Chapter VII: Part 7

In Blenheim Street lived Joshua Brookes, the famous anatomist, whose lectures were attended by upwards of seven thousand pupils. His museum was almost a rival of that of John Hunter, and was liberally thrown open to visitors. One evening a coach drew up at his door, a heavy sack was taken out and deposited in the hall, and the servants, accustomed to such occurrences, since their master was in the habit of buying subjects, were about to carry it down the back-stairs into the dissecting-room, when a living subject thrust his head and neck out of one end and begged for his life. The servants in alarm ran to fetch pistols, but the subject continued to beg for mercy in such tones as to assure them they had nothing to fear from him. He had been drunk, and did not know how he got into the sack. Dr. Brookes ordered the sack to be tied loosely round his chin, and sent him in a coach to the watch-house. How he got into the sack may easily be surmised: Some body-snatchers, a tribe then very much to the fore, had no doubt found the man dead drunk in the street, and knowing the doctor to be a buyer of subjects, had taken him there, in the hope that the doctor might begin operating on the body before it recovered consciousness, so as to enable them afterwards to claim the price. In the days when there were dozens of executions in one morning at Newgate, the doctors had a good time of it, for the bodies of the malefactors were handed over to them for dissection. In fact, under the steps leading up to the front-door of Surgeons' Hall, a handsome building which stood next to Newgate Prison, there was a small door, through which the corpses were introduced into the building. Surgeons' Hall was pulled down in 1809, to make room for the new Sessions House.

The doctors of the previous two centuries were mostly Sangrados, who bled and purged their patients most unmercifully; but we must say this to their credit, they did not descend to the sublime atrocity of microbes, bacilli, and all the other horrors of the microscopic mania now sending unnumbered nervous people into lunatic asylums. And so they had not, like their modern compeers, the chance of amusing themselves and paying one another professional compliments by sending glass tubes, filled with the deadly spawn, from one country to another by ship and rail. Fancy one of those tubes getting accidentally broken, or being intentionally smashed for a lark on board a passenger steamer. Why, this would speedily become a vessel laden with corpses! At least, according to modern teaching, which, _entre nous_, we have no more faith in than we have in many other medical dicta. A man is ill from over gorging or drinking, a child ails from a surfeit of sweets or from catching a disease playing with other children in the streets or at school. The doctor is called in, and instead of telling the man, 'You have made a beast of yourself,' or correctly indicating the cause of the child's illness, he sniffs about and says: 'There is something the matter with your drains: I can smell sewer-gas.' And presently the sanitary inspector arrives, and orders the pulling up and renewal of the drains, and for days the house is filled with the effluvia supposed to be poisonous. How is it the whole family do not die off? Well, scavengers who daily deal with offal and garbage of the most offensive kind, the men who work down in the sewers, enjoy robust health; the latter only suffer when they are suddenly plunged into an excess of sewer-gas, but it is the quantity and not the quality that injures.

The excessive treacliness of modern doctors, as we have just shown, is as objectionable as was the brimstone treatment of some of their predecessors. A principle with modern doctors is never to acknowledge themselves nonplussed. The old doctors now and then confessed themselves beaten. Said an AEsculapius who had been called in to prescribe for a child, after diagnosing, as the ridiculous farce of tongue-speering and pulse-squeezing is called: 'This here babe has got a fever; now, I ain't posted up in fevers, but I will send her something that will throw her into fits, and I'm a stunner on fits.' And modern doctors, indeed, have no occasion to admit ignorance since the invention of the liver. When they cannot tell what is the matter with a man, or they are too urbane to reproach him with his excesses, his liver is out of order--and that is an organ which cannot possibly be examined and its condition be verified so as to prove or disprove the practitioner's assertion. I assume that nine out of ten people don't know where or what the liver is--I'm sure I don't, and don't want to; but as Sancho Panza blessed the man who invented sleep, the doctors should bless their colleague who invented the liver! Abernethy, of whom more hereafter, with all his eccentricity, was honest enough to confess that he never cured or pretended to cure anyone, which only quacks did. He despised the humbug of the profession, and its arts to mislead and deceive patients. He only attempted to second Nature in her efforts. He admitted that he could not remove rheumatism, that opprobrium of the faculty, and no doctor can; a residence in a warm and ever sunny clime, or a long course of Turkish baths, can do it. Hence sings Allan Ramsay's 'Gentle Shepherd':

'I sits with my feet in a brook,
And if they ax me for why,
In spite of the physic I took,
It's rheumatiz kills me, says I.'[#]

[#] In searching for material for these pages I had occasion to read the lives of a good many doctors; half of them, I should say, died of rheumatism and gout.

This was the desperate remedy taken by Caroline, Queen of that brute George II., when he expected her to take her usual walk with him, though both her feet were swollen with rheumatism. She plunged them in a bath of cold water, and managed to go out with him that afternoon.

