations on the
position which the study of medicine acquired under the tutorship of the
philosophers.
The siege of Troy is supposed to have taken place about three hundred
years before the _Iliad_ was sung, and in that early time it appears
that the cultivation of our art formed part of the general education of
kings and warriors.[6]
-----
Footnote 6:
“As for Medicine, something of it must have been understood in that
age, though it was so far from perfection, that, according to Celsus,
(book i.) what concerned _diet_ was invented long after by
Hippocrates. The accidents of life make the search after remedies too
indispensable a duty to be neglected at any time; accordingly, he
tells us, that the Egyptians, who had many medicinal plants in their
country, were all Physicians, and perhaps he might have learnt his own
skill from his acquaintance with that nation.
“The state of war in which Greece lived, required a knowledge in the
healing of wounds, and this might make him breed his princes,
Achilles, Patroclus, Podalirius and Machaon, to the science; what
Homer thus attributes to others he himself knew, and he has given us
reason to believe, not slightly, for if we consider his insight into
the structure of the human body, it is so nice, that he has been
judged by some to have wounded his heroes with too much science; or,
if we observe his cure of wounds, which are the accidents proper to an
epic poem, we find him directing the chirurgical operations, sometimes
infusing lenitives, at other times bitter powders, when the effusion
of blood required astringent qualities.”—_Pope’s Essay on the
Character of Homer._
-----
Homer introduces us to Machaon the son of Esculapius, who, when Menelaus
was treacherously wounded by Pandarus, is called to his aid:
“When the wound appeared in sight, where struck
The stinging arrow, from the clotted blood
He cleansed it, and applied with skilful hand
The healing ointments, which, in friendly guise,
The learned _Chiron_ to his father gave.”[7]
-----
Footnote 7:
Lord Derby’s Translation.
-----
Making due allowance for the debasing fable with which every great name
or talent is overlaid, it is rational to suppose that Chiron, the
teacher of Esculapius, was one of those shepherd philosophers, who like
their Babylonian brethren absorbed all the knowledge of the times; but
Homer gives us other examples in support of this idea. Chiron was the
preceptor of Achilles, and when Machaon is himself wounded, Patroclus is
sent by Achilles to his assistance; on his arrival he is urged by
Eurypylus, to
“Draw the deadly dart,
With luke-warm water wash the gore away:
With healing balm the raging smart allay,
Such as sage _Chiron_, sire of pharmacy,
Once taught Achilles, and Achilles thee.”—_Pope._
He also complains that
“Of two great _surgeons_, Podalirius stands
This hour surrounded by the Trojan bands,
And great _Machaon_ wounded in his tent
Now wants the succour which so oft he lent.”
Then
“Patroclus cut the forky steel away,
And in his hand a bitter root he pressed,
The wound he washed and styptic juice infused,
The closing flesh that instant ceased to glow,
The wound to torture and the blood to flow.”
Machaon seems to have largely shared the goodwill of the Grecian hosts.
Nestor, in his anxiety, says:—
A wise Physician skilled in wounds to heal,
Is more than _armies_ to the public weal.
Military leaders in our days have no such weakness as this. Studied
neglect seems to them the befitting recompense of those on whom they
must necessarily rely for the health and sanitary welfare of their
troops.
As we are still in the age of fable, it may not be out of place to
notice with what tenacity the human mind clings to those delusions which
fear engenders, and weak hopes sustain: with all our boasted
enlightenment, the _marvellous_ and the _incredible_ have more
worshippers than the _real_ and the _true_. Let us not wonder then, that
the pure monotheism enunciated in the Holy Scriptures had so little
charm for the sensuous and imaginative Greeks. Socrates, who, by the
simple force of reason and philosophy had reached the very portals of
the temple in which was enshrined the idea of the unity of God, in his
_last hour_ “sacrifices a cock to Esculapius.” The reputed offspring of
an impure deity, History is unhappily more abundant in records of human
folly and superstition, than in examples of purity of thought and
action—simplicity is everywhere despised—facts are distorted or made
subservient to sensations; for example:—It is not enough to tell us that
Chiron was skilled in physic, but to suit the depraved appetites of the
vulgar he is a _centaur_, and Esculapius a _god_. It is therefore with
something like relief that the name of Hippocrates comes before us, for
in him we have a _reality_, and in his works a remarkable record of the
condition of medical science in the fifth century before Christ. He was
born at Cos, a small island off the coast of Caria, not in Greece
proper, in the first year of the 80th Olympiad.
Hippocrates was descended from Esculapius by his father’s side, and from
Hercules by his mother’s, and was the son of Heraclides, a physician of
the family of the Asclepiadæ, who furnish us with the very earliest
instance of a body of philosophers devoting themselves to the healing
art; for, although Pythagoras, who lived immediately before Hippocrates,
and Democritus, who was his contemporary, were both learned physicians,
yet, whatever fame they acquired, was ascribed to their powers as mental
philosophers and rhetoricians.
It has been urged by way of apology for the mystery in which the
philosophers shrouded their wisdom, that “science, like modesty, should
cover itself with a veil to increase the charms of the treasure it
conceals;” and this principle has been, throughout all ages, more
generally acted upon than avowed.
The character of Hippocrates is at once a study for the physician and
the moralist; the former will appreciate the astonishing evidences which
his works afford, of a deep acquaintance with the whole subject of
medicine, and his admiration will be increased by the remembrance that
all the principles laid down by this great and good man, were the
results of his own experience.
No treatises on disease existed anterior to his time to aid him in his
investigations of the phenomena of nature, although it is true that in
the Asclepion or temple of Esculapius at Cos, records were kept and
votive tablets preserved commemorative of cures performed, and of the
remedies by which they were effected. But if the physician admires his
talents, the moralist does honour to the qualities of his mind and the
goodness of his heart. Benevolent and disinterested, pious towards the
gods, and incorruptibly devoted to his country, he instructed his fellow
men, not by shedding maudlin tears over their follies, like Heraclides,
nor by the coarse laughter of his friend Democritus, but by a calm and
even walk of life, mitigating sorrow by his skill, and showing the form
and beauty of virtue by his example.
His portrait of a worthy physician may well serve for his own likeness,
and in its description we shall observe that the exalted principles of
professional ethics therein inculcated, are as strictly applicable to
our own times as they were to those which he himself enlightened and
adorned. His words are:—“The physician who is an honour to his
profession, is he who has merited the public esteem by profound
knowledge, long experience, consummate integrity, and irreproachable
life; who, esteeming all the wretched as equals in the eyes of the
Divine Being, hastens to their assistance, speaks with mildness, listens
with attention, bears with their impatience, and inspires that
confidence which sometimes of itself restores life; sensibly alive to
their sufferings, carefully studies the causes and progress of the
complaint; not disconcerted by unforseen accidents, but, in emergencies,
having exhausted his own resources, holds it a duty to call in his
brethren of the healing art to assist him with their advice. Having
struggled with all his strength against the malady, he is happy and
modest in success, and in failure congratulates himself that he has, at
least, alleviated the sufferings of his patient.”
One of the great obstacles to the advancement of anatomy and physiology
was the universal reverence for the dead which the Greeks and Romans
shared in common with all the people of antiquity. Among the Jews, to
touch a dead body exposed the offender to a penance of seven days’
exclusion and privation from the ordinary comforts of life; and it is
almost superfluous to add, that the Egyptians made this reverence a part
of their religion.
He, then, who ventured on the dissection of the human body, did so at
great personal risk, and for more than 600 years after the foundation of
Rome, no instance is known of the existence of any public professor of
anatomy. About that time Archagathus, a Greek, practised surgery in
Rome; and it appears that his use of the knife, and the actual cautery,
was so abhorrent to the general feeling, that he was saluted with the
opprobrious title of “Carnifex.” Even in later days the learned
Tertullian classed anatomists and butchers together in a philippic he
pronounced against Herophilus, whom he charged with having tried
experiments on the living body. He commences:—“Herophilus, the
physician, or butcher, whichever you please, who to become better
acquainted with men, ripped them up alive,” &c. &c.
