The Funny Side of Physic Part 86

"All personal gossip is interesting, and all of us like to know something of the men whom we hear talked of day by day, and whose works have delighted or instructed us; how they dressed, talked, or walked, and amused themselves; what they loved to eat and drink, and how they looked when their bows were unbent."

Most famous men have had some peculiarity of dress or address, or both.

Our first impression of Goliah--by what we heard of his size--was that he was as high as a church steeple; and of Napoleon, that he was as short as Tom Thumb. But when we read for ourselves, we found that Goliah was much less in stature than Xerxes and some modern giants, and Napoleon was of medium size.

No man can become truly great in any capacity unless he has the innate qualities of greatness within his composition. These qualities, if possessed, will appear in his face,--for face, as well as acts, indicate the character.

There seem to be elements of character in all great men--almost the identical basis of character in the one as in the other, the different vocations explaining any minor differences that are to be found in them.

Thus we find precisely the same features in the character of Michael Angelo and the Duke of Wellington--two men living three centuries apart, in different countries--one a great artist, and the other a great warrior.

Compare Was.h.i.+ngton and Julius Caesar; you will find them surprisingly alike in many particulars. In them, as in every instance I have yet studied, the distinguis.h.i.+ng feature is an intense love of work--work of the kind that fell to the lot of each to do. Another feature is indomitable courage; and the last is a never-dying perseverance. Though I have carefully studied the histories of many of the greatest men, in order, if I could, to discover the source of their greatness, I have never yet come upon one great life that has lacked these three features--love of work, unfailing courage, and perseverance.

"To be a good surgeon one should be a complete man. He should have a strong intellect to give him judgment and enable him to understand the case to be operated on in all its bearings. He needs strong perceptive faculties especially, through which to render him practical, to enable him not only to know and remember all parts, but to use instruments and tools successfully; also large constructiveness, to give him a mechanical cast of mind. More than this, he must have inventive power to discover and apply the necessary mechanical means for the performance of the duties of his profession. He must have large Firmness, Destructiveness, and Benevolence, to give stability, fort.i.tude, and kindness. He must have enough of Cautiousness to make him careful where he cuts, but not so much as to make him timid, irresolute, and hesitating; Self-esteem, to give a.s.surance; Hope, to inspire in his patients confidence, and genial good-nature, to make him liked at the bedside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.]

"In the group of eminent men whose likenesses are herewith presented, we find strongly marked physiognomies in each. There is nothing weak or wanting about them. All seem full and complete. Take their features separately--eyes, nose, mouth, chin, cheeks, lips--a.n.a.lyze closely as you can, and you will discover strength in every lineament and in every line.

In Harvey we have the large perceptives of the observer and discoverer. He was pre-eminently practical in all things. In Abernethy there is naturally more of the author and physician than of the surgeon, and you feel that he would be more likely to give you advice than to apply the knife. In Hunter, strong, practical common sense, with great Constructiveness, predominates. See how broad the head between the ears. His expression indicates 'business.' Sir Astley Cooper looks the scholar, the operator, and the very dignified gentleman which he was. (He was the handsomest man of his day.) Carnochan, the resolute, the prompt, the expert, is large in intellect, high in the crown, and broad at the base; he has perhaps the best natural endowment, and by education is the one best fitted for his profession, among ten thousand. He is, in all respects, 'the right man in the right place.'

"Dr. Mott, the Quaker surgeon, has a large and well-formed brain, and strong body, with the vital-motive temperament, good mechanical skill, and great self-control, resolution, courage, and sound common sense. Jenner, the thoughtful, the kindly, the sympathetical, and scholarly, has less of the qualities of a surgeon than any of the others."

For the above interesting facts we are indebted to the "Phrenological Journal."

Professor Bigelow, of Harvard, has all the requisites in his "make up" of a great surgeon. As a lecturer, Dr. Bigelow is easy and off-handed. He comes into the room without any fuss or airs. He takes up a bone, a femur, perhaps, and after looking at it and turning it round and upside down as though he never saw it before, he finally says, "This is a bone--yes, a bone." You want to laugh outright at the quaintness of the whole prelude.

