The Funny Side of Physic Part 45

"I think it was during the spring of 1867 that our little 'city on the lake' was visited by the above remarkable character. We are often visited by migratory physicians, who are usually of the 'come-and-go' order; but this one burst upon us like a comet, with dazzling splendor, briefly announced, but at once proclaimed his determination of returning with the regularity of the full moon--repeating his visits every month. Few believed his last arrangement could be carried out, as his predecessors had generally fleeced the invalid public to their utmost at one visit, and if they ever again appeared, it would be under another name and phase. It soon became evident that one visit could not repay the outlay, for no ready posting-board was large enough to hold the agent's posters, which were printed in strips some twenty-five feet in length, and his advertis.e.m.e.nts occupied one, two, or more columns of the public journals, while he flooded the houses with his pictorial circulars.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SINGING DOCTOR.]

"He was merely announced as 'The Sanatorian,' but was indorsed (true or false?) by some of New England's most respectable people. He came in grand style, as the papers briefly announced, thus:--

"'_The Sanatorian._ This distinguished physician proposes visiting us on the 18th inst.... The doctor comes in great style.... He has the finest carriage, and the gayest four black Morgan horses we have ever had the pleasure of riding after.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SANATORIAN'S TURNOUT.]

"The driver, a handsome fellow, with full brown whiskers, curling hair, and a 'heavenly blue eye,' had taken the editor and writer of this last paragraph out to an airing. The team was photographed by the artists, and many of the best citizens had the pleasure of a ride in the easy carriage, and behind the swift ponies.

"The doctor usually remained _incog._ to the public. If they wished to see him, they must go to his 'parlors' at the best hotels. They did go. And now the most remarkable part of the affair remains to be recorded. An editor who interviewed him reports thus: 'The doctor rocks in a rocking-chair,--in fact, never sits in anything else,--or arises and walks the floor, and instantly, _at a glance_, tells every patient each pain and ache better than the patient could describe them himself. 'Are you a clairvoyant?' the editor asked.

"'_Faugh! No, sir._ Clairvoyancy is a humbug; merely power of mind over mind. A clairvoyant can go no farther than your _own_ knowledge leads him, unless he guesses the rest,' was his emphatic reply.

"The same patients, disguised, visited him twice, but he would tell the same story to them as before. His diagnosis was truly wonderful.

"'What is your mode of treatment, or what school do you represent?'

"'There hangs my "school,"' he would reply, pointing to a New York college diploma. 'That, however, cures n.o.body. What cures one patient kills another. My opathy is to cure my patient by _any means_, regardless of "schools."'

"To some he gave 'nothing but water,' the patients affirmed; to others, pills, powders, syrups, or prescriptions. Well, he came the next month, to our surprise, and to the joy of most of his patients. He did the greatest amount of advertising on the first visit, doing less and less puffing each time. The rich, as well as the poor, visited him. He charged all one dollar. Then, if they declined treatment, he was satisfied; but if they doubted, or were sceptical, he refused all prescription. He advertised quite as much by telling one man he was past all help, and would die in eight weeks, which he did, as by curing the mayor of the city of a cough that jeoparded his life. If a poor woman had no money, he treated her just as cheerfully. Men he would not. His cures are said to have been remarkable. He made some eleven visits, and his patrons increased at each visit; but the novelty wore off before he disappeared. He was said to be an excellent musician, an author and composer, a man who was well read (a physician here who often conversed with him so informed the writer), could translate Latin and French, and converse with the mutes. When the day closed, he would see no more patients, but devoted his time to friends, to writing, or to music. Often the hotel parlor would be thronged at evening with the musical portion of the community. In personal appearance he was nothing remarkable,--medium size, wore full beard, had a sharp black eye, a quick, nervous movement, and his voice was not unpleasing to the ear.

"Why he--such a man--should travel, no one knew. He had an object, doubtless, to accomplish, realized it, and retired upon his true name, and from whence he came."

"YOURAN, THE SPANKER."

The writer has many times seen a fellow who travelled the country, nicknamed "the Spanker." He was a tall, lean, lank-looking Yankee, with red hair and whiskers, a light gray eye, and claimed to cure all diseases by "spatting" the patient, or the diseased part thereof, with cold water on his bare palm, the use of a battery, and a pill. He had served as door-keeper to a famous doctor, who created a _furore_, a few years since, by the exercise of his magnetic powers, making cripples to throw down their crutches, and walk off; the deaf to hear, the blind to see; or, at least, many of them _thought_ they did, for the time being, which answered the doctor's immediate purpose. But one fine morning the magnetic doctor found his door-keeper was among the "missing." He had learned the trade, and set up on his own account.

This fellow was as ignorant of physic as Jack Reynolds was of Scripture.

Reynolds, who killed Townsend in 1870, when under sentence of death, listened attentively for the first time to the story of the Saviour's crucifixion in atonement for our sins, when he rather startled the visitors, as well as the eminent divine, with the inquiry, "Did that affair happen lately?"

He was not, it is evident, conversant with Scripture. "The Spanker" was not read in medicine. His treatment was the most ridiculous and repulsive of the absurdities of the nineteenth century. The patient was stripped of his clothes, and often so severely spanked as to compel him, or her, to cry out with pain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NEW SCHOOL OF PRACTICE.]