Of this same Herophilus, who appears to have been a man of humour, as
well as genius, there is an excellent story told:—A certain _Diodorus_,
a contemporary philosopher and teacher of paradoxes, declared that there
was no such thing as _motion_. “If a body _moves_,” says he, “it moves
into the place where it _is_, _or_ into the place where it _is not_; now
it does not move into the place where it _is_, for what is _in_ a place
_remains_ there, and, consequently, one cannot say that _it moves_. It
also cannot move in a place where _it is not_; and therefore, it does
not move at all.” This acute gentleman having dislocated his arm, begged
the services of Herophilus, who, smiling, said:—“Either the bone of your
arm is moved into the place where it _was_, or into the place where it
_was not_; now it cannot move, according to your principles, either in
one place or another, consequently it is not displaced at all.” The poor
teacher of paradoxes saw that Herophilus was laughing at him, and in an
agony cried out:—“Leave, I pray you, _dialectics_ and _sophisms_ to me,
and treat me according to the laws of medicine.”
The inference that dissection was not openly allowed, will be
strengthened by a short reference to the subject of the embalmment of
the dead—the first mention of this custom is found in the 50th Chapter
of Genesis; where, at the second verse, we read:—That “Joseph commanded
his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father, and the physicians
embalmed Israel;” and at 26th verse of the same chapter it is
written:—“So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old, and they
embalmed him.”
The Egyptians believed that so long as the human body could be saved
from putrefaction or decay, the soul of that body continued in
existence; and from this feeling arose the custom of embalming, so
common in remote ages. The embalmer was, in a certain sense, a _sacred_
functionary; nevertheless, it was the fashion to make a show of
resistance, when he began his operation, in order to mark the innate
horror of any, however necessary, profanation of the dead body.
Herodotus relates that in Egypt the mummy embalmers made the incision in
the side of the corpse with a sharp æthiopic stone. Of these stones two
varieties have been found in the tombs in Egypt, both of chipped flint,
and very neatly made. One kind is like a very small cleaver; the other
has more of the character of a lancet. The account given by Diodorus
Siculus of the resistance offered to the embalmer is, as follows:—“And
first, the body being laid on the ground, he who is called the scribe
marks on its left side how far the incision is to be made; then the
so-called slitter (paraschistes) having an æthiopic stone, and cutting
the flesh as far as the law allows, instantly runs off, the bystanders
pursuing him, and pelting him with stones, cursing him, and, as it were,
turning the horror of the deed upon him, for he who hurts a citizen is
held worthy of abhorrence.”[8] Immediately after death the corpse was
put into the hands of the embalmer, who in the presence of the friends
of the deceased, made an incision into the left side, as above
described, through which he extracted all the intestines, leaving the
heart and kidneys; the intestines were then washed in palm wine, and a
solution of astringent gums. The _brain_ was removed through the
nostrils by means of a hooked instrument, contrived for the purpose, and
the cavity filled with aromatic oils. The body was now anointed with
spice-oils and balsamic gums (frankincense being prohibited), and
allowed to remain for thirty days, after which it was immersed in a
solution of nitre for from forty to seventy days (the latter being the
extreme limit allowed); it was then enveloped in aromatised cere-cloths,
and all being ready, consigned to the coffin, on which were painted
emblems indicative of the condition of the deceased. The process is said
to have cost £300 of our money, and was, of course, only applicable to
the rich. The fee for embalmment alone, varied from a _Talent_ (which
has been estimated by some as equivalent to £193 15s., and by others to
£243 15s. of our present money) to a _Mina_, in value about £3 4s. 7d.
-----
Footnote 8:
Taken from E. B. Tylor—“Early History of Mankind,” p. 217.
-----
The embalmment of the middle classes was, in some degree, regulated by
their means; the simplest form being, the destruction of the intestines
with strong oil of tar, and after their removal soaking the body in a
strong solution of nitre for a period not exceeding seventy days.
Some have ascribed the practice of embalming to the fact of the
periodical inundations of the Nile rendering interment impossible at
such seasons, and hence have thought that necessity had quite as much to
do with the custom as the religious principle: but this idea is not well
founded, for although the Nile continues to overflow, embalmings have
ceased for ages.
After Hippocrates the name of Aristotle comes before us. Aristotle, the
pupil and friend of the venerable Plato, whose doctrines he adopted and
developed, lectured at Athens 370 years before Christ. As a physician
and naturalist he was far in advance of his contemporaries, and as a
mathematician and moral philosopher, his transcendent learning was, for
ages, the theme of every scholar; and his “System of the Universe”
adopted by the whole of the civilized world. These great qualities
attracted the attention of Philip of Macedonia, who chose him as the
tutor of his son Alexander (the Great). Ignorance and superstition were,
however, omnipotent, and for having enunciated the doctrine of one God,
and a supreme first cause, the priests of the various temples seeing
their craft in danger, excited the populace, who threatened his life.
Warned by the fate of Socrates, he retired to Chalcis to wear away a
life embittered by personal suffering, and sorrow for the folly and
ingratitude of his countrymen.
The heart’s deepest feelings are roused at the remembrance of the deeds
of violence perpetrated against every benefactor of mankind who has had
the courage to promulgate truths beyond the comprehension of the vulgar
on the one hand, and opposed to the vested interest of established
errors on the other. The fate of Aristotle is a common result, not
confined to the dark ages, nor without examples amongst ourselves.
The learned Philo of Alexandria, who lived A.D. 40, has given us an
interesting account of the very remarkable sect living in Egypt in his
day, known as the “Theraputæ,” or “healers.” He describes them as a
confraternity who, after having received a special training in the
University of Alexandria, devoted themselves to the healing art; they
led a secluded, contemplative life, and laid the foundation of the
monastic system. Eusebius calls them Christians, but this is not
confirmed by Philo, who was a member of the sect; they were, probably,
Platonists, or philosophical pagans. They ascribed their cures to
prayers, fastings, and incantations, eschewed all material remedies, and
medicaments, but made free use of magical rites of both forms—the
leucomancy, or white magic, used in invoking the gods, and necromancy
when the demons were to be propitiated or coerced. St. Luke, before his
conversion, is supposed to have been a Therapeut; and St. Paul denounces
some of their errors. Of their faults we cannot judge, but we may admire
the benevolence with which they devoted themselves alike to the physical
and moral welfare of their fellow men—in this respect, no unworthy
forerunners of Him who commanded his disciples, not only to “instruct
the ignorant,” but to “heal the sick.”
We pass over three centuries to come to the time of Celsus, who, in the
reign of Tiberius and the first century of our Lord, was established at
Rome; where he acquired great honour and renown. To these he was fairly
entitled by the extent of his learning and the especial attention he
paid to surgery and medicine. His principles governed the medical world
without a rival until the time of Galen, who divided the empire with him
for centuries.
Celsus was the first native Roman physician whose name has been
transmitted to us: the practice of medicine and surgery being, prior to
his time, in the hands of eminent Greeks and Asiatics, excepting that
there existed in Rome (at that period) a race of native practitioners,
who belonged to the class of slaves[9] or persons of low degree; and to
whom were entrusted only the subordinate branches of the healing art.
-----
Footnote 9:
See Notes and Letters of Pliny.
-----
The great proficiency of Celsus on the subjects of rhetoric, philosophy,
military tactics, and rural economy, as mentioned by Quintilian, has
induced many of our older writers to doubt whether he ever really
practised medicine and surgery, or, whether, like the elder Cato, he
simply studied them as a branch of general knowledge; and this
scepticism has been favoured by the fact of his name being omitted by
Pliny, in his “Treatise on the History of Medicine.”
