The Doctor in History, Literature, Folk-Lore, Etc Part 2

BY WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.H.S.

From the time of our earliest Norman king down to the days of James I., the chief people of the land partook of their food in fear. Treachery was a not infrequent occurrence, and poison was much used as a means of taking life. As a precaution against murder, a.s.sayers of food, drink, etc., were appointed. Doctors usually filled the office, and by their unremitting attention to their duties crime was to a great extent prevented. In a royal household the physician acted as a.s.sayer.

Let us imagine ourselves in an old English home, the palace of a king, or the stronghold of a leading n.o.bleman. The cloth is laid by subordinate servants, but not without considerable ceremony. Next a chief officer of the household sees that every article on the table is free from poison.

The bread about to be consumed is cut, and, in the presence of the "taker of a.s.say," is tasted, and the salt is also tested. The knives, spoons, and table linen are kissed by a responsible person, so that a.s.surance might be given that they were free from poison. Then the salt dish is covered with a lid, and the bread is wrapped in a napkin, and afterwards the whole table is covered with a fair white cloth. The coverlet remains until the head of the household comes to take his repast, and then his chief servant removes the covering of the table. If any person attempted to touch the covered bread or the covered salt after the spreading of the coverlet, they ran the risk of a severe flogging, and sometimes even death at the hands of a hangman.

The time of bringing up the meats having arrived, the a.s.sayer proceeds to the kitchen, and tests the loyalty of the steward and cook by compelling them to partake of small quant.i.ties of the food prepared before it is taken to the table. Pieces of bread were cut and dipped into every mess, and were afterwards eaten by cook and steward. The crusts of closed pies were raised, and the contents tasted; small pieces of the more substantial viands were tasted, and not a single article of food was suffered to leave the kitchen without being a.s.sayed. After the ceremony had been completed, each dish was covered, no matter if hot or cold, and these were taken by servitors to the banqueting hall, a marshal with wand of office preceding the procession. The bearers on no account were permitted to linger on the way, no matter if their hands were burnt they must bear the pain, far better to suffer that than be suspected of tampering with the food. On no pretext were the covers to be removed until the proper time, and by the servants appointed for that purpose. If very hot, the bearers might perhaps protect their hands with bread, which was to be kept out of sight.

We produce from the Rev. Charles Bullock's interesting volume ent.i.tled "How they Lived in the Olden Time," a picture of bringing in the dinner.

It will be observed that the steward, bearing his staff of office, heads the procession.

Each dish as it was brought to the table was again tasted in the presence of the personage who purposed partaking of it. This entailed considerable ceremony, and took up much time. To render the delay as little unpleasant as possible to the guests, music was usually performed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRINGING IN THE DINNER.]

In the stately homes of old England, as a mark of respect to the distinguished visitor, it was customary to a.s.sign to him an a.s.sayer.

History furnishes a notable instance of an omission of the official. When Richard II. was at Pontefract Castle, we gather from _Hall's Chronicle_, edition 1548, folio 14, that Sir Piers Exton intended poisoning the King, and, to use the chronicler's words, forbade the "esquire whiche was accustumed to serve and take the a.s.saye beefore Kyng Richarde, to again use that manner of service." According to Hall, the King "sat downe to dyner, and was served withoute curtesie or a.s.saye; he much mervaylyng at the sodayne mutacion of the thynge, demanded of the esquire why he did not do his duty." He replied that Sir Piers had forbidden him performing the duties pertaining to his position. The King immediately picked up a carving-knife, struck upon the head of the a.s.sayer, and exclaimed, "The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee together."