The beautiful young wife of the Rev. Mr. F., of Vermont, was brought to the writer for medical advice. The patient was carefully examined, and the minister taken aside, and a.s.sured that the lady was past all help; she was in the last stages of consumption; that she would, in all probability, die with the falling of the autumn leaves, or within two months.

The following day the minister carried the patient to the spanker doctor, who declared her case quite curable. The minister employed him to treat the patient.

A few weeks later I saw the minister, seated on the doorstep of his house, bowed in grief. He was on the lookout for me, as I was expected that way. He called to me, and asked if I would view the corpse of his once beautiful wife. I dismounted, and entered the house of mourning.

There lay the poor, fair young face, within the narrow confines of the coffin. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes sunken, and the nostrils closed, and I doubt if any air had pa.s.sed through the left one for weeks--pathognomonic indications of that fell disease, consumption.

"She did not live as long, doctor, as you thought she would, in August,"

said Mr. F.

"No, sir: I did not then make allowance for the harsh treatment of Dr.

----, that, I am advised, soon followed."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A VICTIM OF THE SPANKER.]

"O, sir," he exclaimed, in agony of soul, while the tears coursed freely down his cheeks, and fell upon the coffin,--"O, sir, G.o.d only knows what the poor thing suffered. Dr. Youran said the spatting and cold water treatment would save her, and I was anxious to try it, and did, till the poor, dear soul begged us, with tearful eyes, not to punish her further, but to let her die in peace."

The ignorant scoundrel is still at large, preying upon the invalid public.

It is a burning shame that the laxity of our laws permits such ignorant, heartless wretches to go about the country, imposing upon the credulity of invalidity.

The invalids, as we said in our opening, expect to be humbugged, and will believe no honest statement of a case and its probabilities, but will too often swallow the lies and braggadocio, and finally the prescriptions, of ignorant charlatans and impostors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. PULSFEEL LEAVING TOWN.]

Mr. Jeaffreson, in the "Book about Doctors," before often quoted, says of the English travelling doctor of the last century,--

"When Dr. Pulsfeel was tired of London, or felt the want of country air, he adopted the pleasant occupation of fleecing rustic simplicity. For his journeys he provided himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack--stout, that it might bear weighty parcels of medical composition; fast, that in case the ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of stoning their benefactor as an impostor,--a mishap that would occasionally occur,--escape might be effected.

"In his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs, markets, wakes, and public festivals, not disdaining to stop an entire week, or even month, at an a.s.size town, where he found the sick anxious to benefit by his marvellous wisdom.

"His manner of making himself known in a new place was to ride boldly into the thickest crowd of a town, and inform his listeners that he had come straight from the Duke of So-and-so, or the Emperor of Wallachia, out of an innate desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was born in that very town. He had left it when an orphan boy, to seek his fortune in the great world. His adventures had been wonderful. He had visited the Sultan and the Great Mogul; and the King of Mesopotamia had tried to persuade him to tarry and keep the Mesopotamians out of the devil's clutches by the offer of a thousand pieces of gold a month. He had cured thousands of emperors, kings, queens, princes, grand d.u.c.h.esses, and generalissimos. He sold all kinds of medicaments--dyes for the hair, washes for the complexion, lotions, rings, and love charms, powders to stay the palsy, fevers, croup, and jaundice. His powder was expensive; he couldn't help that; it was made of pearl-dust and dried violet leaves from the middle of Tartary. Still, he would sell his friends a package at bare cost,--one crown,--as he did not want to make money out of them.

"Nothing could surpa.s.s the impudence of the fellow's lies, save the admiration with which his credulous auditors swallowed his a.s.sertions.

There they stood--stout yeomen, drunken squires, gay peasant girls, gawky hinds and gabbling crones, deeming themselves in luck to have lived to behold such a miracle of wisdom. Possibly a young student, home from Oxford, with the rashness of inexperience, would smile scornfully, and cry out, 'Quack!' (quack-salver, from the article he used to cure wens); but such interruption was usually frowned down by the orthodox friends of the student, and he was warned that he would come to no good end, if he went on as he had begun, a contemptuous unbeliever, and a mocker of wise men."

A MUSICAL DOCTOR.

Mr. Dayton, vocalist, told me of a fellow who cut a swell in various capacities a few years ago. He first knew him as a fiddler at fairs. The next time he turned up was under the following circ.u.mstances:--

"With Madam L. and some other renowned vocalist, he was giving concerts, when one day their pianist was taken suddenly sick. Madam was in great trepidation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MUSICAL DOCTOR.]

"'What shall I do? The concert cannot be postponed, and we cannot sing unless we have an accompaniment,' exclaimed the lady.

"I looked about, made some inquiry,--it was in a small town,--but no competent piano player could be found.

"'We must abandon the concert,' I said, which seemed inevitable, when there came a sharp knock at the door.

"'Come in,' I called.

"The door opened, and instead of a servant, as I had expected, there appeared a tall, stout specimen of the _genus h.o.m.o_, with large black eyes, and long, dark hair flowing down on to his shoulders, making his best bow, and what he doubtless intended as his sweetest smile.

"I offered him a chair, and inquired how I could serve him.

"'You want a piano player?'

"'Yes.'

"'Well, I will undertake to a.s.sist you in your strait. Allow me to see your programme,' he continued, very patronizingly, waiting for us to make no reply whatever.