On the other hand, no one, I think, can rise from the perusal of his
celebrated work, “De Medicina,” without being thoroughly convinced that
his intimate acquaintance with the theory and practice of medicine,
surgery, and pharmacy, could only have resulted from close bedside
observation.
Galen was born at Pergamos, in Asia, in the second century; his learning
was great, and his literary labours enormous. Having traversed Egypt and
Greece, and acquired a knowledge of every science taught in the schools
there, he settled in Rome. His works have been estimated at over 300
volumes—medical, physical, and metaphysical. He practised bleeding more
frequently than his predecessors, but he gave very careful directions as
to the conditions under which venesection should be resorted to, as well
as to the quantity of blood to be taken.
Averroes, Avicenna, and other Arabian physicians held him in great
veneration; and Dr. Alison says:— “For centuries after his death his
doctrines and tenets were regarded in the light of oracles, which few
persons had the courage to oppose; and the authority of Galen alone was
estimated at a much higher rate than that of all the medical writers
combined, who flourished during a period of more than twelve centuries.”
Rome, in its decadence, was too much occupied with the intrigues and
villainies of the factions by which it was ultimately destroyed, to
spare any time for the culture of science. It was not until after the
total disappearance of the Eastern Empire, and the hollow tranquillity
which succeeded the triumphs of Mahomet, and the subsequent subjugation
of Spain by the Moors, that learning reared its head in Alexandria, and
the Arabian physicians came into view.
Although Greece had disappeared, even in the noonday of its glory, its
literature never possessed more devoted admirers, nor more faithful
exponents than are to be found among the Arabian philosophers, and yet
what a striking contrast is exhibited in the characters of the two
people. Whilst making the philosophy of Greece their own, they by no
means lost their distinctiveness and individuality. The Greeks delighted
in all that was brilliant and fascinating, like the beautiful scenery of
Attica and Asia Minor. The Arabs were thoughtful and grave, monotonous
and arid, like the deserts they inhabited. The genius of poetry
illumined all the meditations of the former, and their thoughts were
graceful, even in their errors; whilst the reflections of the latter
were dull and melancholy, albeit they were based on truths.
A dreary night now ensues—we have no name of note until Paulus Ægineta
in 640—but what a series of historically grand events interpose: The
invasion of Europe by the Huns—Division of the Roman Empire—Taking of
Rome by Alaric—Visigoths established in Spain—Saxon heptarchy
begun—Conquest of Italy by Totila—Birth of Mahomet, down to the taking
of Alexandria by the Arabs—Greece and Rome having virtually disappeared;
and our next author (Paulus) probably present at the burning of the
great library of the Ptolemies.
Paulus Ægineta is entitled to our homage, as the author of an abridgment
of the works of Galen, and many excellent treatises on medical subjects,
especially on those incident to childbed, and the diseases of women; he
was the first writer upon _small-pox_ and _measles_, and the originator
of the theory of _zymosis_, which has received so much attention of
late. Paulus died about the middle of the seventh century, and with him
expired the last of the Greek writers upon medicine. His labours have
been thought worthy of being translated by the Sydenham Society.
Avicenna, who lived in the year 980, deserves a fuller notice than we
can afford him; his works are said to present great clearness and
acuteness. At the early age of eighteen he was chosen Physician to the
Court of the Caliph of Bagdad, where for some offence he was imprisoned,
and ultimately died. He has been called the “Hippocrates of the Arabs.”
Rhazes was contemporary with Avicenna, and has attracted the respectful
attention of the lovers of ancient medicine. His most esteemed work is a
treatise on small-pox, which was translated by Dr. Mead in 1548.
I will conclude these sketches of the Arabian schoolmen with a brief
notice of Averroes, the most eminent of them:—
This profound scholar was born at Cordova, in Spain, of which city his
father was the alcade, about the year 1120. He was educated in Morocco,
then in its glory, and in the celebrated schools there studied law,
philosophy, and medicine. His admiration for Aristotle was unbounded,
and his unwearied application to the examination of that great man’s
works, secured for him the reputation of being the ablest commentator on
the Aristotelian philosophy. He rose to the dignity of a judge in
Morocco, but the freedom of his opinions being in advance of the age, he
was imprisoned for some years, and only released on recanting his
errors; he died 1206, during the Caliphate of Almanzer.
The glories of the Moorish power now began to wane, and after repeated
discomfitures in 1516, that intelligent and highly civilized people were
finally expelled by Ferdinand the Catholic: the cross triumphs—the
crescent retires, and takes with it all that is admirable in arts, or
humanizing in science; the Spaniard has chased away Mahomet, and
receives the Inquisition as the first-fruits of his conquest.
The war against opinion was carried on so vigorously that Copernicus,
whose acute perception had discovered the errors of Aristotle’s theory
of heavenly bodies, was fiercely denounced. Copernicus was born in
Westphalia in 1473, he studied at Cracow, where he received the degree
of Doctor of Medicine; at Bologna his piercing genius discovered that
the sun was the centre of the planetary system, that the earth was a
planet and revolved round the sun like other planets, and thus was first
made known the true system of the universe. These discoveries being
distasteful to the church, the Pope issued a sentence of
excommunication; and the great astronomer died with a heart oppressed by
such unmerited persecution.
These discoveries were further pursued by another learned physician,
Galileo, who was born at Pisa in 1564. He entered the university there
in 1581, and prosecuted his studies with such zeal and success, that in
a very few years he became Professor of Mathematics. He now began his
career as a teacher of the philosophy of Copernicus, and soon received
unpleasant evidences that the disciple of truth must be ready to suffer.
A congregation of cardinals, monks, and mathematicians of the old
school, determined that his works were heretical and dangerous, and the
holy inquisition sentenced him to prison. After remaining incarcerated
some months he was taken before his judges, and required to renounce his
errors, and with his hand upon the Gospel, to swear that they were
sinful and detestable. Having performed this horrid penance, his
conscience upbraided him, and as he rose from his knees, he exclaimed,
“yet it does move,” for which relapse he was further sentenced to
perpetual imprisonment. He continued thus secluded for many years,
during which time blindness, deafness, and pains in his limbs embittered
his existence, and death at length, more merciful than the Holy See,
released him from his trials. Newton was born in the year in which this
noble martyr died.
For the edification of the worshippers of the “good old times,” a few
more instances of the loving kindness which prevailed may be acceptable.
The clerical sages of the University of Salamanca pronounced that the
assertion of Christopher Columbus, that a continent existed beyond the
seas, was blasphemous and feloniously wicked. A bishop of Salsburg
expressing his belief in the existence of the antipodes was denounced by
the bishop of Mentz as a dangerous heretic, and committed to the flames.
Bigotry, however, is not confined to any one creed, since we know that
Calvin the reformer, a man who had suffered persecution without learning
mercy, no sooner found himself invested with the power to punish the
freedom of thought in which he had himself indulged, than he persecuted
to death the learned physician, Michael Servetus, not for any immoral
proclivity, but because he believed him to be unsound on the doctrine of
the Trinity. Servetus took the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the
University of Paris about the year 1535. He is the author of some
medical treatises on the circulation of the blood, and also translated
Ptolemy’s geography; he was for some time in constant correspondence
with Calvin, but as the “Odium theologicum” is the bitterest, Calvin
shewed his christian charity by causing his antagonist to be consigned
to the flames.
But I must hasten forward, Fallopius looms in the distance, and with him
our medical celebrities come fast and numerous. Gabriel Fallopius was
born at Modena about the year 1523, and was one of the great triad of
anatomists in Italy who, at the close of the 16th century, laid the
foundation of the modern science of anatomy. Fallopius succeeded
Vesalius in the chair of anatomy and surgery at Padua in 1557. His
career was brilliant but short, and he died in 1562. It should be
mentioned that Fallopius shared the usual fate of great discoverers; his
originality was disputed, and his learning questioned; but it has been
always so, and in appreciating the works of our predecessors, we must
keep in view the enormous difficulties by which every onward step,
whether in art or science, is beset:
“Envy doth merit, as its shade pursue.”
truth does indeed ultimately prevail, but too frequently the heart of
the discoverer is broken before the obtuseness of the mediocrities in
power, by whom it is obstructed, can be overcome.