I read in some publication--_London Society_, I think--in an article on medicine, that it is a sensible plan, adopted by some wise people, to pay a medical man a yearly sum to look up a household periodically and keep them in good health. This seems to me as insane a plan as can well be imagined. Fancy the physicking such a family, especially the children and servants, must all the year round undergo! For the doctor does not like to take his money and do nothing for it; so, if there happens to be no real illness, he must exhibit his draughts and pills, just to show that he is honestly earning his fee. The regular attendant, the family doctor, means that the family are hospitalizing all the year round. Better go and live in the island of Sark. Sir Robert Inglis, in his account of the Channel Islands, says that at Sark there is no doctor, and that in the years 1816 and 1820 there was not one death on the island, containing a population of five hundred persons, and that on an average of ten years the mortality is not quite one in a hundred. But let us return to the old doctors.

Dr. George Fordyce, who came in 1762 from Edinburgh to London, very speedily made himself a name by a series of public lectures on medical science, which he afterwards published in a volume entitled 'Elements of the Practice of Physic,' which passed through many editions. Unfortunately he was given to drink, and though he never was known to be dead drunk, yet he was often in a state which rendered him unfit for professional duties. One night when he was in such a condition, he was suddenly sent for to attend a lady of title who was very ill. He went, sat down, listened to her story, and felt her pulse. He found he was not up to his work; he lost his wits, and in a moment of forgetfulness exclaimed: 'Drunk, by Jove!' Still, he managed to write out a mild prescription. Early next morning he received a message from his noble patient to call on her at once. Dr. Fordyce felt very uncomfortable. The lady evidently intended to upbraid him either with an improper prescription or with his disgraceful condition. But to his surprise and relief she thanked him for his prompt compliance with her pressing summons, and then confessed that he had rightly diagnosed her case, that unfortunately she occasionally indulged too freely in drink, but that she hoped he would preserve inviolable secrecy as to the condition he had found her in. Fordyce listened to her as grave as a judge, and said: 'You may depend upon me, madam; I shall be as silent as the grave.'

Another doctor who made his reputation by lecturing was Dr. G. Wallis, of Red Lion Square. He had originally established himself at York, where he was born, but being much attached to theatrical amusements, and a man of wit, he had written a dramatic piece, entitled 'The Mercantile Lovers: a Satire.' It contained a number of highly caustic remarks, either so directly levelled at certain persons of that city, or taken by them to themselves, that he lost all professional practice, and had to leave York, when he came to London, and, as already mentioned, commenced lectures on the Theory and Practice of Physic. He published various medical works, and died in 1802.

In the reign of James I. lived Dr. Edward Jorden, whom we mention on account of two curious circumstances in his life. The doctor, being on a journey, benighted on Salisbury Plain, and not knowing which way to ride, met a shepherd of whom he made inquiry what places were near where he could pass the night. He was told there was no house of entertainment for travellers near, but that a gentleman of the name of Jordan, and a man of great estate, lived close by. Looking on the similarity of the names as a good omen, Jorden applied at the house, where he was kindly received, and made so good an impression on his host that the latter bestowed on him his daughter with a considerable fortune.

The second circumstance was this: James, as is well known, was a firm believer in witchcraft. Now, it happened that a girl in the country was said to have been bewitched by a neighbour. The King had her sent for, and placed under the care of Dr. Jorden, who very soon discovered the girl to be a cheat; in fact, she confessed as much, saying that her father, having had a quarrel with a female neighbour, had induced her (his daughter) to accuse the woman of having bewitched her and brought upon her the fits she simulated. This confession Jorden reported to the King, the doctor not being courtier enough to see what James wanted, namely, a witch to burn. But as the girl had for a short time given him the prospect of such a treat, the King, though she by her own confession was a diabolical liar--for everyone in those days knew that the charge of witchcraft involved the risk of losing life by a fiery death--James actually gave her a portion, and she was married, 'and,' as the account naively observes, 'thus was cured of her inimical witchery.'

Of Dr. Francis J. P. de Valangin (b. 1719, d. 1805), of the College of Physicians, London, though a native of Switzerland, it was said that to his patients he was kind and consolatory in the extreme--nothing of the rough element in him; he was, as the obituary notice of him says, the friend of mankind and an honour to his profession. About the year 1772 de Valangin purchased ground in Pentonville, near White Conduit House, where he erected a residence on a plan laid down by himself; and as the design was not that of ordinary builders or architects it was called fanciful, chiefly because of a high brick tower rising from it, which the doctor built for an observatory. Of course the next tenant, a timber merchant, had nothing more pressing to do than immediately to pull down the features which distinguished the building from the dulness of orthodox architecture. Valangin had christened the elevation on which his house stood 'Hermes Hill,' after Hermes Trismegistus, the fabled discoverer of the chemist's art.

Dr. Anthony Askew, one of the celebrities of St. Bartholomew's in the last half of the last century, was as famous in literature as he was in medicine. He had a collection of Greek MSS., purchased at great expense in the East, more numerous and more valuable than that of any other private gentleman in England. His house in Queen Square was, moreover, crammed with printed books; the sale of his library in 1775, which lasted twenty days, was the great literary auction of the time.

Another famous physician of St. Bartholomew's was Dr. David Pitcairn, who died in 1809. He also was distinguished as a literary man and lover of art. His earnings were very large, for he was frequently requested by his brethren for his advice in difficult cases. His manners as a physician were simple, gentle, and dignified, and always sufficiently cheerful to inspire confidence and hope. It is said that he was occasionally affected in his speech; thus he is reported to have asked a lady for a pinch of snuff in the following terms: 'Madam, permit me to immerse the summits of my digits in your pulveriferous utensil, to excite a grateful titillation of my olfactory nerves.'

