SPARE HOURS BY JOHN BROWN, M.D. LL. D., ETC. " Ce fagotage de tant si diverses pieces, se faict en cette condition: que je riy mets la main, que lors qu'une trap lasche oysifveti me yresse.'' - Michel db Montaigne THIRD SERIES LOCKE AND SYDENHAM AND OTHER PAPERS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY iSiVerjSttie Camfiriirge The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. "Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one, Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men ; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge is proud, that he has learnt so much ; Wisdom is humble, that he knows no more." Cowper. VERAX. CAFAX SAG AX. PERSPICAX EFFICAX. TENAX. NOTE. rpIIE present volume consists of a re-issue of the more -L purely professional papers published in 1866, to which I have added a few words on Dr. John Scott, Mr. Syme, and Sir Robert Christison. They are addressed more to myself than to anyone else. With some true things, and not unimportant, there are some rash and jejune ones; but though recognizing fully the immense enlargement of our means of knowledge in these latter years, I would put in as strong a word as ever for the cultivation and concentration of the unassisted senses. Microscopes, sphygmographs, etc., are good, but don't let us neglect the drawing out into full power, by the keen and intelligent use of them, those eyes which we can always carry with us. It is this aKpt^eia of the wise and subtle Greek, this ac- curacy (ad and cur a) of the stout Roman, that is the eye of the physician and its memory, and it depends greatly on vivid attention in the act of seeing ; as Dr. Chalmers said, there is a looking as well as a seeing. " I 've lost my spectacles," said good, easy Lord Cuninghame, as he was mooning about Brougham Hall in search of them, when on a visit to his vehement old friend, its Lord, whose mind was always in full spate. "Where did you lay them?" said Brougham. " I forget." "Forget! you should never forget ; nobody should forget. I never forget. You should attend ; I always do. I observed where you laid your spec- tacles ; there they are!" The onlv other thincs I would now mention are, 1st, The 6 NOTE. cramming system of Examinations Surely this matter, which is becoming an enormous nuisance and mischief and oppression to examiners as well as examinees, has reached that proverbial point when things begin to mend. Let some strong-brained, wide-knowledged, and merciful man find out the how to mend. 2</,. I am more convinced than ever of the futility, and worse of the Licensing system, and think, with Adam Smith, that a mediciner should be as free to exercise his gifts as an architect or a mole-catcher. The Public has its own shrewd way of knowing who should build its house or catch its moles, and it may quite safely be left to take the same line in choosing its doctor. Lawyers, of course, are different, as they have to do with the State - with the law of the land. J. B. 23 Rutland Street, April 12, 1882. In order to render this collection of Dr. Brown's papers complete, the American publishers have added to this vol- ume the contents beginning with Miss Stirling Graham, of Duntrune. CONTENTS. TAOS INTRODUCTION 19 Locke and Sydenham . 39 Dr. Andrew Combe 119 Dr. Henry Marshall and Military Hygiene . 145 Art and Science 193 Our Gideon Grays ....... 207 Dr. Andrew Brown and Sydenham . . . .221 Free Competition in Medicine 235 Edward Forbes 241 Dr. Adams oe Banchory 251 Excursus Ethicus 261 Dr. John Scott and his son. Mr. Syme. Sir Rob- ert Christison, Bart ....... 283 Dr. John Scott ........ 285 Mr. Syme 289 Sir Robert Christison 300 Miss Stirling Graham of Duntrune .... 305 Sir E. Landseer's Picture " There's Life in the Old Dog yet," Etc., Etc 313 Halle's Recital . . . . . . . .319 Biggar and the House of Fleming .... 328 " Giein' himsel' a fleg " 329 Biggar as a Medical School .... 330 Robert Forsyth, Advocate 332 Mary Youston and Professional Ethics . . 334 " Langleathers " 335 Bra Henry Raeburn 345 Something about a Well 369 PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1866. aHESE occasional Papers appeared, with a few exceptions, in the early editions of HortE Subseciv^e, and were afterwards excluded as being too professional for the general reader. They have been often inquired for since, and are now re- printed with some fear that they may be found a sort of compromise of flesh and fowl, like the duck-billed Platypus - neither one thing nor the other - not med- ical enough for the doctors, and too medical for their patients. If they are of any use, it will be in confirming in the old and impressing on the young practitioners of the art of healing, the importance of knowledge at first hand; of proving all things, and holding fast only that which is good : of travelling through life and through its cam- paigns, as far as can be, like Caesar-relictis impedi- mentis - neither burdened overmuch with mere word- knowledge, nor led captive by tradition and routine, nor demoralized by the pestilent lusts of novelty, notoriety, or lucre. This is one great difficulty of modern times ; the choosing not only what to know, but what to trust; what not to know, and what to forget. Often when I see some of our modern Admirable Crichtons leaving their university, armed cap-a-pie, and taking the road, 10 PREFACE. where they are sure to meet with lions of all sorts, I think of King Jamie in his full armor - " Naebody daur meddle wi' me, and," with a helpless grin, " I daur meddle wi' naebody." Much of this excess of the ma- terial of knowledge is the glory of our age, but much cf it likewise goes to its hindrance and its shame, and forms the great difficulty with medical education. Every man ought to consider all his lecture-room knowledge as only 63 much outside of himself, which he must, if it is to do him any good, take in moderately, silently, selectly ; and by his own gastric juice and chylopoietics, turn, as he best can, in succum el sanguinem. The muscle and the cin- eritious matter, the sense and the power, will follow as matters of course. And every man who is in earnest, who looks at nat- ure and his own proper work with his own eyes, goes on through life demolishing as well as building up what he has been taught, and what he teaches himself. He must make a body of medicine for himself, slowly, stead- ily, and with a single eye to the truth. He must not on every emergency run off to his Cyclopaedias, or, still worse, to his Manuals. For in physic, as in other things, men are apt to like ready-made knowledge; which is generally as bad as ready-made shoes, or a second-hand coat. Our ordinary senses, our judgment and our law of duty, must make up the prime means of mastering and prosecuting with honor and success the medical, or in- deed any other profession founded upon the common wants of mankind. Microscopes, pleximeters, the nice tests of a delicate chemistry, and all the transcendental apparatus of modern refinement, must always be more for the few than for the many. Therefore it is that I would PREFACE. 11 insist more and more on immediate, exact, intense ob- servation and individual judgment, as the mainstays of practical medicine. From the strenuous, life-long, truth- loving exercise of these, let no amount of science, how- ever exquisite, decoy the student; and let him who has them not greatly long after, as he will not greatly miss, these higher graces of the profession. What will make a valuable physician or surgeon now, and enable him when he dies to bequeath some good thing to his fellow- men, must in the main be the same as that which made Hippocrates and Sydenham, Baillie and Gregory, what we glory and rejoice to think they were. Therefore, my young friend, trust neither too much to others, nor too much to yourself; but trust every- thing to ascertained truth to principles ; and as chemists can do nothing without a perfect balance, so see to it that your balance, that weighing faculty which God has given you, is kept true - in a state, as Locke would say, of " absolute indifferency," turning only to the touch of honest weight. See that dust does not gather on its agate plate and studs, clogging its free edge. See that no one loads it, that you don't load it yourself, - for we are all apt to believe that which we desire, - and put down its results, as on soul and conscience, at all hazards .etting it tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. One can fancy the care with which such men as New- ton, Bishop Butler, Dr. Wollaston, or our own Faraday, would keep their mental balance in trim, - in what a sacred and inmost place, - away from all " winds of doctrine," all self-deceit and " cunning craftiness," all rust, all damp, all soiling touch, all disturbing influences, acting as truly as anything either of the Oertlings, or 12 PREFACE. Staudinger, or the exquisite Bianchi could turn out,1 - turning sweetly and at once, as theirs do, for big weights with the ^^th, and with small with the ^th of a grain. And to keep up our joke, we need not be always pondering; we should use what the chemists call the arrestment, by which the balance is relieved and rests. We will weigh and judge all the better that we are not always at it; we may with advantage take a turn at rumination, contemplation, and meditation, all differ- ent and all restful, as well as useful; and don't let us out of idleness or super-consciousness take to everlasting weighing of ourselves. As far as you can, trust no other man's scales, or weights, or eyes, when you can use your own, and let us in a general way look with both our eyes. It was a great relief to reflecting mankind, when the stereoscope showed us the use of having two eyes, and that human nature had not been all its days carrying number two as a fox-hunter does his extra horse-shoe, in case of losing number one. We see solidity by means of our two eyes; we see, so to speak, on both sides of a body ; and we find, what indeed was known before, that the ultimate image, or rather the idea of external objects, is a compromise of two images, a tertium quid, which has no existence but in the brain, somewhere, I suppose, in the optic Chiasma. Now there is such a thing as stereoscopic thinking,-■ the viewing subjects as well as objects with our two eyes. Some men of intense nature shut one of the eyes of the mind, as a sportsman does his actual eye when he aims at his game, because then there is a straight line 1 A friend says, "put in Liebrich and Jung, and that a good bai- unce should turn with of a Troy grain " I PREFACE. 