Although a little diverging from the strict chronological order, I must
here introduce to you our old acquaintance, Paracelsus; this eccentric
genius had too little virtue to be admired, and too much talent to be
despised. He was born at Zurich, in Switzerland, in 1493, and was
consequently contemporary with many more learned, but less celebrated
men; an unblushing and presumptuous egotist, he presents himself, in a
moral point of view, as the exact antithesis of the amiable and virtuous
Hippocrates. That he made some very useful discoveries must be granted
to him; he introduced the use of opium into Germany, and was the first
practitioner who employed preparations of mercury, antimony, sulphur,
iron, and other remedies.
Van Helmont is the most indulgent of his biographers, and Lord Bacon the
most severe; but perhaps the description given by Zimmerman comes
nearest the truth—“Paracelsus burnt publicly at _Bàle_ the works of
Galen, Avicenna, and other eminent predecessors, because, he said, ‘they
knew nothing of the cabballa and magic,’ which lay at the root of all
medical and natural laws. He undertook to cure all diseases by the use
of certain words and charms. He enjoined secresy on his disciples, and
certainly was the first _great quack_ from whom the numerous band of
Charlatans have proceeded.”
He has left his mantle behind him, and his descendants, with none of his
brains, have largely inherited his presumption. On the occasion of his
inauguration in the Chair of Medicine, he thus expresses himself:—
“Know,” says he, “that my _cap_ has more learning than all your
professors, and my beard more experience than all your academies! I
speak to you Greeks, Latins, Frenchmen, Italians, &c. &c. _You_ will
follow _me_, _I_ shall not follow _you_. You, I say, doctors of Paris,
Montpellier, Dalmatia, of Athens; you Jews, Arabs, Spaniards, English, I
tell you all that nature obeys me; and if God does not deign to assist,
I have yet the devil to resort to. I am king of all science, and command
all the hosts of hell.”
We have in this impostor the very embodiment of the true quacks of
to-day; their language is indeed a little subdued, but their pretensions
are as large; and, let me add, that whereas Paracelsus, in his days, had
the countenance and support of many persons of rank, so in ours, there
does not exist an ignorant pretender without the patronage of the great,
and this patronage, too often, in the exact ratio of his presumption and
falsehood.
It must not be overlooked that this arch imposter died miserably, in
poverty, induced by dissipation, and the possessor of the “elixir of
immortality” breathed out his drunken soul at the age of fifty.
We have a lively picture of the state of things begotten of this man in
the pages of Burton, an example in himself of the power of credulity,
and a proof that great scholastic learning was by no means at variance
with the wild vagaries of the times. He appears not unconscious of his
peculiarities, and offers the following apology for his frequent
reference to callings other than his own:—
“If any physician shall infer ‘ne sutor ultra crepidam,’ and be grieved
that I have intruded into his profession, I tell him, in brief, he does
the same by us:—I know many of his sect who have taken Orders in hope of
a Benefice—’tis a common transaction; and why may not a melancholy
divine, who can get nothing but by _Simony_, profess _Physic_? Marsilius
Ficinus was ‘semel et simul,’ a priest and physician, at once ‘sacerdos
et medicus;’ and also divers Jesuits are at this time ‘permissu
superiorem,’ chirurgeons, panders, bawds and midwives. Many poor vicars,
for want of other means, are driven to turn mountebanks, quacksalvers
and empirics; and in every village have we not wizards, alchymists,
barbers, goodwives, Paracelsians (as they call themselves), possessing
great skill, and in such numbers that I marvel how they shall all find
employment?”
Burton lived about 1576, and was consequently of the same age as our own
great Harvey, of whom we shall speak presently.
Let me offer you one specimen on the subject of demoniacal possession,
first introducing you to a new character, Cornelius Gemma, who was born
at Louvain in 1535, and was one of the greatest scholars of his age, a
professor of medicine in his native town (the chair having been
conferred upon him by the great Duke of Alva, who governed the low
countries), and whose writings embrace the subjects of medicine,
mathematics, magic, and spiritual possession. Like Cardan, he was
thought a little extreme in some views, but this one example suffices to
demonstrate the evil influences of Paracelsus. Gemma, in his second book
on natural miracles, says:—“A young maid, called Katherine Gualter, a
cooper’s daughter, in the year 1571, had such strange passions that
three men could not hold her. She purged a live eel—I myself saw and
touched—a foot and a half long; she vomited twenty-four pounds of
fulsome stuff of all colours twice a day for fourteen days, and after
that great _balls of hair_, _pieces of wood_, _pigeons’ dung_, _coals_,
and after them _two pounds_ of pure blood, and then again coals and
stones (_of which some had inscriptions_) bigger than a walnut. All this
I saw with horror. Physic could do no good, so she was handed over to
the clergy.”
Marcellus Donatus relates a story of a country fellow who had four
knives in his belly, every one a span long, and indented like a saw;
also a wreath of hair, and much other baggage. How they “came into his
guts” he knew not.
This personal testimony of Gemma is a melancholy proof that the light of
christianity, during fifteen centuries, had done but little towards the
emancipation of the human mind from the trammels of superstition, for,
we find Josephus, who lived A.D. 30, also favoring us with his
_personal_ testimony to facts quite as marvellous, and no doubt as
veracious, as those recorded by our Dutch philosopher. Yet although
common sense rejects such “materials of history” where shall we look for
better evidence of authenticity than is thus furnished by two men of
unimpeachable integrity. The pride of enlightenment is indeed checked by
the reflection that A.D. 1867 we hear of believers in “Spiritual
Manifestation” not only among the vulgar but in classes of society where
the yearning after the mysterious sets both reason and philosophy at
defiance.
The universality of belief in the existence of demons, and their
occasional possession of the bodies of men, pervades the whole course of
sacred and profane history, and Josephus, in enumerating the great
qualities of King Solomon, bears testimony to the power of the Jewish
Monarch as an “_Exorcist_:”—After informing us that Solomon exceeded all
men in knowledge of natural things, that he was familiar with every sort
of tree, from the cedar to the hyssop on the wall; that he knew the
habits of every living creature, whether upon the earth, or in the seas,
or in the air, and described their several attributes like a
philosopher, and demonstrated his exquisite knowledge of them; he goes
on to say:—“God also gave him understanding to attain to skill against
demons for the benefit of mankind; for having composed incantations,
whereby diseases are removed, he also left behind him certain kinds of
exorcisms whereby demons may be expelled so as never to return, and this
method of cure is effectual or prevails much among us to this day: for
_I saw_ one Eleazar, my countryman, in the presence of Vespasian and his
sons, and many tribunes and other soldiers, deliver men who were seized
by these demons. The cure was in this manner:—Applying to the nostrils
of the demoniacs a ring, having under the seal one of those roots of
which Solomon taught the virtues, he drew out the demon from the
nostrils of the man who smelled to it:—The man presently falling down,
the Exorcist mentioned the name of _Solomon_, and reciting the charms
composed by _him_, adjured the demon never to return:—Moreover Eleazar,
to satisfy all the company of his power, placed a small vessel full of
water, in which feet are washed, and commanded the demon as he went out
of the man to overthrow it, that all present might be sensible that he
had left the man: this being done the wisdom of Solomon was manifest.”