Paul Hentzner, a German tutor, visited England in 1598, and wrote a graphic account of his travels in the country, which were translated into English by Horace Walpole. The work contains a curious account of the ceremonies of laying the cloth, etc., for Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich Palace. The notice is rather long, but is so entertaining and informing that it well merits reproduction. "A gentleman," it is stated, "entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him another who had a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times, with the utmost veneration, he spread upon the table, and after kneeling again, they both retired. Then came two others, one with the rod again, and the other with a salt-cellar and a plate of bread: when they had kneeled, as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they, too, retired with the same ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried lady (we were told she was a Countess), and along with her a married one, bearing a tasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who when she prostrated herself three times in the most graceful manner, approached the table, and rubbed the plates with bread and salt with as much care as if the Queen had been present; when they had waited there a little time, the Yeomen of the Guard entered bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with a golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course of twenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the lady-taster gave to each guard a mouthful to eat, for fear of poison. During the time that this guard, which consists of the tallest and stoutest men that can be found in all England, being carefully selected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two kettle-drums made the hall ring for half-an-hour together. At the end of the ceremonial, a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who, with particular solemnity, lifted the meat off the table and conveyed it into the Queen's inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosen for herself, the rest goes to the ladies of the Court."

[Ill.u.s.tration: a.s.sAYING WINE.]

Drink as well as food had to be a.s.sayed twice, once in the b.u.t.tery and again in the hall. The butler drank of the wine in the b.u.t.tery, and then handed it to the cup-bearer in a covered vessel. When he arrived at the hall, he removed the lid of the cup, and poured into the inverted cover a little of the wine, and drank it under the eye of his master. We give an ill.u.s.tration, reproduced from an ancient ma.n.u.script, of an a.s.sayer tasting wine. The middle of the twelfth century is most probably the period represented.

In the ancient a.s.say cup, it is related on reliable authority, a charm was attached to a chain of gold, or embedded in the bottom of the vessel.

This was generally a valuable carbuncle or a piece of tusk of a narwhal, usually regarded as the horn of the unicorn, and which was believed to have the power of neutralising or even detecting the presence of poison.

Edward IV. presented to the amba.s.sadors of Charles of Burgundy a costly a.s.say cup of gold, ornamented with pearls and a great sapphire, and, to use the words of an old writer, "in the myddes of the cuppe ys a grete pece of a Vnicornes horne."

The water used for was.h.i.+ng the hands of the great had to be tasted by the yeoman who placed it on the table, to prove that no poison was contained in the fluid. This ceremony had to be performed in the presence of an a.s.sayer.

The Gold-headed Cane.

BY TOM ROBINSON, M.D.

The stick takes many forms. It is the sceptre of kings, the club of a police constable, the baton of a field marshal. The mace is but a stick of office, being ornamental and merely symbolical.

In history we may go back to the pilgrim's staff, which was four feet long, and hollow at the top to carry away relics from the Holy Land. It was also used to carry contraband goods, such as seeds, or silk-worms'

eggs, which the Chinese, Turks, or Greeks forbade to be exported. It is occasionally used for eluding the customs now. Some people smuggle diamonds into the United States in that way.

Prometheus' reed, or marthex, in which he conveyed fire to "wretched mortals," as Aeschylus tells us, is a well-known fable.

An enormous amount of interest centres around the walking stick, and there are few families in which we do not find an old stick handed down generation after generation. Such an inheritance was at one time a common possession of those who belonged to the medical profession.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. RADCLIFFE'S CANE.]

The College of Physicians possesses at the present time the gold cane which Radcliffe, Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie successively carried about with them, and which Mrs. Baillie presented to that learned body.

The drawing here given is a representation of this cane, and it will be seen that it has not a gold k.n.o.b, but consists of an engraved handle or crook. It is, I think, quite clear that the custom which the doctors of the last century always followed in carrying their stick about with them, even to the bed-side, was due entirely to the fact that the handle of the cane could be, and was, filled with strong smelling disinfectants, such as rosemary and camphor. The doctor held this against his nose obviously for two reasons. One, to destroy any poison which might be floating about in the air but chiefly to prevent him smelling unpleasant odours. This stick was as long as a footman's, smooth and varnished.

A belief in the protective power of camphor and other pleasant-smelling herbs is still in existence, and we know quite a number of individuals who carry about with them bags of camphor during the prevalence of an epidemic.

Before Howard exposed the deadly sanitary state of the prisons of this country, it was the custom to sprinkle aromatic herbs before the prisoners, so powerful was the noxious effluvium which exhaled from their filthy bodies. The bouquet which the chaplain always carried when accompanying a prisoner to Tyburn, was used for the same defensive purpose.