13 between Ais eye and Ais object; but for the general pur- pose of understanding and mastering the true bulk and projection, the whereabouts and relations of a subject, it is well to look with both eyes; and so it comes to pass that the focus of one man's mental vision differs from that of another, probably in some respects from that of all others, and hence the allowance which we should make for other men when they fail to see not only things, but thoughts, exactly as we do. We will find, when we look through their stereoscope, we don't see their image as they do, -it may be double, it may be distorted and blurred. I have long thought that upon the deepest things in man's nature-those that bind him to duty, to God, and to eternity - no man receives the light, no man sees " into the life of things," exactly as any other does, and that as each man of the millions of the race since time began has his own essence, that which makes him himself, and qua that, distinct from all else, so ultimate truth, when it lies down to rest and be thankful on the optic Thalami of the soul, has in it a something incommunicable, unintelligible to all others. No two men out of ten thousand, gazing at a rainbow, see the same bow. They have each a glorious arch of their own, and while they agree as to what each says of it, still doubtless there is in each of those ten thousand internal glories within the veil, in the chamber of im- agery, - some touch, some tint, which differentiates it from all the rest. But to return: look with both eyes, and think the truth as you would speak and act it. It is the rarer virtue, 1 suspect. When the English nobility were overwhelming Ca- nova with commissions, and were ignorant of the exist »nce of their own Flaxman, the generous Italian rebuked 14 PREFACE. them by saying, " You English see with 'our ' and there is much of this sort of seeing in medicine a* well as in art and fashion. I end with the weighty words of one who I itjoice still a living honor to our art; a man uniting much oX the best of Locke and Sydenham with more of himseR and whose small volumes contain the very medulla me dicince ; a man who has the courage to say, "Iwas wrong; " "I do not know ; " and " I shall wait and watch." " I make bold to tell you my conviction, that during the last thirty-six years the practice of medicine has upon the whole " (taking in the entire profession) "gone backwards, and that year after year it is still going back- wards. Doubtless in the mean time there has been * vast increase of physiological and pathological knowl- edge ; but that knowledge has not been brought to bea**, in anything like the degree it might and ought to have been, upon the practice of medicine; and simply for this reason, that the mass of the profession has never been taught what the practice of medicine means. " Had the same office (the settling the kind and amount of professional education) been committed to Gregory, and Heberden, and Baillie, they would, I am persuaded, have made the indispensable subjects of educa- tion very few, and the lectures very few too. " They would have made the attendance upon the sick in hospitals a constant, systematic, serious affair.1 As 1 We wish we saw more time, and more handiwork, more mind spent _pon anatomy and surgery, especially clinical surgery. There is a treat charm for the young in the visibility of surgical disease and practice, in knowledge at the finger-ends, and the principles and per- formance of a true surgery constitute one of the best disciplines for the office of the physician proper. PREFACE. 15 for the " ologies," they would have thrown them all overboard, or recommended them only to the study of those who had time enough, or capacity enough, to pur- sue them profitably." These are golden words ; put them in your scales, and read off and register their worth. You will observe that it is the practice, not the study - it is the inner art, not the outer science - of medicine which is here referred to as being retrograde. We ques- tion very much if there is as much skill, in its proper sense, now as then. There is to be sure the immense negative blessing of our deliverance from the polyphar- macy and nimia diligentia of our forefathers, and there- fore very likely more of the sick get well now than then. But this is not the point in question ; that is whether the men who practise medicine, taken in the slump, have the ability and practical nous that they had five- and-thirty years ago. Diagnosis has been greatly advanced by the external methods of auscultation, the microscope, chemical anal- ysis, etc. - and there is (1 sometimes begin to fear we must say was) a better understanding of and trust in the great restorative powers of nature. The recognition of blood poisons, and of many acute diseases, being in fact the burning out of long-slumbering mischief, the cleans- ing away of the perilous stuff manufactured within, or taken in from without, as seen in a fit of gout; in all this we have gained more than we have lost (we always lose something), but is the practical power over disease commensurate with these enlargements ? is our sagacity up to our science ? The raw " prentice " lad whom Gideon Gray had sent up from Middlemas to the head of Caddon Water, to deliver the herd's wife, and who, finding her alone, and 16 PREFACE. sinking from uterine haemorrhage, and having got the huge flaccid deadly bag to contract once more, im- prisoned it in a wooden bicker or bowl, with a tight binder over it, leaving his hands free for other work, -- this rough and ready lad has probably more of the mak- ing of a village Abercrombie, than the pallid and accom- plished youth who is spending his holidays at the next farm, and who knows all for and against Dr. R. Lee's placental and cardiac claims, and is up to the newest freak of the Fallopian tubes and their fimbrice, or the very latest news from the ovisac and the corpora lutea. To be sure, there may be boys who can both know everything, and do the one thing that is needed, but the mental faculties, or capacities rather, that are cultivated, and come out strong in the cramming system, are not those on which we rely for safe, ready, and effectual action. We are now, in our plans of medical education, aim- ing too much at an impossible maximum of knowledge in all, meanwhile missing greatly that essential mini- mum in any, which, after all, is the one thing we want for making a serviceable staff of doctors for the com- munity. Sagacity, manual dexterity, cultivated and intelligent presence of mind, the tactus eruditus, a kind heart, and a conscience, these, if there at all, are always at hand, always inestimable ; and if wanting, " though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, I am as sound- ing brass, or a tinkling cymbal; and though I under- stand all mysteries, and all knowledge, 1 am nothing." can profit my patient and myself nothing. In the words of Dr. Latham:1 - 1 Clinical Medicine, Leet. I. PREFACE. 17 " In our day there is little fear that students will be spoiled by the recommendation of their instructors to be content with a scanty knowledge, and trust to their own sagacity for the rest. They are not likely to suffer harm by having Sydenham held up as an example for imitation. The fear is of another kind (and it is well grounded), namely, that many men of the best abilities and good education will be deterred from prosecuting physic as a profession, in consequence of the necessity indiscriminately laid upon all for impossible attain- ments." And again: - " Let us take care then what we are about, and be- ware how we change the character of the English prac- titioner of physic. He is sound and unpretending, and full of good sense. What he wants is a little more care- ful, and a somewhat larger instruction in what bears directly upon the practical part of his profession. Give it him (indeed we are giving it him), and he will be- come more trustworthy and more respected every day. But for all that is beyond this, we may recommend it, but we must not insist upon it; we must leave it for each man to pursue according to his leisure, his opportuni- ties, and his capacity, and not exaggerate it into a matter of necessity for all. When too much is exacted, too little will be learned; excess on the one hand nat- urally leads to defect on the other." INTRODUCTION.1 ■ Y objects, in this volume of odds and ends, are, among others, - I. To give my vote for going back to the old manly intellectual and literary culture of the days of Sydenham and Arbuthnot, Heberden and Gregory ; when a physician fed, enlarged, and quickened his entire nature; when he lived in the world of letters as a free- holder, and reverenced the ancients, while, at the same time, he pushed on among his fellows, and lived in the present, believing that his profession and his patients need not suffer, though his horce subsecivce were devoted occasionally to miscellaneous thinking and reading, and to a course of what is elsewhere called " fine confused feeding," or though, at his by-hours he be, as his Gaelic historian says of Rob Roy, a man " of incoherent trans- actions - specially in general." For system is not al- ways method, much less progress. II. That the study in himself and others of the hu- man understanding, its modes and laws as objective real ities, and his gaining that power over mental action in 1 This Introduction contains so much of the Preface to the First Edition as relates to the contents of this volume. The remainder may be found in the Author's Preface prefixed to the first series of Spare Houre. 