In the seventh book of his “Wars of the Jews,” he gives us the following
account of one of the roots employed by Exorcists:—“On the north side of
the City of Machœrus there is a valley, in which is a place called
Baaras, in which is found a plant bearing the same name: it is of a
flaming colour and towards evening shines very bright: it is not easy to
be gathered for it withdraws itself and does not stay unless one pours
upon it the urine of a woman, or menstruous blood, and even then it is
certain death to him who takes it unless he carries the root hanging
down upon the hand—There is another way of getting it without
danger:—They dig all round it, so that a very little bit of the root is
left in the ground, then they tie a dog to it, and the dog attempting to
follow him who tied it, the root is easily pulled up, but the dog dies
presently, as it were, instead of the man who would get the plant,
afterwards there is no danger to those who touch it. With all these
dangers the root is desirable, for demons, as they are called, who are
the spirits of wicked men entering into the living, and killing those
who have no help, this root presently expels; if it be only brought near
to them who are diseased.”
We have already shewn how it took the devils by the nose.
Before we proceed, it may not be out of place to notice the general
belief in astrology, and especially lunar influences, which prevailed at
this period. Herbs and roots had their several patrons, and it was only
when gathered and preserved under certain prescribed circumstances that
their specific virtues were assured.
Similar superstitions are not yet extinct; even in this year of grace,
1867, we are not quite emancipated from the ignorance of the middle
ages, and it is not a very unusual thing to see an advertisement in the
_Times_ announcing a “child’s caul” for sale. These and such like
absurdities,
“Though it make the unskilful laugh,
Cannot but make the judicious grieve.”
Nor is this credulity confined to the illiterate classes. The dupes of
St. John Long, as many of us may remember, included “potent, grave, and
reverend signiors,” and on his memorable trial, a certain noble lord[10]
gave evidence that Mr. Long had extracted a piece of lead from his head.
Some scoffers think it a pity that the quack, having succeeded to some
extent, left so much behind.
-----
Footnote 10:
The Earl of Shrewsbury.
-----
In speaking of Harvey, it is difficult to strike out any new path in a
tale that has been told so often. Yet, we may extract something out of
the consideration of the times in which he lived, and the men by whom he
was surrounded. He was born at Folkestone, in 1578, and commenced his
travels at 19 years of age. What his previous education had been does
not appear, but we find him at the age of 24 elected Doctor of Medicine
at Padua—then the most famous University in the world. On his return to
England he received the honour of the degree of Doctor of Medicine at
Cambridge. James the First, and his son, Charles the First, favoured him
with their countenance, and in 1628 he was induced to publish an account
of his great discovery. As a matter of course he was at once denounced
as a visionary; personal abuse was unsparingly poured upon him; but as
the grand fact enunciated was not to be shaken, his enemies turned round
and discovered that, after all, it was not new, and had been the
doctrine of many eminent physicians from the earliest days. The old, old
story: the same sickening detraction—the same miserable envy rife in
every age and clime. Harvey died in 1658.
Shakespeare was 14 years old when Harvey was born, and the garrulous but
erudite Burton was about the same age, yet strange to say, the great
poet seems to have been unknown to the men of his own generation:
scholars knew nothing of poor players, and he who was born to delight
and instruct the future of mankind shone with but small lustre then.
The history of medicine in England now begins, although for some time
subsequently medical instruction was sought for in the schools of Italy,
France and Holland. The Reformation had swept away the monastic
institutions; but during the depressing middle ages, all the learning
that barbarism had spared took refuge in the cloister. The monks
practised physic very extensively, and considering the ignorance and
superstition of the period, it was natural that the vulgar should prefer
the medical assistance of those who arrogated to themselves the
immediate assistance of Heaven in the preparation of their remedies. The
women were especially fond of consulting the monks, if there be any
truth in the old epigram:—
“To Esculapian monks the good wives roam
What marvel, they have husbands sick at home.”
The alchymists again, like their lineal descendants in our days,
professed to have discovered the philosophers stone, and _universal
specifics_, and they were, as they are now, believed in proportion to
their presumption. The practice of medicine being chiefly engrossed by
empirics and monks, the latter very readily obtained licenses from the
Bishops of the various dioceses who had authority to examine candidates,
without having themselves any knowledge of the subjects in question,
beyond that acquired in their general education.
By the 5th Henry VIII., chap. vi., we find there were but twelve regular
Surgeons practising in all London, and about the same number of
Physicians.
The college of Physicians in London owes its foundation to Dr. Thomas
Linacre, of All Soul’s, Oxford, a man of profound learning, who had won
honours at Rome, Bologna, and Florence.
Linacre, through his interest with Wolsey, a wise and liberal patron of
learning, obtained, in 1518, letters patent from Henry the Eighth,
constituting a corporate body of regular Physicians in London. He was
elected the first president, and meetings were held at his house in
Knight Ryder Street until his death. With a munificence not without many
worthy imitators in our profession, as we shall presently point out, he
bequeathed this house to the College.
His successor in the presidential chair was one of those bright lights
who have contributed largely to the fame of medicine, in what I have
already called its social and scientific aspect, and therefore deserves
a passing notice. Dr. John Caius Kaye, of Gonville Hall, Cambridge, was
Court Physician to Edward the Sixth, and as he retained the favour of
Mary, after the demise of the pious young King, he procured from her a
license to advance Gonville Hall into a _College_ under the name of
Gonville and Caius College, on condition of enlarging the institution at
his own expense. In order to devote himself to this object, he resigned
the presidency of the College of Physicians, and completed his buildings
at Cambridge. The mansion of learning thus raised by his liberality,
became the retreat of his old age, and having given up the dignified
position of _Master_, with a disinterestedness equalled only by his
generosity, he continued to reside there as a gentleman commoner until
his death in 1573.
Harvey was elected president of the College of Physicians in 1654, but
excused himself on account of his age and infirmities. Such, however,
was his attachment to that body (best evinced by _donationes inter
vivos_), that in 1656, he made over his personal estate in perpetuity
for its use, having previously (on the occasion of the College being
removed from Knight Ryder Street to Amen Corner) built them a library
and public hall,[11] which he granted for ever to the corporation,
together with his own valuable collection of books and instruments.
Harvey’s grand result was the work of a quarter of a century of
unremitting toil. An admirer wrote:—
“There didst thou trace the blood, and first behold
What dreams mistaken sages coined of old.
For till thy Pegasus the fountain brake,
The crimson blood was but a crimson lake,
Which first from thee did tyde and motion gaine,
And veins became its channel, not its chaine.
With _Drake_ and _Ca’ndish_ hence thy bays are curl’d,
Fam’d circulator of the lesser world.”
He died in 1658.
-----
Footnote 11:
Now the site of Stationers’ Hall.
-----
I may here mention, that, after the fire of London, the College of
Physicians was rebuilt on a site in Warwick Lane, which, until the
erection there of the palatial residence of Guy of Warwick, the King
maker, was called Eldenesse Lane.
Sir Christopher Wren was the architect of the new College, and its
burnished dome gave Garth the opportunity of displaying his powers of
satire thus:—
“Witness a dome, majestic to the sight,
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height;
A golden globe, placed high, with artful skill,
Seems to the distant sight—a gilded pill.”
Amongst the remarkable men of Harvey’s time were Shakespeare, Bacon, Van
Helmont, and Sydenham, all of whom had personal intercourse with him; of
these we shall first notice Thomas Sydenham, who was born in 1624.
Boerhaave called him the second Hippocrates on account of his close
observation of the natural phenomena of disease, but he is too well
known to us to require any detailed description either of his method, or
of his general knowledge. The story of his reply to Dr. Blackmore, when
asked by him what books he should read, that “Don Quixote was a very
good book” has been erroneously supposed to express his contempt for
learning, but the joke was a personal one. Blackmore was a poet, and
Sydenham saw that the man who consulted him did not possess the stuff of
which doctors are made, he therefore referred him to the most lively
piece of writing then in existence, as furnishing fitter pabulum for a
poet, than the dry discussions of medical subjects could afford. To
describe the character of Sydenham, it would be necessary to call to our
aid the highest forms of panegyric; a good and honourable man, living in
harmony with his brethren, and as far as the troubled state of the
country would allow, in peace with all men. He lived to see the
revolution of 1688 accomplished, and his aspirations as a patriot being
thus gratified, he died in the following year.