Then he goes on to tell all about "the bone." We have not s.p.a.ce for more than a mere line sketch of even great men like the above, and but few of those.

THE OLD COUNTRY DOCTOR'S DRESS.

The country doctor of the past is interesting in both dress and address.

He is almost always, somehow, an elderly gentleman. He devotes little time and attention to dress. We have one in our "mind's eye" at this moment,--the dear old soul! His head was as white as--Horace Greeley's; not so bald. His hair he combed by running his fingers though it mornings.

His eyes, ears, and mouth were ever open to the call of the needy. His clothes looked as though they belonged to another man, or as if he had lodged in a hotel and there had been a fire, and every man had put on the first clothes he found. His coat belonged to a taller and bigger man, also his pants, while the vest was a boy's overcoat. His boots were not mates.

His lean old spouse looked neat and prim, but as though she had been used for trying every new sample of pill which the doctor's prolific brain invented.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CALL ON THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.]

I knew another, kind, benevolent old doctor, who started off immediately on a call, without adding to or changing his dress. I once saw him seven miles from home in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves in November, driving fiercely along in his gig, as dignified as though dressed in his Sunday coat. If a friend reminded him of his omission, he would smile benevolently, swear as cordially, and drive on. He did not mean to be odd, he did not mean to swear; and the minister, who had talked with him on the subject more than once, had come to that charitable conclusion--for the doctor always made due acknowledgment, and did not forget the contributions and salaries. The doctor was like an innocent old backwoods deacon we have heard of, who, chancing at a village tavern for the first time, heard some extraordinary swearing; and being fascinated by this new accomplishment, he went home, and looking about for an opportunity to put to practical use the new vocabulary, he finally electrified his amiable wife by exclaiming,--

"Lord-all-h.e.l.l, wife; shut the doors by a dam' sight!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: PHYSICIANS COSTUME IN 1790.]

In regard to s.h.i.+rts, a reliable author tells us that Dr. H. Davy adopted the following plan _to save time_. "He affected not to have time for the ordinary decencies of the toilet. Cold ablutions neither his const.i.tution nor his philosophic temperament required; so he rarely ever washed himself. But the most remarkable fact was on the plea of saving time. When one s.h.i.+rt became too indecently dirty to be seen longer he used to put a clean one on over it; also the same with stockings and drawers. By spring he would look like the 'metamorphosis man' in the circus--big and rotund.

"On rare occasions he would divest himself of his superfluous stock of linen, which occasion was a feast to the washerwoman, but it was a source of perplexity to his less intimate friends, who could not account for his sudden transition from corpulency to tenuity."

The doctor's stock of s.h.i.+rts must have equalled Stanford's.

A California paper tells us that "twenty years ago Leland Stanford arrived in that state with only one s.h.i.+rt to his back. Since then, by close attention to business, he has contrived to acc.u.mulate a trifle of ten million."

What possible use can a man have for _ten million s.h.i.+rts_?

The Earl of Surrey, afterwards eleventh Duke of Norfolk, who was a notorious gormand and hard drinker, and a leading member of the Beefsteak Club, was so far from cleanly in his person that his servants used to avail themselves of his fits of drunkenness--which were pretty frequent, by the way, for the purpose of was.h.i.+ng him. On these occasions they stripped him as they would a corpse, and performed the needful ablutions.

He was equally notorious for his horror of clean linen. One day, on his complaining to his physician that he had become a perfect martyr to rheumatism, and had tried every possible remedy without success, the latter wittily replied, "Pray, my lord, did you ever try a clean s.h.i.+rt?"