20 INTRODUCTION. himself and others, which alone comes from knowledge at first-hand, is one which every physician should not only begin in youth, but continue all his life long, and which in fact all men of sense and original thought do make, though it may lie in their minds, as it were, uu- formed and without a tongue. III. That physiology and the laws of health are the interpreters of disease and cure, over whose porch we may best inscribe hinc sanitas. That it is in watching Nature's methods of cure 1 in ourselves and in the lower animals, - and in a firm faith in the self-regulative, re- cuperative powers of nature, that all our therapeutic in- tentions and means must proceed, and that we should watch and obey this truly Divine voice and finger, with reverence and godly fear, as well as with diligence and worldly wisdom -humbly standing by while He works, guiding, not stemming or withdrawing, His current, and acting as His ministers and helps. Not, however, that we should go about making every man, and above all, every woman, his and her own and everybody else's doctor, by making them swallow a dose of science and physiology, falsely so called. There is much mischiev- ous nonsense talked and acted on, in this direction. The 1 " ' That there is no curing diseases by art, without first knowing how they are to be cured by nature,' was the observation of an an- cient physician of great eminence, who very early in my life superin- tended my medical education, and by this axiom all my studies and practice have been regulated." -Grant on Fevers, Loud. 1771. An admirable book, and to be read still, as its worth, like that of nature, never grows old, naturam non pati senium. We would advise every young physician who is in practice to read this unpretending and nov little-known book, especially the Introduction. Any " ancient physi ian," and the greater his eminence and his age the better, so that th eminence be real, who takes it up, will acknowledge that the author ha< done what he said, made " this axiom " the rule ef his life and doctrine INTRODUCTION. 21 physiology to be taught in schools, and to our clients the public, should be the physiology of common sense, rather than that of dogmatic and minute science; and should be of a kind, as it easily may be, which will de- ter from self-doctoring, while it guides in prevention and conduct; and will make them understand enough of the fearful and wonderful machinery of life, to awe and warn, as well as to enlighten. Much of the strength and weakness of Homoeopathy lies in the paltry fallacy, that every mother, and every clergyman, and " loose woman," as a wise friend calls the restless public old maid, may know when to admin- ister aconite, arsenicum, and nux, to her child, his entire parish, or her " circle." Indeed here, as elsewhere, man's great difficulty is to strive to walk through life, and through thought and practice, in a straight line ; to keep in medio - in that golden mean, which is our true centre of gravity, and which we lost in Eden. We all tend like children, or the blind, the old, or the tipsy, to walk to one side, or wildly from one side to the other: one extreme breeds its opposite^ Hydropathy sees and speaks some truth, but it is as in its sleep, or with one eye shut, and one leg lame ; its practice does good, much of its theory is sheer nonsense, and yet it is the theory that its masters and their constituents doat on. If all that is good in the Water-Cure, and in Rubbing, and in Homoeopathy, were winnowed from the false, the useless, and the worse, what an important and permanent addition would be made to our operative knowledge 1 - to our powers as healers ! and here it is, where I cannot help thinking that we have, as a profession, gone astray in our indiscriminate abuse of all these new practices and nostrums: they indicate, however coarsely and 22 INTRODUCTION. stupidly, some want in us. There is in them all some- thing good, and if we could draw to us, instead of driv- ing away from us, those men whom we call, and in the main truly call, quacks, - if we could absorb them with a difference, rejecting the ridiculous and mischievous much, and adopting and sanctioning the valuable little, we and the public would be all the better off. Why should not "the Faculty" have under their control and advice, and at their command, rubbers, and shampooers, and water men, and milk men, and grape men, and cudgelling men, as they have cuppers, and the like, in- stead of giving them the advantage of crying out " per- secution," and quoting the martyrs of science from Galileo downwards. IV. As my readers may find to their discontent, the natural, and, till we get into " an ampler aether and diviner air," the necessary difference between specula- tive science and practical art is iterated and reiterated with much persistency, and the necessity of estimating medicine more as the Art of healing than the Science of diseased action and appearances,1 and its being more 1 When the modern scientific methods first burst on our medical world, and especially, when morbid anatomy in connection with phys- ical signs (as distinguished from purely vital symptoms, an incom- plete but convenient distinction), the stethoscope, microscope, etc., it, as a matter of course, became the rage to announce, with startling minuteness, what was the organic condition of the interior - as if a watchmaker would spend most of his own time and his workmen's in debating on the beautiful ruins of his wheels, instead of teaching him- self and them to keep the totum quid clean and going, -winding it up before it stopped. Renowned clinical professors would keep shiver- ing, terrified, it might be dying, patients sitting up while they ex- hibited their powers in auscultation and pleximetry, etc., the poor students, honest fellows, standing by all the while and supposing this to be their chief end; and the same eager, admirable, and acute per- former, after putting down everything in a book, might be seen mov INTRODUCTION. 23 teachable and better by example than by precept, in- sisted on as one of the most urgent wants of the time. But I must stick to this. Regard for, and reliance on a person, is not less necessary for a young learner than belief in a principle, or an abstract body of truth; and here it is that we have given up the good of the old apprenticeship system, along with its evil. This will remedy, and is remedying itself. The abuse of huge masses of mere hearers of the law, under the Professor, ing on to the lecture-room, where he told the same youths what they would find on dissection, with more of minuteness than accuracy, deep- ening their young wonder into awe, and begetting a rich emulation in ail these arts of diagnosis, -while he forgot to order anything for the cure or relief of the disease! This actually happened in a Parisian hospital, and an Englishman, with his practical turn, said to the lively, clear-headed professor, " But what are you going to give him ? " " Oh! " shrugging his shoulders, " I quite forgot about that; " possibly little was needed, or could do good, but that little should have been the main thing, and not have been shrugged at. It is told of another of our Gallic brethren, that having discovered a specific for a skin disease, he pursued it with such keenness on the field of his patient's surface, that he perished just when it did. On going into the dead-house, our conqueror examined the surface of the subject with much interest, and some complacency - not a vestige of disease - or life, and turning on his heel, said, "Il est mart gueri!" Cured indeed ! with the disadvantage, single, but in one sense infinite, of the man being dead; dead, with the advantage, general, but at best finite, of the scaly tetter being cured. In a word, let me say to my young medical friends, give more at- tention to steady common observation - the old Hippocratic <xKpi7?eia, exactness, literal accuracy precision, niceness of sense; what Syden- ham calls the natural history of disease. Symptoms are universally available; they are the voice of nature; signs, by which I mean more artificial and refined means of scrutiny - the stethoscope, the micro scope, etc. - are not always within the power of every man, and, with all their help, are additions, not substitutes. Besides, the best natural and unassisted observer - the man bred in the constant practice of keen discriminating insight - is the best man for all instrumental niceties' Hid above all. the faculty an 1 habit of gathering together the entirs 24 INTRODUCTION. has gone, I hope, to its utmost, and we may now look for the system breaking up into small bands of doers acting under the Master, rather than multitudes of mere listeners, and not unoften sleepers. Connected with this, I cannot help alluding to the crying and glaring sin of publicity, in medicine, as in deed in everything else. Every great epoch brings with it its own peculiar curse as well as blessing, and in religion, in medicine, in everything, even the most symptoms, and selecting what of these are capital and special; and trusting in medicine as a tentative art, which, even at its utmost con- ceivable perfection, has always to do with variable quantities, and is conjectural and helpful more than positive and all-sufficient, content with probabilities, with that measure of uncertainty which experience teaches us attaches to everything human and conditioned. Here are the candid and wise words of Professor Syme: "In performing an opera- tion upon the living body, we are not in the condition of a blacksmith or carpenter, who understands precisely the qualities of the materials upon which he works, and can depend on their being always the same. The varieties of human constitution must always expose our proceed- ings to a degree of uncertainty, and render even the slightest liberties possibly productive of the most serious consequences; so that the ex- traction of a tooth, the opening of a vein, or the removal of a small tumor, has been known to prove fatal. Then it must be admitted that the most experienced, careful, and skilful operator may commit mistakes; and I am sure that there is no one of the gentlemen present who can look back on his practice and say he has never been guilty of an error." This is the main haunt and region of his craft. This it is that makes the rational practitioner. Here again, as in religion, men now-a-days are in search of a sort of fixed point, a kind of demonstra- tion and an amount of certainty which is plainly not intended; for from the highest to the lowest of these compound human knowledges, "probability," as the great and modest Bishop Butler says, "is the ruk of life;" it suits us best, and keeps down our always budding self-conceit and self-confidence. Symptoms are the body's mother- tongue; signs arc in a foreign language; and there is an enticing ab- sorbing something about them, which, unless feared and understood, I have sometimes found standing in the way of the others, which ar» the staple of our indications, always at hand, and open to all. INTRODUCTION. 