Contemporary with Sydenham, we find the celebrated Sir Wm. Petty, the
founder of the Lansdowne family. He was the eldest son of Anthony Petty,
who, Aubrey the Antiquary tells us, was a clothier in Romsey. In his
early days he showed great liking for all mechanical operations, and at
twelve years of age had acquired considerable skill in carpentry and
smiths’ work. Educated at the free school of his native place, at the
age of fifteen he began his remarkable career as a self-helping man;
from his own account, we learn that he went over to Caen, in Normandy,
with a little stock of merchandise, and had such good success that out
of the profits he educated himself in the French tongue, and perfected
his knowledge of classics and mathematics. In his twentieth year he had
saved about three-score pounds, and acquired as much progress in
mathematics as any of his age: to his love of learning was joined the
desire to acquire wealth; he was at all times _practical_, and seems to
have held pecuniary advantage to be the most comprehensive form of the
practical. He tells us that when the civil wars between the King and
Parliament grew hot “I had _sixty pounds_ in money and went into the
Netherlands and France for three years, and vigorously pursued my
studies, especially that of medicine at Utrecht, Leyden, Amsterdam, and
Paris. I returned to Romsey with about _ten pounds more_ than I had
carried out of England.” In Paris, Petty made the acquaintance of
Hobbes, who retired early from the civil wars. Hobbes soon discovered
the capacity of his young friend, and read with him the Anatomy of
Vesalius. He entered at Brazennose College, Oxford, in April, 1648, and
took his degree there as Doctor of Physic, in March, 1649. The date of
his admission to the College of Physicians is 25 June, 1650. He had been
previously deputy to Doctor Thomas Clayton, Professor of Anatomy at
Oxford, who laboured under the singular disqualification of having an
insurmountable aversion to the sight of a mangled corpse. On the
resignation of Clayton in 1651, Petty became Anatomical Professor, and
about the same time he succeeded Dr. Knight in the Professorship of
Music in Gresham College. About the year 1645, the Royal Society was
formed, and Petty was one of the earliest members of the Oxford branch.
In 1652 he was appointed Physician to the Army in Ireland, which post he
retained for seven years, at a salary of twenty shillings a day, while
his practice produced him £400 a year more. His first great step to
wealth, however, arose from his dealings with the forfeited lands in
Ireland, and in a few years he managed his financial affairs so
skilfully that he acquired a rental of £18,000 a year; part of this he
was dispossessed of at the Restoration, as being unfairly obtained. He,
however, had still a large fortune at his command, and bought the Earl
of Arundel’s house and gardens in Lothbury, and erected thereupon the
buildings forming Tokenhouse Yard, which was partly destroyed by the
great fire. Petty had the tact to make his peace with the new
government, and became a favourite with Charles II., who knighted him,
and bestowed on him the place of Surveyor General for Ireland; and it is
said, by Aubrey, that he was created Earl of Kelmore, though he never
assumed the title. When the College of Physicians obtained its new
Charter his name was published in the list of Fellows, although he had
then resigned practice. The universality of his genius is clearly shewn
by the list of his published works. He was a man of a genial character
and handsome person:—“If he has a mind to it,” says Aubrey, “he will
preach extempore, either as a Presbyterian, Independent, or as a Capucin
friar, or Jesuit.” As a proof of his humour, when he was challenged to
fight by Sir H. Sankey, he told his opponent, that as his short sight
would not allow of the usual mode of warfare, he would meet him, if he
was so minded, in a dark cellar, each to have a carpenter’s axe for his
weapon: this the knight declined. He died in 1687 of a gangrene of the
foot, and was buried at Romsey, by the side of his father and mother:
there lie his remains, covered with a flat stone, on which an illiterate
workman has cut these words:—“_Here layes Sir William Pety._”
The part played by the Good-Wives and Ladies Bountiful in this age
deserves a passing notice, and we will make one or two quotations from
books especially devoted to their use. Thus: “To make Oil of
Swallows:—Take lavender cotton, spikenut grass, ribwort, and twenty
other simples, of each a handful, sage of virtue, camomiles and red
roses, of each two handsful, _twenty live_ swallows; beat all together
in a mortar, add a quart of neatsfoot oyl or May-butter, and mix. This
oyl is exceeding sovereign for any broken bones, bones out of joint, or
any grief of the sinews.”
“The ‘_Usnea Humana_’[12] described as a moss two lines long, grown on
the skulls of malefactors who have been a long time exposed to the air.
This little plant is found chiefly in England and Ireland, where the
bodies of men are left hanging in chains for many years after their
execution. It is of a volatile astringent nature, good for bleeding of
the nose, and of use internally for epilepsy.” The writer adds, “I have
seen in the apothecaries’ shops in London these skulls exposed with the
Usnea upon them.” Then again we have a whole tribe of “holy remedies”
and cabalistic charms, &c.
-----
Footnote 12:
Corroborative evidence of the esteem in which this remedy was held
will be found in Macaulay’s account of the death scene of Charles
II.:—“All the medical men of note in London were summoned. Several of
the prescriptions have been preserved; one of them is signed by
fourteen doctors. The patient was bled largely. Hot iron was applied
to his head. A loathsome volatile salt, _extracted from human skulls_,
was forced into his mouth.”
[This volatile salt is thus described in the Dictionares des Drogues:
Amsterdam, 1716. “L’Usnée humaine contient beaucoup de sel volatil et
d’huile; elle ne bouillonne point avec les acides.”]
-----
Hiera Picra and Solomon’s seal are used to this day. The charm for burns
is as follows:—“In the name of, &c. There came two angels from the East,
one brought fire, the other water; I command them both: out fire!! in
water!! and so I say _Amen_.” This is mumbled by the charmer, and the
sufferer is relieved without daring to doubt, for if he _doubts_ the
charm is destroyed. Warts and wens are disposed of by a similar process.
So much for the march of intellect; in its progress very much like the
military goose step.
A belief in the curative power of the Royal touch over scrofulous
affections continued to be universally held so late as the time of
William III. Shakespeare gives us an account of it in the tragedy of
Macbeth, which I have thought worth transcribing. In the 4th Act, Scene
3rd, a room in the King, of England’s palace:—
Enter a Doctor.
Malcolm. Comes the king forth, I pray you?
Doctor. Ay sir: There are a crew of wretched souls
That stay his cure. Their malady convinces
The great assay of art: but, at his touch,
Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,
They presently amend. [Exit Doctor.
Macduff. What’s the disease he means?
Malcolm. ’tis called the Evil:
A most miraculous work in this good king;
Which often, since my here-remain in England,
I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven,
Himself best knows: but strangely-visited people;
All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures;
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers; and ’tis spoken,
To the _succeeding_ royalty he leaves
The healing benediction.
Macaulay gives us the following graphic account of the practice of
touching for the scrofula, as performed by that _most religious_ and
_gracious_ King Charles the Second.
“This ceremony had come down almost unaltered from the darkest of the
dark ages to the time of Newton and Locke. The Stuarts frequently
dispensed the healing influences in the Banqueting House. The days on
which this miracle was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy
Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the parish
churches of the realm. When the appointed time came, several divines in
full canonicals stood round the canopy of state. The surgeon of the
royal household introduced the sick. A passage from the sixteenth
chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark was read. When the words ‘They shall
lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover’ had been
pronounced, there was a pause, and one of the sick was brought up to the
King. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, and hung round the
patient’s neck a white ribbon, to which was fastened a gold coin. The
other sufferers were then led up in succession; and, as each was
touched, the chaplain repeated the incantation, ‘They shall lay their
hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’ Then came the epistle,
prayers, antiphones and a benediction.... Theologians of eminent
learning, ability, and virtue gave the sanction of their authority to
this mummery; and, what is stranger still, medical men of high note
believed, or affected to believe, in the balsamic virtues of the royal
hand. We must suppose that every surgeon who attended Charles the Second
was a man of high repute for skill; and more than one of the surgeons
who attended Charles the Second, has left us a solemn profession of
faith in the King’s miraculous power.... We cannot wonder that, when men
of science gravely repeated such nonsense, the vulgar should believe it.