Dr. Davy's remarkable oddity of dress did not end here. He took to fis.h.i.+ng: we have noticed his writing on angling elsewhere. He was often seen on the river's banks, in season and out of season, "in a costume that must have been a source of no common amus.e.m.e.nt to the river nymphs. His coat and breeches were of a bright green cloth. His hat was what Dr. Paris describes as 'having been intended for a coal-heaver, but as having been dyed green, in its raw state, by some sort of pigment.' In this attire Davy flattered himself that he closely resembled vegetable life"--which was not intended to scare away the fishes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW POOR TOMMY WAS LOST.]

This reminds me of Mrs. Pettigrew's little boy "Tommy." Never heard of it?

"Well," says Mrs. Pettigrew, "I never again will dress a child in green.

You see,"--very affectedly,--"I used to put a jacket and hood on little Tommy all of beautiful green color, till one day he was playing out on the gra.s.s, looking so green and innocent, when along came a cow, and eat poor little Tommy all up, mistaking him for a cabbage."

Mrs. H. Davy was as curious in dress as the doctor. "One day"--it is told for the truth--"the lady accompanied her husband to Paris, and walking in the Tuileries, wearing the fas.h.i.+onable London bonnet of the period,--shaped like a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l,--and the doctor dressed in his green, they were mistaken for _masqueraders_, and a great crowd of astonished Parisians began staring at the couple.

"Their discomfiture had hardly commenced when the garden inspector informed the lady that nothing of the kind could be permitted on the grounds, and requested a withdrawal.

"The rabble increased, and it became necessary to order a guard of infantry to remove '_la belle Anglaise_' safely, surrounded by French bayonets."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRIDGET'S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS.]

A Portland paper tells how a servant girl there mended her stockings.

"When a hole appeared in the toe, Bridget tied a string around the stocking below the aperture and cut off the projecting portion. This operation was repeated as often as necessary, each time pulling the stocking down a little, until at last it was nearly all cut away, when Bridget sewed on new legs, and thus kept her stockings always in repair."

DOCTORS' WIGS.

For the s.p.a.ce of about three centuries the physician's wig was his most prominent insignia of office. Who invented it, or why it was invented, I am unable to learn. The name _wig_ is Anglo-Saxon. Hogarth, in his "Undertaker's Arms," has given us some correct samples of doctors' wigs.

Of the fifteen heads the only unwigged one is that of a woman--Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter. The one at her left is Taylor, the "quack oculist;" the other at her right is Ward, who got rich on a pill. Mrs. Mapp is sketched in our chapter on Female Doctors. Isn't she lovely? And how Taylor and Ward lean towards her!

YE ANCIENT DOCTOR.

"Each son of Sol, to make him look more big, Wore an enormous, grave, three-tailed wig; His clothes full trimmed, with b.u.t.ton-holes behind; Stiff were the skirts, with buckram stoutly lined; The cloth-cut velvet, or more reverend black, Full made and powdered half way down his back; Large muslin cuffs, which near the ground did reach, With half a dozen b.u.t.tons fixed to each.

Grave were their faces--fixed in solemn state; These men struck awe; their children carried weight.

In reverend wigs old heads young shoulders bore; And twenty-five or thirty seemed threescore."

HARVEY'S HABITS.

I think Harvey should have been represented in a wig. They were worn by doctors in his day, though John Aubrey makes no mention of Dr. Harvey's wearing one. He (Aubrey) says, "Harvey was not tall, but of a lowly stature; round faced, olive complexion, little eyes, round, black, and very full of spirit. His hair was black as a raven, but quite white twenty years before he died. I remember he was wont to drink coffee with his brother Eliab before coffee-houses were in fas.h.i.+on in London.

"He, with all his brothers, was very choleric, and in younger days wore a dagger, as the fas.h.i.+on then was; but this doctor would be apt to draw out his dagger upon very slight occasions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE UNDERTAKER'S ARMS.]

"He rode _on horseback, with a foot-cloth, to visit his patients, his footman following, which was then a very decent fas.h.i.+on, now quite discontinued_."

It was not unusual to see a doctor cantering along at a high rate of speed, and his footman running hard at his side, with whom the doctor was keeping up a _lively_ conversation.