25 sacred and private, this sin of publicity now-a-days most injuriously prevails. Every one talks of everything and everybody, and at all sorts of times, forgetting that the greater and the better - the inner part, of a man, is, nd should be private - much of it more than private. Public piety, for instance, which means too much the looking after the piety of others and proclaiming our own - the Pharisee, when he goes up to the temple to pray, looking round and criticising his neighbor the pub- lican, who does not so much as lift up his eyes even to heaven - the watching and speculating on, and judging (scarcely ever with mercy or truth) the intimate and unspeakable relations of our fellow-creatures to their infinite Father, is often not coexistent with the inward life of God in the soul of man, with that personal state, which alone deserves the word piety. So also in medicine, every one is for ever looking after, and talking of everybody else's health, and advis- ing and prescribing either his or her doctor or drug, and that wholesome modesty and shamefacedness, which I regret to say is now old-fashioned, is vanishing like other things, and is being put off, as if modesty were a mode, or dress, rather than a condition and essence. Besides the bad moral habit this engenders, it breaks up what is now too rare, the old feeling of a family doctor - there are now as few old household doctors as servants - the familiar, kindly, welcome face, which has presided through generations at births and deaths ; the friend who bears about, and keeps sacred, deadly secrets which must be laid silent in the grave, and who knows the kind of stuff his stock is made of, their " constitutions," - all this sort of tiling is greatly gone, especially in large cities, and much from this love of change, of talk, of having 26 INTRODUCTION. everything explained,1 or at least named, especially if it be in Latin, or running from one " charming " specialist to another ; of doing a little privately 2 and dishonestly 1 Dr. Cullen's words are weighty : " Neither the acutest genius nor the soundest judgment will avail in judging of a particular science, in regard to which they have not been exercised. I have been obliged to vlease my patients sometimes with reasons, and I have found that any will pass, even ivith able divines and acute lawyers; the same will pass with the husbands as with the wives." 2 I may seem too hard on the female doctors, but I am not half so hard or so bitter as the old Guy (or, as his accomplished and best edi- tor, M. Reveilie-Parise, insists on calling him, Gui) Patin. I have af- terwards called Dr. J. H. Davidson our Scottish Guy Patin; and any one who knew that remarkable man, and knows the Letters of the witty and learned enemy of Mazarin, of antimony, and of quacks, will acknowledge the likeness. Patin, speaking of a certain Made- moiselle de Label, who had interfered with his treatment, says: "C'est tin sot animal qu'une femme qui se mele de notre mdtier." But the pas- sage is so clever and so characteristic of the man, that I give it in full: "Noel Falconet a porte lui-mgme la lettre a Mademoiselle de Label; son fils est encore malade. Elle ne m'a point voulu croire ; et au lieu de se servir de mes remedes, elle lui a donnd des siens, quo agnito re- cessi. C'est un sot animal qu'une femme qui se mele de notre metier: cela n'appartient qu'a ceux qui ont un haut-de-chausses et la tete bien faite. J'avois fait, saigner et purger ce malade; il se portoit mieux; elle me dit ensuite que mes purgatifs lui avoient fait mal, et qu'elle le purgeoit de ses petits remedes, dont elle se servoit a Lyon autrefois. Quand j'eus reconnu par ces paroles qu'elle ne faisait pas grand ^tat de mes ordonnances, je la quittai la et ai pratique le precepte, sinite mortuos sepelire mortuos. Peut-etre pourtant qu'il en rechappera, ce lue je souhaite de tout mon coeur ; car s'il mouroit, elle diroit que ce seroit moi qui l'aurois tud. Elle a temoigne a Noel Falconet qu'elle avoit regret de m'avoir fache, qu'elle m'enverroit de l'argent (je n'eu ai jamais pris d'eux). Feu M. Hautin disoit: Per monachos et mo- nachas, cognatos et cognatas, vicinos et vicinas medicus nonfacit res was. Ce n'est pas a faire a une femme de pratiquer la methode de Ga- lien, res est sublimioris intelligentice; il faut avoir 1'esprit plus fort. Muller est animal dimidiati intellectus; il faut qu'elles filent leur que- nouille, ou au moins, comme dit Saint Paul, contineant se in silentio. Feu M. de Villeroi, le grand secretaire d'Etat, qui avoit une mauvaise femme (il n'etoit pas tout seul, et la race n'en es* nas morte), disoit INTRODUCTION. 27 o one's self or the children with the globules ; of going to see some notorious great man without telling or tak- ing with them their old family friend, merely, as they say, " to satisfy their mind," and of course, ending in leaving, and affronting, and injuring the wise and good man. I don't say these evils are new, I only say they are large and active, and are fast killing their opposite virtues. Many a miserable and tragic story might be told of mothers, whose remorse will end only when they themselves lie beside some dead and beloved child, whom they, without thinking, without telling the father, without " meaning anything," have, from some such grave folly, sent to the better country, leaving them- selves desolate and convicted. Publicity, itching ears, want of reverence for the unknown, want of trust in goodness, want of what we call faith, want of gratitude and fair dealing, on the part of the public; and on the part of the profession, cupidity, curiosity, restlessness, ambition, false trust in self and in science, the lust and haste to be rich, and to be thought knowing and om- niscient, want of breeding and good sense, of common honesty and honor, these are the occasions and results of this state of things. I am not, however, a pessimist, - I am, I trust, a rational optimist, or at least a meliorist. That as a race, and as a profession, we are gaining, I don't doubt; to disbelieve this, is to distrust the Supreme Governor, and to miss the lesson of the time, which is, in the main, qu'en latin une femme 6toit mulier, c'est-a-dire mule hier, mule demain, mule toujours."1 1 Salomon a dit quelque part: Il n'y a pas de malice au-dessus de cells i'une femme. Erasme mit cette reflexion: Vous observerez qu'il n'y wait pas encore de moines. (R. p.) 28 INTRODUCTION. enlargement and progress. But we should all do our best to keep what of the old is good, and detect, and moderate, and control, and remove what of the new is evil. In saying this, I would speak as much to myself as to my neighbors. It is in vain, that yrw^t o-eavrop (know thyself) is for ever descending afresh and silently from heaven like dew; all this in vain, if eywye ytypcoo-Kw (I myself know, I am as a god, what do I not know 1) is for ever speaking to us from the ground and from ourselves. Let me acknowledge - and here the principle or habit of publicity has its genuine scope and power- the immense good that is in our time doing by carrying Hygienic reform into the army, the factory, and the nursery - down rivers and across fields. I see in all these great good ; but I cannot help also seeing those private personal dangers I have spoken of, and the masses cannot long go on improving if the individuals deteriorate. There is one subject which may seem an odd one for a miscellaneous book like this, but one in which I have long felt a deep and- deepening concern. To be brief and plain, I refer to man-midwifery, in all its relations, - professional, social, statistical, and moral. I have no space now to go into these fully. I may, if some one better able does not speak out, on some future occasion try to make it plain from reason and experience, that the management by accoucheurs, as they are called, of natural labor, and the separation of this department of the human economy from the general profession, has been a greater evil than a good ; and that we have little to thank the Grand Monarque for, in this as in many other things, when, to conceal the shame of the gentle INTRODUCTION. 