The stick of the physician's cane was probably a relic of the legerdemain of the healer, who in superst.i.tious times worked upon the ignorance of the credulous. The modern conjuror always uses a wand in his entertainment.

These baubles die hard, because there is a strong conservative instinct in the race which clings with tremendous tenacity to anything which has the sanction of antiquity.

The barber's pole is still seen even in London, and is striped blue and white, emblems of the phlebotomist, and symbolical of the blue venous blood, which was so ungrudgingly given by the sufferers from almost all maladies. The white stripe represented the bandage used to bind up the wound on the arm.

The practice of the bleeders continued in fas.h.i.+on in England until the beginning of this century. John Coutsley Lettsom, who possessed high literary attainments, and who was President of the Philosophical Society of London, and who entertained at his house at Grove Hill, Camberwell, many of the most distinguished men of his time, including Boswell and Dr.

Johnson, and whose writings shew he was an enlightened physician, was bold in his treatment of disease, and a heroic bleeder. He used to say of himself:--

"When patients sick to me apply, I physics, bleeds, and sweats 'em Then if they choose to die, What's that to me--I lets 'em."

The wig also const.i.tuted an essential part of the dress of the older physicians. It was a three tailed one, and this with silk stockings, clothes well trimmed, velvet coat with stiff skirts, large cuffs and buckled shoes, made quite an imposing show, and when they rode in their gilt carriages with two running footmen, as was the custom, no one would be better recognised. It is interesting to contrast the dress and mode of practice of the modern physician with those who built up the honourable calling of medicine. It is so easy to laugh at those who practised the art of medicine before modern scientific investigation had laid naked so many of the secrets of physiology, pathology, and vital chemistry. Slowly but surely as the true nature and progress of disease has become known, so have all the advent.i.tious and unnecessary surroundings of dress disappeared, and now we may meet the most eminent of our doctors, clad in the same garments as a man on Change. All this was inevitable, but running through the whole history of medicine is a magnificent desire on the part of those who have made a mark, and of all its humbler followers to "go about doing good." The difficulties are enormous, the labour is colossal, but there could be no convictions were there no perplexities. Credulity is the disease of a feeble intellect. Accepting all things and understanding nothing, kills a man's intellect and checks all scientific investigation.

The physician has to knock at the temple of the human frame, and patiently pick up the knowledge which nature always gives to those who love her best. But the investigator must approach his subject with humility, and with the recognition that there is a limit to the human intellect, and that behind and above this big round world is a supreme being, that around the intellect is the atmosphere of spiritual convictions from which our highest and best impulses spring, that the universe not only embraces material phenomena, but it also includes the sublime and the moral attributes, which no man has, or ever will, weigh in the physical balance or distil from a retort.

The union of Intellect and Piety will grow stronger as the world grows older. When men began to think, they began to doubt, but when men have thought more deeply they will cease to doubt.

An idea is in the air that the study of science has a tendency to make men sceptical. This is an error. For surely the study of Nature in any of its manifold aspects has a direct tendency to lead us into the inscrutable.

Amongst those who demonstrate the enn.o.bling influence of science let us only name Boyle, Bacon, Kepler, and Newton. If we would select a few names from the number of medical celebrities of the past who have felt this elevating influence, the following will readily occur to us, Linacre, Sydenham, Brodie, Astley Cooper, Graves Watson, and Abernethy. The latter, who is chiefly remembered as a coiner of quaint sayings and personal originality, had, notwithstanding his biting wit, a deep sense of the n.o.bility and the sacredness of his calling, as the following extract from a lecture which he delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons will prove.

He says:--"When we examine our bodies we see an a.s.semblance of organs formed of what we call matter, but when we examine our minds, we feel that there is something sensitive and intelligible which inhabits our bodies.

We naturally believe in the existence of a first cause. We feel our own free agency. We distinguish right and wrong. We feel as if we were responsible for our conduct, and the belief in a future state seems indigenous to the mind of man."