Of Dr. John Radcliffe, the physician of the reigns of William III. and Queen Anne, many strange anecdotes are told, for he was a man of rough Abernethy manners, even with kings. When called in to see King William at Kensington, finding his legs dropsically swollen, he said: 'I would not have your two legs, your Majesty, not for your three kingdoms.' The remark gave great offence. But on another occasion he was even more brusque. 'Your juices,' he said to the King, 'are all vitiated, your whole mass of blood corrupted, and the nutriment mostly turned to water. If your Majesty will forbear making long visits to the Earl of Bradford' (where the King was wont to drink very hard), 'I'll engage to make you live three or four years longer, but beyond that time no physic can protract your Majesty's existence.' On one occasion, when he was sent for from the tavern, to which he resorted but too often, by Queen Anne, he flatly refused to leave his bottle. 'Tell her Majesty,' he bellowed, 'that it's nothing but the vapours.' He advised a hypochondriacal lady, who complained of nervous singing in the head, to 'curl her hair with a ballad.' He cured a gentleman of a quinsy by making his own two servants eat a hasty-pudding for a wager, which caused the patient to break out into such a fit of laughter as to burst the quinsy. Sir Godfrey Kneller and Radcliffe were at one time neighbours in Bow Street, Covent Garden, and the painter having beautiful pleasure-grounds, a door was opened for the accommodation of his neighbour. But in consequence of damage done to his flower-beds, Sir Godfrey threatened to close the door, to which Radcliffe replied, he might do anything with it but paint it. 'Did Dr. Radcliffe say so?' cried Sir Godfrey. 'Go and tell him, with my compliments, that I can take anything from him but his physic.' In spite of his cynicism and rudeness, he made a very large income, on the average twenty guineas a day, and when he was told that the L5,000 he had invested in South Sea stock was lost, he could with placid sangfroid say: 'Well, it is only going up another 5,000 stairs.' But though he so heavily taxed his patients, he was very much opposed to paying his debts, especially such as he owed to tradespeople. A pavior, whom he had employed and constantly put off paying, at last waited for him at his (the doctor's) door, and, when his carriage drove up, roughly asked for his money. 'Why, you rascal,' said the doctor, 'do you expect to get paid for such a bad piece of work? You have spoiled my pavement, and covered it with earth to hide your bad work!' 'Doctor,' replied the pavior, 'mine is not the only bad work the earth hides.' 'You dog, you!' cried the doctor, 'you must be a wit, and want the money. Come in.' And he paid him. Curiously enough, the man who left the splendid library, known by his name, to Oxford, at one time, on being asked where his library was, pointed to a few phials, a skeleton, and a herbal, in one corner of his apartment, and said, 'Sir, there is my library!' He was a Tory in politics, and it was said that he kept Lady Holt alive out of pure political animosity to the Whig Chief Justice Holt, because she led her lord such a life.

Of a more genial disposition, though no less original character, was Dr. John Cookley Lettsom. He was born in a small island near Tortola, called Little Van Dyke, which belonged to his father. A view of it may be seen in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, December Supplement, 1815. When only six years of age he was sent to England for his education, being entrusted to the care of a Mr. Fothergill, then a famous preacher among the Quakers. His father dying before he came of age, that gentleman became his guardian, and with a view to his future profession sent him to Dr. Sutcliffe. For two years he attended St. Thomas's Hospital, and then returned to his native place in the West Indies to take possession of any property that might remain; but on his arrival he found himself L500 worse than nothing, his elder brother, then dead, having run through an ample fortune, leaving to his younger brother only a number of negro slaves, whom he at once emancipated. He entered on the medical profession, and in five months made the astonishing sum of L2,000, with which he returned to Europe, visited the medical schools of Paris and Edinburgh, took his degree of M.D. at Leyden in 1769, and was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London in the same year. His rise in his profession was rapid. In 1783 he earned L3,600; in 1784, L3,900; in 1785, L4,015; in 1786, L4,500; and in some years his income reached L12,000. But he was at the same time giving away hundreds--nay thousands--in gratuitous advice, and the poorer order of the clergy and struggling literary men received not only gratuitous advice, but substantial aid. He was one of the original projectors and supporters of the General Dispensary, of the Finsbury and Surrey Dispensaries, of the Margate Sea-Bathing Infirmary, as well as of many other charitable institutions. In 1779 he purchased some land on the east side of Grove Hill, Camberwell, where he erected the villa which for years was associated with his name, and where he entertained some of the most eminent literati of his time. The house contained a library of near ten thousand volumes, and a museum full of natural and artistic curiosities. The grounds were most tastefully laid out and adorned with choice trees, shrubs and flowers. The avenue of elms, still retaining the name of Camberwell Grove, formed part of the small estate and the approach to the house. It is sad to relate that Dr. Lettsom's excessive devotion to science and literature impaired his resources, and compelled him eventually to quit Grove Hill. He died in 1815, aged seventy-one years. He being in the habit of signing his prescriptions 'J. Lettsom,' some wag, putting forth the lines as the doctor's own composition, wrote thus:

'When patients comes to I,
I physics, bleeds, and sweats 'em;
Then, if they choose to die,
What's that to I? I lets 'em.'