Still less can we wonder that wretches tortured by a disease over which
natural remedies had no power should eagerly drink in tales of
preternatural cures: for nothing is so credulous as misery. The crowds
which repaired to the palace on the days of healing were immense.
Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred
thousand persons. The number seems to have increased or diminished as
the King’s popularity rose or fell.
“In 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred times. In
1684, the throng was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to
death. James, in one of his progresses, touched eight hundred persons in
the choir of the Cathedral of Chester. The expense of the ceremony was
little less than ten thousand pounds a year, and would have been much
greater but for the vigilance of the royal surgeons, whose business it
was to examine the applicants, and to distinguish those who came for the
cure from those who came for the gold.” (_History of England, Vol. III.,
p. 478._)
William the Third gave great offence to the nonjurors by sneering at a
practice sanctioned by the highest ecclesiastical authorities; yielding
to importunity, he once consented to lay his hands on a patient, but his
good sense compelled him to exclaim:—“God give you better health and
more wisdom, my friend.”
Shortly after the death of Sydenham came Dr. Freind, who was born in
1675. Being a man of worth and learning, he soon acquired a leading
position in his profession, and having devoted himself early in life to
the study of politics, he was returned to Parliament as member for
Launceston, where, having warmly espoused the cause of the amiable
Atterbury, he fell under the censure of Walpole, who sent him to the
Tower on a charge of treason. This misfortune gave rise to one of the
finest instances of devotion, on the part of his friend Mead, that has
ever been recorded for the honour of human nature. Walpole was taken
seriously ill, and of course sent for Mead, who at that time was the
most popular physician. The doctor is reported to have addressed the
minister thus:—“You are very ill, Sir Robert, and I can cure you; but
one condition is indispensable. Dr. Freind has been in prison some
months, and my esteem for him is so great that I will not prescribe a
single thing for you until he is set at liberty.” Walpole hesitated, but
Mead was resolute, and at length the tyrant gave way. Freind was
released, and Mead when he paid his first visit of congratulation, took
with him a considerable sum of money, the produce of fees he had
received from Freind’s patients during his incarceration. Freind was a
voluminous writer, and compiled a history of medicine in which he
attacked some of the opinions of Leclerc, who had gone more extensively
and accurately into the subject.
Next in order, we must say a few words of Dr. Mead. Richard Mead was
born in 1673, at Stepney. Political troubles drove his father, who was
rector of the parish, into Holland, where this future ornament of the
medical profession was educated, at Utrecht, under Grœvius. He continued
his studies at Leyden, and travelling into Italy, took his degree of
doctor at Padua. On his arrival in England, whither his fame had
preceded him, the University of Oxford confirmed his title, and the
College of Physicians received him with applause, as did the Royal
Society (then but recently established.) He soon became the leading
practitioner of the day, and in course of time Physician to George the
Second. For more than half a century he attended at St. Thomas’s
Hospital, and is said to have suggested to Guy the foundation of the
hospital known by that name. A more noble, disinterested, and generous
man than Mead never lived. His emoluments were very large, and his
benevolence and hospitality kept pace with his income. It is stated that
no poor applicant ever left his door unrelieved.
“Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send.”
After a life of 80 years, he died full of honours, leaving his many
literary labors as monuments of his talents and industry.
The reign of Queen Anne has been called the Augustan age of literature
in England, and was in no less degree looked upon as the great day of
medical science. Amongst the literary men we have to name Swift,
Addison, Warburton, Pope, Steele, Parnell, Rowe, Gay, and others; and
amongst Physicians—Freind, Mead, Radcliffe, Cheselden, Arbuthnot, Garth,
&c. &c.
Radcliffe next comes under notice; he was a man cast in a rougher mould
than Mead. John Radcliffe was born at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, in 1650,
and educated at Oxford, where he became a Fellow of Lincoln College;
after a two years residence he resigned his Fellowship and devoted
himself to physic, removed to London, and settled in Bow-street, Covent
Garden. He was a man of ready wit, and great conversational powers, with
much pleasantry and frankness. In 1686 he was appointed physician to
Princess Anne of Denmark, and after the revolution was often consulted
by William the Third; the latter on his return from Holland sent for
Radcliffe, and shewing him his ankles swollen, and his body emaciated,
the doctor brusquely said, “Truly I would not have your Majesty’s two
legs for your three kingdoms.” This sally lost him the king’s favour,
nevertheless he still prospered, and sat in Parliament for the borough
of Buckingham.
In the last illness of Queen Anne, Radcliffe was sent for, but excused
his attendance on account of indisposition; the Queen died the next day,
and Radcliffe was greatly censured, which is said to have hastened his
own death, which took place three months after.
There is a story told of his quarrel with Sir Godfrey Kneller, the
celebrated painter. They were next door neighbours, and enjoyed a
certain garden in common. Kneller complained that Radcliffe took no care
that the door leading into this garden should be kept properly shut, and
sent a snappish message to the doctor, that if he were not more mindful
he would shut up the door and keep the key. Radcliffe’s answer was,
“Tell Sir Godfrey Kneller he may do what he likes with the door provided
he does not paint it.” Kneller retorted to this sarcasm, “Tell the
doctor I will take anything from him except his physic.”
I cannot find that Radcliffe ever published any work; but at his death
he left the munificent sum of £40,000 to the University of Oxford for
the formation of a public library of medical and philosophical science,
and a further considerable sum to provide for an annual augmentation of
books and instruments. Garth, in allusion to this bequest, remarked that
for Radcliffe to found a library was as if an Eunuch should establish a
Seraglio.
Samuel Garth was among the celebrities of this time: the correspondent
of Bolingbroke, the friend of Swift and Addison, and the patron of Pope,
he must have possessed great merit to have reached such a position. He
was born of a good family in Yorkshire: the date of his birth I have
been unable to discover, but he was admitted a Fellow of the College of
Physicians in 1693. Johnson classes him with the English Poets, and in
his description of him says, “He is always mentioned as a man of
benevolence, and it is just to suppose that his desire to help the
helpless disposed him with so much zeal to undertake the founding of a
dispensary:—Whether physicians have, as Temple says, _more_ learning
than the other faculties I will not stay to inquire, but I believe every
man has found in physicians great liberality and dignity of sentiment,
very prompt effusion of benevolence, and willingness to exert a
lucrative art, where there is no hope of lucre.”
Garth was an active and zealous Whig, and consequently familiarly known
to all the great men of that party; his orthodoxy was questioned, but it
was the fashion of the times to be a free thinker. Pope apostrophises
him in his second pastoral:—
“Accept, O! Garth, the muses early lays,
That add this wreath of ivy to thy bays.”
And again, in conjunction with Arbuthnot, in “the Farewell to London:”—
“Farewell Arbuthnot’s raillery
On every learned sot,
And Garth the best good Christian he
Although he knows it not.”
Pope’s favourite physician was Dr. John Arbuthnot, and never was
grateful affection better bestowed. He was the son of an Episcopal
clergyman in Scotland, born in 1675, and went through a course of
academical studies at Aberdeen, where he also took the degree of Doctor
of Physic. On his arrival in London he supported himself as a teacher of
mathematics, in which he was a great proficient, and became known to the
world of letters by his examination of Dr. Woodward’s “Account of the
Deluge,” and by an able treatise on the “Advantages of Mathematical
Learning.” The first book of the memoirs of “Martinus Scriblerus” has
also been attributed to him. An accident introduced him to Prince George
of Denmark, and led the way to his appointment as Physician to Queen
Anne; he retained the favour of the Court until the death of the Queen,
when, being more than suspected of Jacobite proclivities, he was
compelled to leave his quarters in St. James’s Palace, and retired to a
small house in Dover Street.