The noiseless tread of time will cause many doctors whose names are now household words to be forgotten, but we may rest a.s.sured that the wreath of memory will cl.u.s.ter round the brows of these grand, n.o.ble workers in the field of medicine who have shown by their daily life that they never flinched from the arduous duties, aye and the dangers of their profession, but steadfastly plodded on. Originality, integrity, and honesty are attributes which grace the life of any man, and although the history of medicine claims no monopoly of these virtues, for they serve all men alike, yet they are the handmaids of greatness; without them no human being will ever win that true success which enables us to look back upon such lives and say, "Here are examples which show us the possibilities of the race." Doctors ought to be great burden lifters. Their mission is to carry into the chamber of disease--and even of death itself--that calm courage, that buoyant hope, which has around it a halo of sympathy and of encouragement.

The public are loyal to the profession of medicine, and seldom do we hear of any members of that calling who abuse their high privileges. Their work is an absorbing work; it says to a man:--"You have placed in your hands the lives of the human race. You are the true soldier whose business it is to give life and health and happiness to those with whom you come in contact. You must not lean upon the baubles of your calling, so as to inspire confidence, but you must night and day let the one abiding thought be concentrated upon the good of humanity," and there is no field of professional experience which has given us so many men who have as n.o.bly done their duty as the doctors of the past and of the present day. We seem to be on the threshold of a new era in the treatment of disease, and already do we find an increase in the average lives of the race. No one need despair of the future in that direction; indiscretion and ignorance kill more human beings than plague, pestilence, or famine. The public must help to tear away the veil which hides the _Truth_, by not wors.h.i.+pping at the foot of Quackery, Chicanery, or Superst.i.tion.

The medical profession has so far escaped the pernicious tendency of modern thought, which tendency is to hamper every inst.i.tution. This is a noteworthy fact; our hospitals, medical schools, College of Physicians, and College of Surgeons are not cramped and hindered by legislative interference; but unostentatiously, silently, and with a never-failing sense of their responsibilities, do they educate and pa.s.s through their gates the doctors of the future--and no man dare point his finger at any one of these, and say he does not do his duty.

Magic and Medicine.

BY c.u.mING WALTERS.

Coleridge once said that in the treatment of nervous cases "he is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope." The great "faith cures" are worked by such physicians, and the dealers in magic at all times and in all parts achieved their successes by inspiring hope in their patients. The more credulous the invalid the more easy the cure, no matter what remedy is applied. Is it surprising, then, to find that among the more childlike races, or that among the infant civilizations, magic often supersedes medicine, or is combined with it? Ceremonies which impress the mind and act upon the imagination considerably aid the physician in his treatment of susceptible persons. Paracelsus himself combined astrology with alchemy and medicine, and his host of followers often went further than their master, and relied more upon magic than upon specific remedies.

It was the crowd of charlatans, astrologers, wonder-workers, and their sort who subst.i.tuted magic for medicine, and who had so great an influence in England three centuries ago, that Ben Jonson scourged with the lash of his satire in "The Alchemist," the impostor described as

"A rare physician, An excellent Paracelsian, and has done Strange cures with mineral physic. He deals all With spirits, he; he will not hear a word Of Galen, or his tedious recipes."

There has generally been sufficient superst.i.tion in all races to make amulets the popular means of averting calamity and preserving from sickness. The Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the Turks, and the Arabs, to say nothing of less civilized races, have thoroughly believed that disease can be charmed away by the simple expedient of wearing a token, or carrying a talisman. The magical formula of Abracadabra, written in the form of a triangle, sufficed to cure agues and fevers; the Abraxas stones warded off epidemics; the coins of St. Helena served as talismans, and cured epilepsy. So strong was the belief in these magical protectors in the fourth century that the clergy were forbidden, under heavy penalties to make or to sell the charms, and in the eighth century the Christian Church forbade amulets to be longer worn. In this connection it may be mentioned that the custom of placing the wedding-ring upon the fourth finger of the left hand owes its origin to the ancients who resorted to magic for the cure of their ailments. The Greeks and the Romans believed that the finger in question contained a vein communicating directly with the heart, and that nothing could come in contact with it without giving instant warning to the seat of life. For this reason they were accustomed to stir up mixtures and potions with this "medicated finger," as it was called, and when the ring became the symbol of marriage that finger was chosen of all others for the wearing of it. Thus do we unknowingly keep alive the superst.i.tions of other times.