Everyone has heard, and has a story to tell, of Dr. John Abernethy (b. 1764, d. 1831), so we do not know whether in telling our stories of him we shall be able to tell the reader anything new; but as he was a medical eccentricity, we cannot omit him from our portrait gallery. But let us premise that if we call him eccentric we refer to his manners only, in which he did not take after his chief instructor, Sir Charles Blick, who was a fashionable physician of the extra-courteous school. In scientific knowledge Abernethy greatly excelled all his colleagues, though he got less fame by that than by his oddities. When he had made up his mind to marry he wrote off-hand to a lady a note of proposal, saying that he was too busy to attend in person, but he would give her a fortnight for consideration. His irritable temper at times rendered him very disagreeable with patients and medical men who consulted him. When the latter did so, he would walk up and down the room with his hands in his pockets and whistle all the time, and end by telling the doctor to go home and read his (Abernethy's) book. On being asked by a colleague whether a certain plan he suggested would answer, the only reply he could obtain was: 'Ay, ay, put a little salt on a bird's tail, and you will be sure to catch him.' He could hardly be induced to give advice in cases which appeared to depend on improper diet. A farmer of immense bulk came from a distance to consult him, and having given an account of his daily meals, which showed an immense amount of animal food, Abernethy said: 'Go away, sir; I won't attempt to prescribe for such a hog!' A loquacious lady he silenced by telling her to put out her tongue; she having done so, 'Now keep it there till _I_ have done talking,' said Abernethy. A lady having brought her daughter, he refused to prescribe for her, but told the mother to let the girl take exercise. Having received his guinea, he gave the shilling to the mother and said: 'Buy the girl a skipping-rope as you go along.' When the late Duke of York consulted him, he stood whistling with his hands in his pockets, and the Duke said: 'I suppose you know who I am?' 'Suppose I do,' was the uncourtly reply, 'what of that?' To a gentleman who consulted him for an ulcerated throat, and wanted him to look at it, he said: 'How dare you suppose that I would allow you to blow your stinking, foul breath in my face!' But sometimes he met a Tartar. A gentleman who could not succeed in getting the doctor to listen to his case, suddenly locked the door, put the key into his pocket, and took out a loaded pistol. Abernethy, alarmed, asked if he meant to murder him. No, he only wanted him to listen to his case, and meant to keep him a prisoner till he did. The patient and the surgeon afterwards became great friends. The Duke of Wellington having insisted on seeing him out of his usual hours, and abruptly entering his room, was asked by the doctor how he got in. 'By that door,' was the reply. 'Then,' said Abernethy,' I recommend you to make your exit by the same way.' He refused to attend George IV. until he had delivered his lecture at the hospital, in consequence of which he lost a royal appointment. To a lady who complained that on holding her arm over her head she felt pain, he said: 'Then what a fool you must be to hold it up!' He was fond of calling people fools. A countess consulted him, and he offered her some pills, when she said she could never take a pill. 'Not take a pill! What a fool you must be!' was the courteous reply.

Abernethy usually cut patients short by saying: 'I have heard enough. You have heard of my book?' 'Yes.' 'Then go home and read it.' This book gives admirable rules for dieting and general living, though few persons would be willing to comply with them rigidly; he himself did not. When someone told him that he seemed to live like most other people, he replied: 'Yes, but then I have such a devil of an appetite!' One day a lawyer suffering from dyspepsia, brought on by want of exercise and good living, went to consult Abernethy. As he came out of the consulting-room he met another lawyer, a friend of his. 'What the devil brought you here?' said one, and the other echoed the question, and the reply of each was the same. 'What has he prescribed for you?' asked the newcomer. The prescription was produced and read as follows: 'Read my book, p. 72. J. Abernethy.' The first lawyer agreed to wait for his friend whilst he went to consult the doctor. In about a quarter of an hour he came out, well pleased apparently with his interview. 'Well, what is your prescription?' inquired lawyer number one. Number two produced a slip of paper, on which was written: 'Read my book, p. 72. J. Abernethy.' That was what each got for his guinea. But Abernethy deserves praise for three utterances, viz., that mind is a miraculous energy added to matter, and not the result of certain modes of organization, as modern scientists maintain; that an operation is a reproach to surgery, and that a patient should be cured without recourse to it; and that vivisection experiments are morally wrong and physiologically unsafe, because unreliable.

That Dr. Abernethy, with his uncouth manners and vulgar repartee, should have been so successful in his profession is a marvel; certainly few people of the present day would tolerate such rudeness as his. Possibly in former days the doctor's distinctive dress had a secret influence of its own. The gold-headed cane, the elaborate shirt-frill, the massive snuff-box, tapped so argumentatively in consultation, the pompous manner and overbearing assurance, no doubt exercised a spell with which we are unacquainted now.