29 La Valliere, he sent for M. Chison instead of the cus- tomary sage-femme. Any husband or wife, any father or mother, who will look at the matter plainly, may see what an inlet there is here to possible mischief, to certain unseemliness, and to worse. Nature tells us with her own voice what is fitting in these cases ; and nothing but the omnipotence >f custom, or the urgent cry of peril, terror, and agony, what Luther calls miserrima miseria, would make her ask for the presence of a man on such an occasion, when she hides herself, and is in travail. And as in all such cases, the evil reacts on the men as a special class, and on the profession itself. It is not of grave moral delinquencies I speak, and the higher crimes in this region; it is of affront to Nature, and of the revenge which she always takes on both par- ties, who actively or passively disobey her. Some of my best and most valued friends are honored members of this branch; but I believe all the real good they can do, and the real evils they can prevent in these cases, would be attained, if - instead of attending - to their own lu- dicrous loss of time, health, sleep, and temper, - some 200 cases of delivery every year, the immense majority if which are natural, and require no interference, but have nevertheless wasted not a little of their life, their patience, and their understanding - they had, as I would always have them to do, and as any well-educated reso- .ute doctor of medicine ought to be able to do, confined themselves to giving their advice and assistance to the midwife when she needed it. I know much that may be said against this - igno- rance of midwives; dreadful effects of this, etc.; but to all this I answer, Take pains to educate carefully, and to 30 INTRODUCTION. nay well, and treat well these women, and you may safely regulate ulterior means by the ordinary general laws of surgical and medical therapeutics. Why should not " Peg Tamson, Jean Simson, and Alison Jaup,"1 be sufficiently educated and paid to enable them to conduct victoriously the normal obstetrical business of " Middle- mas " and its region, leaving to " Gideon Gray " the ab- normal, with time to cultivate his mind and his garden, or even a bit of farm, and to live and trot less hard than he is at present obliged to do? Thus, instead of a man in general practice, and a man, it may be, with an area of forty miles for his beat, sitting for hours at the bed- side of a healthy woman, his other patients meanwhile doing the best or the worst they can, and it may be, as not unfrequently happens, two or more labors going on at once; and instead of a timid, ignorant, trusting woman - to whom her Maker has given enough of " sorrow," and of whom Shakespeare's Constance is the type, when she says, " I am sick, and capable of fears ; I am full of fears, subject to fears; I am a woman, and therefore naturally born to fears " - being in this hour of her agony and apprehension subjected to the artificial misery of fearing the doctor may be too late, she might have the absolute security and womanly hand and heart of one of her own sex. This subject might be argued upon statistical grounds, and others; but I peril it chiefly on the whole system being unnatural. Therefore, for the sake of those who have borne and carried us, and whom we bind ourselves to love and cherish, to comfort and honor, and who suffer so much that is inevitable from the primal curse, - for its own sake, let the profession look into this entire sub 1 Vide Sir Walter Scott's Surgeon's Daughter. INTRODUCTION. 31 ject in all its bearings, honestly, fearlessly, and at once. Child-bearing is a process of health ; the exceptions are ew indeed, and would, I believe, be fewer if we doctors would let well alone. One or two other things, and I am done. I could have wished to have done better justice to that noble lass of men - our country practitioners, who dare not peak out for themselves. They are underpaid - often mt paid at all - underrated, and treated in a way that the commonest of their patients would be ashamed to treat his cobbler. How is this to be mended ? It is mending itself by the natural law of starvation, and de- scent per deliquium. Generally speaking, our small towns had three times too many doctors, and, therefore, each of their Gideon Grays had two thirds too little to live on; and being in this state of chronic hunger they were in a state of chronic anger at each other not less steady, with occasional seizures more active and acute; they had recourse to all sorts of shifts and meannesses to keep soul and body together for themselves and their horse, whilst they were acting with a devotion, and, gen- erally speaking, with an intelligence and practical be- neficence, such as I know, and I know them well, nothing to match. The gentry are in this, as in many country things, greatly to blame. They should cherish, and reward, and associate with those men who are in all essentials their equals, and from whom they would gain as much as they give; but this will right itself as civil- ized mankind return, as they are doing, to the country, a,nd our little towns will thrive now that lands change, .airds get richer, and dread the city as they should. The profession in large towns might do much for their friends who can do so little for themselves. I am a vol- 32 INTRODUCTION. untary in religion, and would have all State churches abolished; but I have often thought that if there was a class that ought to be helped by the State, it is the coun- try practitioners in wild districts; or what would be bet- ter, by the voluntary association of those in the district who have means - in this case creeds would not be troublesome. However, I am not backing this scheme. I would leave all these things to the natural laws of supply and demand, with the exercise of common hon- esty, honor, and feeling, in this, as in other things. The taking the wind out of the rampant and abomi nable quackeries and patent medicines, by the State with- drawing altogether the protection and sanction of its stamp, its practical encouragement (very practical), and giving up their large gains from this polluted and wicked source, would, I am sure, be a national benefit. Quack- ery, and the love of being quacked, are in human nature as weeds are in our fields; but they may be fostered into frightful luxuriance, in the dark and rich soil of our people, and not the less that Her Majesty's super- scription is on the bottle or pot. I would beg the attention of my elder brethren to what I have said on Medical Reform and the doctrine of free competition. I feel every day more and more its importance and its truth. I rejoice many ways at the passing of the new Medical Bill, and the leaving so much to the discretion of the Council ; it is curiously enough almost verbatim, and altogether in spirit, the measure Professor Syme has been for many years advo- cating through good and through bad report, with his characteristic vigor and plainness. Holloway's Oint- ment, or Parr's Pills, or any such monstra horrenda, at- tain their gigantic proportions and power of doing mis INTRODUCTION. 33 thief, greatly by their having Governmental sanction and protection. Men of capital are thus encouraged to go into them, and to spend thousands a year in adver- tisements, and newspaper proprietors degrade themselves into agents for their sale. One can easily see how harmless, if all this were swept away, the hundred Hol- loways, who would rise up and speedily kill nobody but each other, would become, instead of one huge inap- proachable monopolist; this is the way to put down quackery, by ceasing to hold it up. It is a disgrace to our nation to draw, as it does, hundreds of thousands a year from these wages of iniquity. 23 Rutland Street, October 30, 1858. POST-PREFACE. BWO hitherto unpublished letters of Locke and Sydenham, I had the good fortune to find in the British Museum, - that among the best and chiefest of our national glories, where, strange to say, I found myself for the first time the other day. Not to my sorrow, for I am not by any means sure that it is not an advantage to be not young before seeing and feeling some things. A man at all capable of ideal exquisiteness has a keener because a deeper sense of the beauty of the Clytie - of the awfulness of those deep- bosomed Fates, resting in each other's laps, " careless diffused " - after, than before he finds himself "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita." Time and suffering, and self-knowledge, the mystery, the vanity and the misery of life, quicken and exalt our sense and relish of that more ample greatness, that more exact goodness, that sense of God,1 which the contem- 1 In a certain and large sense Malebranche is right. We see every- thing in God, as well as God in everything; all beauty of thought, passion, affection, form, sound, color, and touch, whatever stirs our mortal and immortal frame, not only comes from, but is centred in God, in his unspeakable perfections. This we believe to be not only norally, but in its widest sense, philosophically true, as the white «ight rays itself out into the prismatic colors, making our world what It is - as if all that we behold were the spectrum of the unseen Eternal In that thinnest but not least great of his works, Mr. Ruskin's sec. INTRODUCTION. 35 plation of Nature and Art at their utmost of power and beauty ought always to awaken and fill. It is the clear shining after the rain. Pain of body or of mind, by a double-edged, but in the main, merciful law of God and of our nature, quickens and exalts other senses besides that of itself. Well is it that it does. Sweetness is sweeter than before to him who knows what bitterness has been, and remembered sweetness too. The disloca- tion of the real and the ideal - the harsh shock of which comes on most men before forty, and on most women sooner, when the two lines run on together - sometimes diverging frightfully, for the most part from their own fault - but never meet, makes him look out all the more keenly for the points where he can safely shunt himself; it is a secret worth knowing and acting upon, and then you can go and come as you list. This is our garden, every one's garden of the Hesperides, into which if we only know the right airt and door - it is small and lowly, and made for children, or those who can stoop and make themselves so for the nonce - we may at any time enter, and find sunshine and shadows, and soft airs and clear waters, and pluck the golden apples from the laden boughs. And though the Dragon is there, he is our own Dragon; and it adds to the glory of the new-born day, and gives a strange flavor of peril ond volume of Modern Painters, there may be found the best un- folding I know of the doctrine that all sublimity and all beauty is typical of the attributes of God. I give his divisions, which are them- selves eloquent: - Typical Beauty: first, of Infinity, or the type of X>ivine Incomprehensibility; second, of Unity, or the type of Divine Comprehensiveness; third, of Repose, or the type of Divine Perma- nence; fourth, of Symmetry, or the type of Divine Justice; fifth, of Purity, or the type of Divine Energy ; lastly, of Moderation, or the 'ype of Government by Law. 36 INTRODUCTION. to its