Pope dedicated to him the prologue to his satires, and thus gracefully
mentions him:—
“Friend to my life (which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song.”)
The concluding stanzas are so full of tenderness that I venture to give
them:—
“Oh! friend, may each domestic bliss be thine,
Be no unpleasing melancholy mine,
Me, let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age,
With lenient arts extend a mother’s breath,
Make langour smile and smooth the bed of death.
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep a while one parent from the sky!
On cares like these, if length of days attend,
May Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend,
Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,
And just as rich as when he served a Queen.”
About the time of his preferment he made the acquaintance of the great
luminaries of art and learning, particularly Swift, (the mad parson as
he was first designated) Pope, Gay, Parnell, Atterbury, Congreve, &c.,
and greatly assisted, with his ready and witty pen, the ambitious
Bolingbroke.
What is greatly to his honour, in the midst of an age of scoffers, he
retained a deep sense of the importance of personal religion, and seems
to have lived in the affectionate esteem and remembrance of his friends;
Swift said of him, “Oh! if the world had a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I
would burn my travels” (Gulliver’s); and on another occasion expresses
himself thus, “Arbuthnot has more wit than all we have, and his humanity
is equal to his wit.”
For some time before his death he suffered from asthma and dropsy, and
bore his affliction with characteristic fortitude and resignation. He
died in 1734, leaving a son, who was one of Pope’s executors, and two
daughters.
Next to the illustrious Scotchman whom we have just dismissed, comes a
very worthy native of the Emerald Isle—Hans Sloane, the son of Alexander
Sloane, the head of a colony of Scotchmen, who, in the reign of James I.
settled in the north of Ireland. Hans was born at Killileagh, in the
year 1660. He very early showed a liking for Natural History, and on his
arrival in London attended lectures on Anatomy, Botany, and their
kindred sciences, and formed a close intimacy with Boyle and Ray. After
four years study he visited Paris and Montpellier, in which places he
took his degrees in Medicine. In 1684 he returned to London and
commenced practice, being a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the
College of Physicians. On the appointment of the Duke of Albemarle to
the government of Jamaica he accompanied that nobleman, and thus
acquired a rich addition to his Museum of Natural History. George the
First created him a Baronet, and on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, he
became President of the Royal Society—estimable as a man, and eminent in
science, he lived to a great age, and at his decease, bequeathed his
museum to the nation, conditionally on the sum of £20,000 being paid to
his executors for the benefit of his survivors: this sum bore no
proportion to the value of his collection, and as it laid the foundation
of the British Museum, it must ever be regarded as a patriotic and
generous act.
A curious illustration of the observant mind of Sir H. Sloane is
furnished by the fact of his having noticed that the natives of the West
Indian Islands, who eat much of the green fat of the turtle, perspired a
yellow oil; the explanation being that the true green fat of the turtle
is a green-coloured cellular tissue enclosing a yellow oil, which passes
through the system undigested. The anatomical data on which this
statement is advanced have been, at a comparatively recent period,
verified by actual experiments performed by the late Dr. Pereira,
assisted by our much esteemed former President, Dr. Daldy. It occurred
to my mind that this fact in dietetics might present a lesson of caution
to an audience peculiarly exposed, as citizens of London, to the
temptation of eating a material, which, however appetising, is incapable
of healthy assimilation.
In a sketch of such limited pretension we are compelled to pass over
names well deserving a niche in the temple of Esculapius:—every letter
of the alphabet furnishes its contingent. To many of the men, into whose
labours we have here entered, the civilised world is indebted for their
contributions to general literature, as well as to the science of
medicine; and in our endeavour to chronicle their importance, we can
never cease to admire the fertility of their talents, and the extent of
their industry in bringing to light so much useful knowledge out of the
scanty materials by which their enquiries were aided:—Akenside, Bacon,
Boyle, Blackmore, Cheselden, Darwin, Petty, Ray, among others, may be
noted as examples.
We have now reached the period at which legitimate medicine was
established in this country; and as my discourse has already exceeded
the assigned limits, it remains only to record our solemn tribute of the
affectionate remembrance we all entertain towards those members of our
society whose faces we shall so sadly miss in our next sessional
meetings. Constituted as our cherished society is, as a friendly
gathering of kindred spirits, actuated by mutual necessities, meeting as
brothers, knowing no rivalry but the desire to impart, each to other,
the results of our matured experience, it is with more than ordinary
grief that we bow submissively when Providence sees fit to lessen our
numbers by death.
But it is not we alone who have sustained a loss. The name of Barlow
will live for ages to come as the type of the scientific physician of
the nineteenth century. A man of cultivated intellect, of elegant mind
and blameless life, of calm judgment and exalted feeling, I look upon
his death as nothing less than a calamity to the whole medical
profession.
Too soon, alas! after him, we were shocked by the almost sudden removal
of the accomplished and genial Jeaffreson, endeared to his brethren by
those solid endowments which mark and govern the high minded
practitioner and amiable gentleman—no less than to the public by those
qualities that are inherent in a warm, kindly, and generous nature. And,
what then shall we say of our dear friend, Henry Blenkarne, so recently
carried to his rest. Who can ever forget his pure and simple nature, his
spotless life, and those endearing virtues which attached him so closely
to all whose privilege it was to enjoy his friendship—one of Nature’s
gentlemen, delicate and considerate of the feelings of others, generous
to the poor at the sacrifice of his valuable life, ready at all seasons
to give his time for the promotion of any and every benevolent scheme in
connexion with our calling; we shall long mourn over the good old man.
As I stood by and saw his remains committed to the ground but the other
day, my mind reverted to the other honoured members I have mentioned,
and I felt that one and all had realized and fulfilled to the letter the
following monition of Bacon:—
“I hold every man a debtor to his profession, from the which as men of
course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty
to endeavour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament
thereunto.”
I now beg permission to draw the curtain. I have laid before you, with
but little skill, some rapid sketches of our illustrious predecessors. I
have shown how worthily they have fulfilled their mission; and, having
approached the advent of that great man, to whose memory we dedicate
this evening, I make my bow and retire, first thanking you for the
attention you have accorded to my dull recital. I pause now because I
can add nothing to your knowledge of the character and labours of John
Hunter. His patience under such difficulties as would have destroyed an
ordinary worker, and his sublime indifference to personal comfort and
advantage when the interest of that science, which he so well loved was
in question—are “familiar in your ears as household words.”
But, whilst we honour him by these periodical meetings, and by the
discussion of subjects the elaboration of which formed the happiness of
his life, it is only in the great museum, founded by his energy, that
the grandeur of his character can be felt.
In that hallowed path, in which he delighted to tread, the mantle of his
genius has fallen upon one who, with a kindred love, aided by the
marvellous instinct of his own original mind, still follows out the
investigations of the great author, adding each day something to the
knowledge which went before, and still turning over some new page of the
book of Nature, wherein the finger of God has written, in characters
hitherto undeciphered, fresh evidences of His glorious infinity. Under
the auspices of our honorary member, Professor Owen, we gaze and admire.
THE END.
Transcriber’s notes:
● The errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been
corrected, and are noted here.
● Where hyphenation occurs on a line break, the decision to retain
or remove is based on occurrences elsewhere in the text.
● Errors in punctuation and quotes have been silently restored.
● The footnotes were moved near the corresponding paragraph.
● The numbers below reference the page or footnote and line in the
original book.
reference correction original text
5.24 lawgiver Jewish law-giver, it is a positive
fn3.11 Alnajah Speaking of the alnajah, an
34.13 fellow men he instructed his fellow-men,
fn8.1 Tylor Taken from E. B. Tyler—“Early History
56.11 Harvey our own great Hervey, of whom we
60.10 menstruous menstrous blood, and even then it is
68.23 carpentry skill in carpentery and smiths’ work.
92.6 knowledge something to the knowlege which went
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