Abernethy had imitators, but they had been pupils of his. Tommy Wormald, or 'Old Tommy,' as the students called him, was Abernethy over again in voice, style, appearance and humour. To an insurance company he reported on a bad life proposed to them: 'Done for.' When an apothecary wanted to put him off with a single guinea at a consultation on a rich man's case, he said: 'A guinea is a lean fee, and the patient is a fat patient. I always have fat fees from fat patients. Pay me two guineas instantly; our patient is a fat patient.' Some rich but mean people would drive to St. Bartholomew's to get advice gratis as out-patients. To this Tommy meant to put a stop. Seeing a lady dressed in silk, he thus addressed her before a roomful of people: 'Madam, this charity is for the poor, destitute invalids; I refuse to pay attention to destitute invalids who wear rich silk dresses.' The lady quickly disappeared. Will no Old Tommy arise at the present day and put an end to the abuse, which is as rampant as ever?

Doctors are not agreed as to what constitutes medical science. By an empiric a quack is meant. Now, an empiric goes by observation only, without rational grounds; yet Sir Charles Bell asserted that physiology was a science of observation rather than of experiment, which is the rational ground the quack is said to disregard. Who is right? Without attempting to answer the question, which would lead us too far, we must rest satisfied with the fact that the profession and the public have agreed to stigmatize certain individuals as quacks who, with or without any medical training, pretend to cure diseases by charms, manipulations, or nostrums, which have no scientific or rational basis. Quacks have existed at all times, for mankind, especially suffering mankind, has ever been credulous. Henry VIII. endeavoured to put down those of his own times by establishing censors in physic, but the public would not be enlightened, and so the quacks flourished. In 1387 one Roger Clerk, of Wandsworth, pretending to be a physician, got twelve pence in part payment from one Roger atte Haccke, in Ironmonger Lane, for undertaking the cure of his wife, who was ill. He put a charm, consisting of a piece of parchment, round her neck, but it did her no good, whereupon Roger brought him before the chamber at Guildhall for his deceit and falsehood, and Roger Clerk was sentenced to be led through the middle of the city with trumpets and pipes, he riding on a horse without a saddle, the said parchment and a whetstone[#] for his lies being hung about his neck, a urinal also being hung before him, and another on his back. In the reign of Edward VI. one Grig, a poulterer in Surrey, was set in the pillory at Croydon, and again in the Borough, for cheating people out of their money by pretending to cure them by charms or by only looking at the patient.

[#] Early in English history we find the whetstone as the symbol of a liar. Why? Does lying imply a sharpened wit, as a whetstone sharpens a blade? The custom is referred to in 'Hudibras,' II., i. 57-60.

Was Valentine Greatrakes, whom Charles II. invited to his Court, a quack? If he was, he was a harmless one, since he gave no physic, but only pretended to cure by magnetic stroking. Our modern magnetizers are not so modest; they have added much hocus-pocus to Valentine's simple process.

From among the medical oddities of the latter part of the last century we must not omit Dr. Von Butchell, who lived in Mount Street, and pretended to cure every disease. He applied for the post of dentist to George III., but when the King's consent was obtained he said he did not care for the custom of royalty. When his wife died, he had her embalmed and kept in his parlour, where he allowed his patients to see the body; so that the modern showman who exhibited the dead body of his wife at Olympia was, after all, only a copyist. But whilst the doctor was half-mad, the world was altogether mad; for his exhibiting the corpse of his wife was not considered as eccentric as his letting his beard grow, which then was held to be the height of madness. And there seems to have been method in _his_ madness, for he sold the hairs out of his beard at a guinea each to ladies who wished to have fine children. He used to ride about the West End on a pony painted with spots by the doctor himself. There is an engraving extant of him, showing him astride on it. The horse was afterwards, in consequence of a dispute with the stable-keeper who had charge of it, sold at Tattersall's, where, as a curiosity, it fetched a good price. There was a wonderful inscription on the outside of his house, extending over the front of the next, and his neighbour rebuilding his frontage, half the inscription was obliterated. Butchell was also a great advertiser, and his advertisements even now afford amusing reading. He never would visit a patient, though as much as L500 was offered him for a visit--patients had to go to his house. 'I go to none,' he said in his advertisements. Many persons used to visit him, not for getting advice, but simply to converse with such an original. He was twice married. His first wife he dressed in black, and his second in white, never allowing a change of colour. He was one of the earliest teetotalers. The profits he and some of his contemporaries made on their quack draughts and pills led, in 1788, to the imposition of the tax on 'patent medicines.'

But to come down to more recent times, in 1700 one John Pechey, living at the Angel and Crown, in Basing Lane, an Oxford graduate and member of the College of Physicians, London, advertised that all sick people might for sixpence have a faithful account of their diseases and plain directions for their cure, and that he was prepared to visit any sick person in London for 2s. 6d.; and that if he were called by any person as he passed by, he would require but one shilling for his advice. A physician who in our day advertised like this would be deprived of his diploma. In 1734 one Joshua Ward became a celebrity even among quacks by his pills, which he extensively advertised, and which were patronized by the Queen herself. There was a rhyming quack, Dr. Hill, who also wrote a farce, and wanted Garrick to produce it, till the latter published the following distich on him:

'For farces and physic his equal there scarce is,
His farces are physic, his physic a farce is.'