innocent brightness, when we see on the horizon that he is up too, and watching, lying sinuous and im- mense all across the Delectable Mountains, with his chin on his paw on the biggest hill, and the sunlight touch- ing up his scales with gold and purple. This is our Paradise at hand - next door, next room, you are in it by thinking of it, it comes into you if you open your door, - guarded only to those who have been cast out of it, and under whose flaming sword the small people may creep, and the only serpent in which each must himself bring, or be ; and then, best of all - if you are in the right garden - this ideal fruit is among the best of whets and tonics, and strengtheners for the hard every-day work, and still harder night-and-day suf- fering of that real world, which is not much of a garden, but rather a field and a road, with graves as milestones. This in its own place, wisely, temperately enjoyed, ena- bles many a man and many a woman to lighten some- what "The heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world," ' and go on their way, if not rejoicing, at least patient and thankful; and, like the heroic apostle, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. I am therefore less sorry than glad that I was as old as Cortez when he first gazed on the Pacific, before I saw the Pyrenees, and the Venus of Melos, and Ti- tian's Entombment, and Paul Veronese's Cain, with his wife and child, and the Rhine under a midnight thunder- storm at Coblentz, and the Turners at Farnley Hall; ttnd it pleases me more than the reverse, .to think that I have the Alps, and Venice, and Memphis, and old Thebes, yet to see, and a play or two of Shakespeare'# INTRODUCTION. 37 to read, and the Mangostein to pluck and eat, and Niag- ara to hear. But one thing I am glad to have seen, and not to have seen it till I did, and that is the Panizzi Reading Room in the British Museum, where you may any day see three hundred, feeding silently like one, browsing each as if alone in his own chosen pasture. There can never be any nobler or more fitting monument to that great man, who is the informing spirit, the soul and mo- tive power of that amazing concentration and record of human conquest and progress, - whose prodigious brain and will has reared "This dome of thought, this palace of the soul," and whose formidable understanding and inevitable vis- age fronts you in Marochetti's marble as you enter - a head of the genuine old Roman build, an unmistakable rerum dominus. The letter now printed at page 121 was written two months later than the one quoted at page 47, and on the same subject. I like this letter exceedingly, every word of it, and wish I could ask the delightful and omniscient Notes and Queries who " Tom Bagnall " was, and what is the joke of " the thrushes and fieldfares," and the " hey trony nony." The solemn and prolonged, but genial banter about " t' other condition " is very pleasant and characteristic; the desipience of such a man as John Locke is never out of place, and is as sweet to listen to now as it could have been to his thoughtful and affec- tionate self to indulge in, a hundred and eighty years, and more ago. 38 INTRODUCTION. In the same ms. volume in which I found this letter is a case-book of Locke's, in his own neat hand, written in Latin (often slovenly and doggish enough), and which shows, if there were any further need, that he was in active practice in 1667. The title in the Museum vol- ume is " Original Medical Papers by John Locke, pre- sented by Wm. Seward, Esq.; " and its contents are - 1. Hydrops. 2. Rheumatismus. 3. Hydrops. 4. Febris Inflammatoria. To us now it seems curious to think of the author of the Essay on Human Understanding recording all the aches and doses and minute miseries of an ancilla culin- aria virgo, and to find that after a long and anxious case he was turned off, when, as he says, his impatient pa- tient alio advocato medico erumpsit (/) I cannot help reminding my young friends of the value of his posthumous little book on the Conduct of the Understanding. I am glad to see that Bell and Daldy have published this precious legacy to the youth of England for the first time, (!) introduced and edited by Mr. Bolton Corney : it is a book every father should give his son. There is interesting matter in this letter besides its immediate subjects ; and some things, I rather think, un- known before of Sydenham's college life. It is the only bit of English by its author, except a letter to the Hon- orable Robert Boyle, quoted in Latham's Life. 23 Rutland Street, October 13, 1859. LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. " Ils n'etoient pas Savans, mats Us etoient Sages." "Philosophia dividitur in scientiam et habitum animi : unam illam qui didicit, et favenda et vitanda pracepit, nondum sapiens est, nisi in ea qua didicit, animus ejus transJiguratus est." LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. SHE studies of Metaphysics and Medicine have more in common than may perhaps at first sight appear. These two sciences, as learnt, taught, and practised by the two admirable men we are about to speak of, were in the main not ends in them- selves, but means. The one, as Locke pursued it, is as truly a search after truth and matter of fact, as the other ; and neither Metaphysics nor Medicine is worth a rational man's while, if they do not issue certainly and speedily in helping us to keep and to make our minds and our bodies whole, quick, and strong. Soundness of mind, the just use of reason - what Arnauld finely calls droiture de Tame - and the cultivation for good of our entire thinking nature, our common human understand- ng, is as truly the one great end of the Philosophy of Mind, as the full exercise of our bodily functions, and their recovery and relief, when deranged or impaired, is of the Science of Medicine, - the Philosophy of Heal- ing ; and no man taught the world to better purpose than did John Locke, that Mental science, like every other, is founded upon fact - upon objective realities, upon an induction of particulars, and is in this sense as much a matter of proof as is carpentry, or the doctrine of projectiles. The Essay on Human Understanding contains a larger quantity of facts about our minds, a greater amount of what everybody knows to be true, 42 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. than any other book of the same nature. The reason- ings may be now and then erroneous and imperfect, but the ascertained truths remain, and may be operated upon by all after-comers. John Locke and Thomas Sydenham - the one the founder of our analytical philosophy of mind, and the other of our practical medicine - were not only great personal friends, but were of essential use to each other in their respective departments; and we may safely affirm, that for much in the Essay on Human Under- standing we are indebted to its author's intimacy with Sydenham, " one of the master builders at this time in the commonwealth of learning," as Locke calls him, in company with " Boyle, Huygens, and the incomparable Mr. Newton." And Sydenham, it is well known, in his dedicatory letter to their common friend Dr. Mapletoft, prefixed to the third edition of his Observationes Med- icce, expresses his obligation to Locke in these words: 11 Nosti praeterea, quam huic me® methodo suffragantem habeam, qui earn intimitis per omnia perspexerat, utrique nostrum conjunctissimum Dominum Johannem Lock ; quo quidem viro, sive ingenio judicioque acri et sub- acto, sive etiam antiquis (hoc est optimis) moribus, vix superiorem quenquam inter eos qui nunc sunt homines repertum iri confido, paucissimos certe pares." Refer- ring to this passage, when noticing the early training of this ingen ium judiciumque acre et subactum, Dugald Stewart says, with great truth, " No science could have been chosen, more happily calculated than Medicine, to prepare such a mind for the prosecution of those spec- ulations which have immortalized his name ; the com- plicated and fugitive and often equivocal phenomena of disease requiring in the observer a far greater pro- LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 43 portion of discriminating sagacity than those of Physics, strictly so called; resembling, in this respect much more nearly, the phenomena about which Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics are conversant." And he shrewdly adds, " I have said that the study of Medicine forms one of the best preparations for the study of Mind, to such an understanding as Locke's. To an understanding less comprehensive, and less cultivated by a liberal educa- tion, the effect of this study is like to be similar to what we may have in the works of Hartley, Darwin, and Cabanis ; to all of whom we may more or less apply the sarcasm of Cicero on Aristoxenus the musician, who at- tempted to explain the nature of the soul by comparing it to a harmony ; Hie ab artificio suo non recessit." The observational and only genuine study of mind - not the mere reading of metaphysical books, and know- ing the endless theories of mind, but the true study of its phenomena - has always seemed to us (speaking qua medici) one of the most important, as it certainly is the most studiously neglected, of the accessary disci- plines of the student of medicine. Hartley, Mackintosh, and Brown were physicians; and we know that medicine was a favorite subject with Socrates, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Berkeley, and Sir William Hamilton. We wish our young doctors kept more of the company of these and suchlike men, and knew a little more of the laws of thought, the nature and rules of evidence, the general procedure of their own minds in the search after the proof and the applica- tion of what is true, than we fear they generally do? 1 Pinel states, with much precision, the necessity there is for physi wans to make the mind of man, as well as his body, their especial study L'histoire de 1'entendement humain, pourroit-elle etre ignoree par le 44 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. They might do so without knowing less of their Aus- cultation, Histology, and