A Dr. Hannes, a contemporary of Dr. Radcliffe, ordered his servant to stop a number of coaches between Whitehall and the Royal Exchange, and to inquire at each whether it belonged to Dr. Hannes, as he was called to a patient. Entering Garraway's Coffee-House, the servant put the same question. Dr. Radcliffe happening to be there, he asked who wanted Dr. Hannes. The servant named several lords who all wanted him. 'No, no, friend,' said Radcliffe; 'Dr. Hannes wants the lords.'

Quacks were never more flourishing than they are now, and they always will be, for the public like mysterious remedies, and are anxious to recommend them and to force them on their friends. In nothing is a little knowledge more dangerous than in medicine; mothers and nurses especially, who have acquired some smattering of it from their conversations with doctors, may do a lot of mischief. To them are due nearly all so-called diseases of children--as if children must necessarily have diseases--a superstition which is shared by some doctors, who also encourage the reading of their books. The reading of those books has physically the same effect on the body that the reading or hearing of ghost stories has morally on the mind: the reader or hearer everywhere feels dis-ease and sees ghosts; _ergo_ beware of medical books and goblin stories--both are unwholesome. Modern invalids are fortunate in escaping the tortures inflicted on patients in earlier days. Edmund Verney thus writes concerning his father, Sir Ralph Verney, of Claydon House, in 1686: 'He hath been blooded, vomited, blistered, cupt and scarified, and hath three physicians with him, besides apothecary and chirurgian.' And then he wonders that 'he still continues very weak.' The marvel was that he survived at all. Had not Moliere a few years before the above date said: 'You must not say that a man died of such and such a disease, but of so many physicians, surgeons and apothecaries'?

The most pungent and most witty definition of the doctor's character probably is that given, I think, by Talleyrand. When Napoleon, in a fit of despondency, said that he would forsake war and turn physician, the sarcastic courtier said _sotto voce_: '_Toujours assassin?_'

*XV.*

*THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON.*

London is deficient in two conditions to render it picturesque: it lacks diversity of surface, and it lacks water. In so vast an expanse of ground as is covered by London, Ludgate Hill and Notting Hill are mere molehills.[#] As to water, it has the Thames, but that is accessible at short and broken intervals only. There is the Embankment from Blackfriars to Westminster; a short bit at Chelsea, and the Albert Embankment. But the City people during the day have no time to waste on their Embankment, and in the evening they are gone to the suburbs, and so this grand promenade is given up to occasional country cousins' visits, and to permanent ruffianism. For, of course, no one from the more northern parts of London ever thinks of coming so far to take a stroll on that Embankment, from which nothing is to be seen but mud-banks in the near prospect, as by a perverse arrangement of nature it is generally low water when you want to take a walk; on the opposite bank only dismal wharves present themselves. As to the Chelsea Embankment, that is patronized by the dwellers in that region only, if they do not neglect it altogether, as people generally do who live in a rather picturesque locality. The less we say about the Albert Embankment the better; its characteristics are dingy hovels and smoke-belching pottery chimneys on one side, smoke and cinders from passing steam-barges and penny steamers on the river, and a dreary outlook on the opposite side, scarcely relieved by the Tate Gallery, which, for reasons unknown to the general public, but self-evident to those who can see the wire-pulling behind, has been pitched, like a King Log, into the Pimlico swamp. All other parts of the river are inaccessible to the public, and therefore as good as non-existent for the Londoner.

[#] The highest point north is Hampstead Hill, 400 feet above sea-level; to the south Sydenham Hill, 365 feet; Primrose Hill, about 260 feet; Herne Hill, about 180 feet; Denmark, about 100 feet; Orme Square, 95 feet; Broad Walk, 90 feet; North Audley Street, 83 feet; Tottenham Court Road, 85 feet; Regent Circus, 90 feet; Cornhill, 60 feet; Charing Cross, 24 feet; Euston Road, 90 feet; Cheapside, 59 feet; Farringdon Street, 28 feet; St. Katherine's, Regent's Park, 120 feet; Camberwell Green, 19 feet.

Thus much for the Thames. As to other pieces of water to be found in public parks, they are mere ponds, and of benefit only locally. As to public fountains, which form the peculiar charm of so many Continental cities, where the melodious splash of water is heard day and night, London possesses none. True, there are two squirts in Trafalgar Square, and the Shaftesbury fountain is making asthmatic efforts to assert itself, whilst the Angel at the top seems to be shooting Folly as it flies all around him in the savoury purlieus of the Haymarket. The small drinking fountains found here and there are evidences of philanthropy, which may be grateful to children and tramps, to horses and dogs, but do not add much to the aquatic features of London. There are canals, it is true, but they are private property, and so fenced, hoarded, and walled in, as to be of no use to the public. And as a rule their water is so dirty that no one with a nose would walk by the side of them, even if allowed to do so.

But London was not always so deadly level and so waterless as it is now. In ancient days there were high hills and deep valleys in the very heart of it. From the river Lea to the river Brent on the northern side of London there were numerous rivulets and brooks descending from the northern heights through the City and its western outskirts into the Thames, brooks and rivulets which at times assumed such dimensions as to cause serious inundations. It was the same in the south of London, where from the Ravensbourne to the Wandle similar watercourses reached the Thames from the southern hills.

All those brooks between the four rivers we have named, and which alone are still existing, have totally disappeared. What were their features, when they still flowed from northern and southern heights, and what were the causes and the process of their disappearance, we now intend to investigate, by proceeding from east to west, and taking the northern shore of the Thames first.

The site on which the Romans founded London was the rising ground on the northern bank of the Thames, from the present Fish Street Hill, or Billingsgate, to the Wallbrook. At a later date of their occupation they extended the City eastward to the Tower, and westward to the valley of the Fleet. Then the valley of the Wallbrook divided the City into two portions of almost equal size. To the north the buildings extended to the present Aldgate and to Moorfields, and westward to Newgate and Ludgate. The wall which encompassed the town began at the Tower, and in a line with various bends in it terminated at the Arx Palatina, somewhere near the present _Times_ office. On the east of the town, where the country was flat, there was a marsh, extending to the river Lea. To the north-west were dense forests stretching far into Middlesex, and abounding with deer, wild boar, and other savage animals. This forest was partly the cause of the many brooks, which in those days watered London from the northern heights; it being a well-known fact that trees absorb and retain moisture.

It is doubtful whether there were any Roman buildings west of the Fleet; Fleet Street and the Strand certainly were then undreamt of, and did not come into existence till centuries after the Romans had left our island. To the west of the present Strand, the ground lying very low, it was frequently inundated by the river, and there are persons still living who can remember Belgravia and Pimlico as a dismal swamp. Westminster Abbey stood on an island, which rose above the marshy environs, and even as late as the times of Charles II. occasional high tides converted the palace of Whitehall into an island.

The great forest of Middlesex above mentioned came close to the City wall; it had, in fact, occupied a portion of the site on which the City was built, and as much of it had been cut down, and so much space cleared, as the builders required for their operations. But the nature of the forest ground could not be as readily changed. It was still full of moisture, and numerous rills continued to flow through it. Now, one of the most important of them was the Langbourne.

This watercourse, so called because of its length, took its rise in ground now forming part of Fenchurch Street. It ran swiftly through that street in a westward direction, across Grass, now Gracechurch Street, into and down Lombard Street--where many Roman remains have been discovered--to the west of St. Mary Woolnoth Church, where it turned sharply round to the south and gave name to Sherbourne Lane, so termed of sharing or dividing, because there it broke into a number of rills and so reached the Thames. From this watercourse Langbourne Ward took its name. Thus says Stow, but he adds that in his day (1598) this bourne had long been stopped up at the head, and the rest of the course filled up and paved over, 'so that no sign thereof remaineth more than the name aforesaid.'

Some modern historians, Mr. Loftie, for instance, deny the existence of the Langbourne altogether. 'Stow says that the Langbourne rose in Fenchurch Street and ran down Lombard Street. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the course indicated is up hill,' Mr. Loftie objects. But Fenchurch Street was then, as it is now, considerably higher than the outfall of the Langbourne into the Thames, and what do we know of the then levels of the streets through which it was said to have run? Upwards of thirty feet under the present level of Lombard Street Roman remains have been found, and the Langbourne, as we know from various documents, was covered in as early as the latter part of the twelfth century, a time when building increased rapidly under Fitz-Alwyn, the first Mayor of London; moreover, the fenny condition of Fenchurch Street is said to have been due to the overflowing of the Langbourne at its source. Mr. Loftie says that the original name of the Langbourne was Langford; but a ford implies a watercourse, and not a mere ditch or artificial trench, which, receiving the drainage of the immediate locality, fell into the Wallbrook, as Mr. Burt would have us believe. If the Langbourne never existed, whence did Langbourne Ward derive its name?

Proceeding westward, we come to a much more important stream, namely, the Wallbrook.

No more striking instance of the changes which Time will effect in the topographical aspect of a locality can be found than that which the disappearance of the Wallbrook has produced within the limits of its own course and in its surroundings. Where now a smooth expanse of asphalte paving covers firm ground (except where rendered treacherously dangerous by sewer-like railway tunnels, in which human beings are shot to and fro like so many rats enclosed in traps in a drain!), extending from Princes Street right across to the Mansion House, and to and down the street called Wallbrook, there, centuries ago, yawned a wide ravine with precipitous sides, at the bottom of which flowed the brook called the Wall-brook, because, rising in the upper fenny grounds of Moorfields, it entered the city through an opening in the wall, somewhere near the northern end of the present Moorgate Street. The brook, towards its southern termination, must have been of considerable width, for barges could be rowed up to Bucklersbury--a fact commemorated by Barge Yard, formerly a kind of dock, but now solid ground, opening into Bucklersbury. The width of the Wallbrook near its outfall was no doubt increased by tributaries, which, flowing from the opposite portion of the City, found an exit on the western bank. There is no doubt that there was a watercourse along the line of Cheapside; the fact is stated positively by Maitland. He says: 'At Bread Street corner, the north-east end, in 1595, one Thomas Tomlinson causing in the High Street of Chepe a vault to be digged, there was found at fifteen feet deep a fair pavement, like that above-ground, and at the further end, at the channel, was found a tree, sawed into five steps, which was to step over some brook running out of the west towards Wallbrook. And upon the edge of the said brook there was found lying the bodies of two great trees, the ends whereof were then sawed off, and firm timber as at the first when they fell. It was all forced ground until they went past the trees aforesaid, which was about seventeen feet deep, or better. Thus much has the ground of this city been raised from the main. And here it may be observed that within fourscore years and less, Cheapside was raised divers feet higher than it was when St. Paul's was first built, as appeared by several eminent marks discovered in the late laying of the foundation of that church.' The mention of Cheapside as a highway does not go back to very early times. In the eleventh century it must have been a mere bog; for, when in 1090 the roof of Bow Church was blown off by a tempest, the rafters, which were twenty-six feet long, penetrated more than twenty feet into the soft soil of Cheapside. The course of the brook just mentioned west of Bread Street is not known; it is doubtful whether it struck off northward by about Gutter Lane, and so towards springs known to exist near Cripplegate, or whether it came from further westward, from the springs which supply the ancient baths in Bath Street (formerly called Bagnio Court), north of Newgate Street.