other good things, and with knowing them to better purpose. We wonder, for in- stance, how many of the century of graduates sent forth from our famous University every year - armed with microscope, stethoscope, uroscope, pleximeter, etc., and omniscient of rales and rhonchi sibilous and sonorous; crepitations moist and dry; bruits de rape, de scie, et de soufflet ; blood plasmata, cytoblasts and nucleated cells, and great in the infinitely little, - we wonder how many of these eager and accomplished youths could " unsphere the spirit of Plato," or are able to read with moderate relish and understanding one of the Tusculan Disputations, or have so much as even heard of Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature, Berkeley's Minute Philosopher, or of a posthumous Essay on the Conduct of the Understanding,1 of which Mr. Hallam says, " I cannot think any parent or instructor justified in neglect- ing to put this little treatise in the hands of a boy about the time that the reasoning faculties become developed," and whose admirable author we shall now endeavor to prove to have been much more one of their own guild than is generally supposed. In coming to this conclusion, we have been mainly in- debted to the classical, eloquent, and conclusive tract by medecin, qui a non-seulement a d&rire les vesanies ou maladies mo- rales, et a indiquer toutes leurs nuances, mais encore, qui a besoin de porter la logique la plus sdv6re pour Writer de donner de la r^alitd a de termes abstraits, pour proceder avec sagesse des iddes simples a des iddes complexes, et oui a sans cesse sous ses yeux des Merits oil le dd- faut de s'entendre, la seduction de 1'esprit de system e, et l'abus des expressions vagues et inddtermindes ont amend de milliers des volumes et des disputes interminables ? " - Methodes d'etudier en Medecine. 1 There is a handsome reprint of this " pith of sense " put forth the ither day by Bell & Daldy. LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 45 Lord Grenville,1 entitled, Oxford and Locke; to Lord King's Life of his great kinsman; to Wood's Athena and Fasti Oxonienses; to the letters from Locke to Drs. Mapletoft, Molyneux, Sir Hans Sloane, and Boyle, pub- lished in the collected edition of his works ; to Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors; and to a very curious collection of letters of Locke, Algernon Sidney, the second Lord Shaftesbury, and others, edited and pri- vately printed by Dr. Thomas Forster; and to a Medi- cal Commonplace Book, and many very interesting let- ters on medical subjects, by his great kinsman, in the possession of the Earl of Lovelace, and to which, by his Lordship's kindness, we have had access ; some of the letters are to Fletcher of Saltoun, on the health of his brother's wife, and, for unincumbered good sense, ra- tional trust in nature's vis medicatrix, and wholesome fear of polypharmacy and the nimia diligentia of his time, might have been written by Dr. Combe or Sir James Clark. Le Clerc, in his Eloge upon Locke in the Bibliotheque Choisie (and in this he has been followed by all subse- quent biographers), states, that when a student at Christ Church, Oxford, he devoted himself with great earnest- ness to the study of Medicine, but that he never prac- tised it as his profession, his chief object having been to qualify himself to act as his own physician, on account of his general feebleness of health, and tendency to con- sumption. To show the incorrectness of this statement, we give the following short notice of his medical studies and practice; it is necessarily slight, but justifies, we think, our assertion in regard to him as a practitioner in medicine. 1 See Note A. 46 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. Locke was born in 1632 at Wrington, Somersetshire, on the 29th of August, the anniversary, as Dr. Forster takes care to let us know, of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist- eight years after Sydenham, and ten before Newton. Fie left Westminster School in 1651, and entered Christ Church, distinguishing himself chiefly in the departments of medicine and general physics, and greatly enamored of the brilliant and then new philos- ophy of Descartes. In connection with Locke's university studies, An- thony Wood, in his autobiography, has the following cu- rious passage : " I began a course of chemistry under the noted chemist and rosicrucian Peter Sthael of Stras- burg, a strict Lutheran, and a great hater of women. The club consisted of ten, whereof were Frank Turner, now Bishop of Ely, Benjamin Woodroof, now Canon of Christ Church, and John Locke of the same house, now a noted writer. This same John Locke was a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented; while the rest of our club took notes from the mouth of their master, who sat at the upper end of a long table, the said Locke scorned to do this, but was for ever prating and troublesome." This misogynistical rosicrucian was brought over to Oxford by Boyle, and had among his pu- pils Sir Christoper Wren, Dr. Wallis, and Sir Thomas Millington. The fees were three pounds, one-half paid in advance. Locke continued through life greatly addicted to med- ical and chemical researches. He kept the first regular journal of the weather, and published it from time to time in the Philosophical Transactions, and in Boyle's History of the Air. Fie used in his observations a ba- ometer, a thermometer, and a hygrometer. Uis letters LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 47 to Boyle are full of experiments and speculations about chemistry and medicine ; and in a journal kept by him when travelling in France is this remarkable entry: " M. Toinard produced a large bottle of muscat; it was clear when he set it on the table, but when the stopper was drawn, a multitude of little bubbles arose. It comes from this, that the included air had liberty to expand it- self : -query, whether this be air new generated. Take a bottle of fermenting liquor, and tie a bladder over its mouth, how much new air will this produce, and has this the quality of common air ?" We need hardly add, that about a hundred years after this Dr. Black answered this capital query, and in doing sp, transformed the whole face of chemistry. We now find that, in contradiction to the generally received account, " sour " Anthony Wood, who was an Oxford man and living on the spot, says in his spiteful way, " Mr. Locke, after having gone through the usual courses preparatory to practice, entered upon the physic line and got some business at Oxford." Nothing can be more explicit than this, and more directly opposed to Le Clerc's account of his friend's early life, which, it may be remembered, was chiefly derived from notes furnished by the second Lord Shaftesbury, whose information must necessarily have been at second or third hand. In 1666, Lord Ashley, afterwards the first Lord Shaftes- bury, came to Oxford to drink the water of Astrop ; he was suffering from an abscess in his chest, the conse- quence of a fall from his horse. Dr. Thomas, his lord- ship's attendant, happening to be called out of town, sent his friend Locke, then practising there, who exam- ined into his complaints, and advised the abscess to be opened ; this was done, and, as the story goes, his lord 48 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. ship's life was saved. From this circumstance took its origin the well-known friendship of these two famous men. That their connection at first was chiefly that of patient and doctor, is plain from the expression, " He, the Earl, would not suffer him to practise medicine out of his house, except among some of his particular friends," implying that he was practising when he took him. In 1668, Locke, then in his thirty-sixth year, accom- panied the Earl and Countess of Northumberland to the Continent, as their physician. The Earl died on his journey to Rome, leaving Locke with the Countess in Paris. When there, he attended her during a violent attack of what seems to have been tic-douloureux, an in- teresting account of which, and of the treatment he adopted, was presented by the late Lord King to the London College of Physicians - and read before them in 1829. By the great kindness of the late Dr. Paris, President of the College, we had access to a copy of this medical and literary curiosity, which, besides its own value as a plain, clear statement of the case, and as an example of simple skilful treatment, is the best of all proofs that at that time Locke was a regular physician. We cannot give it higher praise, or indicate more signif- icantly its wonderful superiority to the cases to be found in medical authors of the same date, than by saying that in expression, in description, in diagnosis, and in treat- ment, it differs very little from what we have in our own best works. After the Earl's death, Locke returned to England, and seems to have lived partly at Exeter House with Lord Shaftesbury, and partly at Oxford. It was in 1670, at the latter place, that he sketched the first oub LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 49 line of his immortal Essay, the origin of which he has so modestly recorded in his Epistle to the Reader. Dr. Thomas, and most probably Dr. Sydenham, were among the " five or six friends meeting at my chamber," who started the idea of that work, " w'hich has done more than any other single work to rectify prejudice, to un dermine established errors, to diffuse a just mode Oi thinking, to excite a fearless spirit of inquiry, and ye„ to contain it within the boundaries nature has set to the human faculties. If Bacon first discovered the rules by which knowledge is to be advanced, Locke has most contributed by precept and example to make mankind at large observe them, and has thus led to that general dif- fusion of a healthful and vigorous understanding, which is at once the greatest of all improvements, and the instrument by which all other improvements must be accomplished." About this time, Locke seems to have been made a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1674, he took the de- gree