But we must return to the Wallbrook itself; and, first, as to its course. After entering the City through the opening in the wall, it curved eastward, ran along Bell Alley, crossed Tokenhouse Yard and Lothbury, close by St. Margaret's Church, curved westward again, passing through ground now covered by the north-west corner of the Bank of England; crossing the present Princes Street and the Poultry, it ran under what is now the National Safe Deposit, whence, by an almost semicircular bend, it reached Cannon Street, which it crossed, turning westwardly towards St. Michael's Church, and crossing Thames Street, flowed past Joiners' Hall into the Thames. There were various bridges over the said watercourse. There was one close to Bokerelsberi (Bucklersbury), which in 1291 four occupiers of tenements adjoining the bridge were ordered to repair, according to clauses in their tenancies. There was another over against the wall of the chancel of the church of St. Stephen, which it was the duty of the parishioners to repair, as they were ordered to do, for instance, in 1300. At Dowgate Hill, at the outfall of the Wallbrook into the Thames, there was discovered in 1884 an ancient landing-stage, a Roman pavement in tile, set upon timber piles, with mortised jointing. The stage stood on the left bank of the Wallbrook, facing not the Thames, but the brook. It was twenty-one feet below the present level of Dowgate Hill, and below the churchyard of St. John's. A large quantity of stout oak-piling was also _in situ_, and the sill of the bridge which crossed from east to west at this spot was seen very plainly. Another landing-stage appears to have existed on the brook at a spot now covered by the National Safe Deposit: it consisted of a timber flooring supported by huge oak timbers, and running parallel with the stream. Adjoining this were evidences of a macadamized roadway, which extended in a line with Bucklersbury, until it reached the apparent course of the brook. Upon the opposite side similar indications appeared, so that here also a bridge may have existed. Another bridge seems to have spanned the brook near London Wall, in Broad Street Ward, with yet another a little more south. It appears that in the year 1300 both these bridges required repairs, and that the Prior of the Holy Trinity, who was liable for those of the first, and the Prior of the New Hospital without Bishopsgate, who was bound to do those of the second, were in that year summoned by the Mayor and Aldermen of London 'to rebuild the said bridges and keep them in repair.'

When in the seventies the National Safe Deposit Company dug down some forty feet into the ground, and reached the ancient course of the Wallbrook, they found in its bed, among other debris, enormous quantities of broken vessels and kitchen utensils. No doubt the careless cooks and housemaids of the ancient Romans found the brook handy for getting rid of the evidences of mishap or recklessness; but their successors on the banks of the stream seem to have treated it with even greater disrespect. In the records of the City we find constant references to the disgraceful condition of the Wallbrook. In 1288 the Warden and Sheriffs of the City of London had to order that the watercourse of the Wallbrook should be made free from dung and other nuisances, and that the rakes should be put back again upon every tenement extending from Finsbury Moor to the Thames. In 1374 the Mayor and Aldermen granted to Thomas atte Ram, brewer, a seven years' lease of the Moor, together with charge of the watercourse of Wallbrook, without paying any rent therefor, upon the understanding that he should keep the said Moor well and properly, and have the Wallbrook cleansed for the whole of the term, clearing it from dung and other filth thrown therein, he taking for every latrine built upon the said watercourse twelve pence yearly. And if, in so cleansing it, he should find aught therein, he should have it for his own. But it would seem that Thomas atte Ram did not properly perform his contract, for at the expiration of it, namely in 1383, we find by an Ordinance of the Common Council that, 'whereas the watercourse of the Wallbrook is stopped up by divers filth and dung thrown thereinto by persons who have houses along the said course, to the great nuisance and damage of all the City, the Aldermen of the Wards of Coleman Street, Broad Street, Chepe, Wallbrook, Vintry and Dowgate, through whose wards the said watercourse runs, shall inquire if any person dwelling along the said course has a stable or other house, whereby dung or other filth may fall into the same; or otherwise throws therein such manner of filth by which the said watercourse is stopped up, and they (the Aldermen) shall pursue all such offenders. But it shall be lawful for those persons who have houses on the said stream to have latrines over it, provided they do not throw rubbish or other refuse through the same ... and every person having such latrines shall pay yearly to the Chamberlain two shillings for each of them.'