of Bachelor of Medicine ; he nevei' was Doctor of Medicine, though he generally passed among his friends as Dr. Locke. In 1675, he went abroad for his health, and appar- ently, also, to pursue his medical studies. He remained for some time at Montpellier, then the most famous of the schools of medicine. He attended the lectures of the celebrated Barbeyrac, to whose teaching Sydenham is understood to have been so much indebted. When there, and during his residence abroad, he kept a diary, large extracts from which are for the first time given by Lord King.1 The following is his account of the an- 1 Lord King refers to numerous passages in Locke's Diaries exclu- sively devoted to medical subjects, which he has refrained from pub- 50 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. nual " capping " at Montpellier. " The manner of mak- ing a Doctor of Physic is this: - 1st, a procession in scarlet robes and black caps - the professor took his seat - and after a company of fiddlers had played a cer- tain time, he made them a sign to hold, that he might have an opportunity to entertain the company, which he did in a speech against innovations - the musicians then took their turn. The Inceptor or candidate then began his speech, wherein I found little edification, being chiefly complimentary to the chancellor and professors, who were present. The Doctor then put on his head the cap that had marched in on the beadle's staff, in sign of his doctorship - put a ring upon his finger - girt himself about the loins with a gold chain - made him sit down beside him - that having taken pains he might now take ease, and kissed and embraced him in token of the friendship which ought to be amongst them." From Montpellier he went to Paris, and was a dili- gent student of anatomy under Dr. Guenelon, with whom he was afterwards so intimate, when living in exile at Amsterdam. In June 1677, when in Paris, he wrote the following jocular letter to his friend Dr. Mapletoft, then physic professor at Gresham College. This letter, which is not noticed in any life of Locke that we have seen, is thus introduced by Dr. Ward: - "Dr. Mapletoft did not fishing, as unlikely to interest the general public; and Dr. Forster gives us to understand that he has in his possession "some ludicrous, sarcastic, and truly witty letters to his friend Furley on medicine, his original profession; " but which letters the Doctor declines giving to the public "in these days of absurd refinement." We would gladly forswear our refinement to have a sight of them ; anything that Locki considered worth the writing down about anything is dkely be worth the reading LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 51 iontinue long at Gresham, and yet longer than he seems to have designed, by a letter to him, written by the fa- mous Mr. John Locke, dated from Paris, 22d June 1677, in which is this passage: ' If either absence (which sometimes increases our desires) or love (which we see every day produces strange effects in the world) have softened you, or disposed you towards a liking for any of our fine new things, 't is but saying so, and I am ready to furnish you, and should be sorry not to be employed; I mention love, for you know I have a particular inter- est of my own in it. When you look that way, nobody will be readier, as you may guess, to throw an old shoe after you, much for your own sake, and a little for a friend of yours. But were I to advise, perhaps I should say that the lodgings at Gresham College were a quiet and comfortable habitation.' By this passage," con- tinues Ward, "it seems probable that Dr. Mapletoft had then some views to marriage, and that Dr. Locke was desirous, should it so fall out, to succeed him. But neither of these events happened at the time, for the Dr. held his professorship till the 10th October 1679, and, in November following, married Rebecca, the daughtei of Mr Lucy Knightley of Hackney, a Hamburg mer- chant." And we know that on the 10th of May that same year, Locke was sent for from Paris by Lord Shaftesbury, when his Lordship was made President of Sir William Temple's Council, half a year after which hey were both exiles in Holland. As we have already said, there is something very characteristic in this jocu- .«r, pawky, affectionate letter. There can be little doubt from this, that so late as 1677, when he was forty-five years of age, Locke was able and willing to undertake the formal teaching of medicine. 52 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. It would not be easy to say how much mankind would have at once lost and gained - how much the philosophy of mind would have been hindered, and how much that of medicine would have been advanced, had John Locke's lungs been as sound as his understanding, and had he "stuck to the physic line," or had his friend Dr. Maple- toft " looked that way " a little earlier, and made Re- becca Knightley his wife two years sooner, or had Lord Shaftesbury missed the royal reconcilement and his half- year's presidency. Medicine would assuredly have gained something it still lacks, and now perhaps more than ever, had that " friend of yours," having thrown the old shoe with due solemnity and precision after the happy couple, much for their sakes and a little for his own, settled down in that quiet, comfortable, baccalaurian habitation, over- against the entrance into Bishopsgate Street; and had thenceforward, in the prime of life, directed the full vigor of that liberal, enlightened, sound, humane, and practical understanding, to the exposition of what Lord Grenville so justly calls " the large and difficult " sub- ject of medicine. What an amount of gain to rational and effective medicine - what demolition of venerable and mischievous error - what fearless innovations - what exposition of immediately useful truth - what an example for all future laborers in that vast and perilous field, of the best method of attaining the best ends, might not have been expected from him of whom it was truly said that " he knew something of everything that could be useful to mankind ! " It is no wonder then, that, looking from the side of medicine, we grudge the loss of the Locke " Physic Lectures," and wish that we might, without fable, imagine ourselves in that quaint, LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 53 Bteep-roofed quadrangle, with its fifteen, trees, and its diagonal walks across the green court; and at eight o'clock, when the morning sun was falling on the long legs and antennae of good Sir Thomas's gilded grasshop- pers, and the mighty hum of awakening London was beginning to rise, might figure to ourselves the great philosopher stepping briskly through the gate into his ecture-room - his handsome, serious face, set " in his nood, according to his degree in the university, as was thought meet for more order and comeliness sake," and there, twice every week in the term, deliver the " sol- emn Physic Lecture," in the Latin tongue, in dutiful ac- cordance with the " agreement, tripartite, between the mayor, commonalty, and citizens of London - the war- dens and commonalty of the mystery of mercers, and the Lecturers in Gresham House ; " and again, six hours later, read the same " solemn lecture," we would fancy with more of relish and spirit, in the " English tongue," " forasmuch," so the worthy Founder's will goes, " as the greater part of the auditory is like to be of such cit- izens and others as have small knowledge, or none at all, of the Latin tongue, and for that every man, for his health's sake, will desire to have some knowledge of the art of physic." We have good evidence, from the general bent and spirit of Locke's mind, and from occasional passages in his letters, especially those to Dr. Molyneux, that he was fully aware of the condition of medicine at that time, and of the only way by which it could be im- oroved. Writing to Dr. Molyneux, he says : " I per- fectly agree with you concerning general theories - the turse of the time, and destructive not less of life than of science - they are for the most part but a sort of wak- 54 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. ing dream, with which, when men have warmed their heads, they pass into unquestionable truths. This is be- ginning at the wrong end, men laying the foundation in their own fancies, and then suiting the phenomena of diseases, and the cure of them, to these fancies. I won- der, after the pattern Dr. Sydenham has set of a better way, men should return again to this romance-way of physic. But I see it is more easy and more natural for men to build castles in the air of their own than to survey well those that are on the ground. Nicely to observe the history of diseases in all their changes and circumstances is a work of time, accurateness, attention, and judgment, and wherein if men, through prepossession or oscitancy, mistake, they may be convinced of their error by unerr- ing nature and matter of fact. What we know of the works of nature, especially in the constitution of health and the operations of our own bodies, is only by the sen- sible effects, but not by any certainty we can have, of the tools she uses, or the ways she works by." Exact, patient, honest, " nice " observation, is neither easy nor common ; as Buffon says : " Il y a une espece de force de genie, et de courage d'esprit, a pouvoir en- visager sans s'etonner, la Nature dans la multitude in nombrable de ses productions, et a se croire capable de les comprendre et de les comparer ; il y a une espece de gout, a les aimer, plus grand que le gout qui n'a pour but, que des objets particuliers, et 1'un peut dire, que amour et 1'etude de la Nature, suppose dans 1'esprit deux qualites qui paroissent opposees, les grandes vues (Fun genie ardent, qui embrasse tout d'un coup-d'oeil, et les petites attentions d'uu instinct laborieux, que ne s'attache qu'a un seul point." Gaubius calls it " masculum illud observandi stadium LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 55 ceteribus tantopere excultum ; " and Dr. Samuel Brown, nimium brevis cevi decus et desiderium ! thus en- forces the same truth : - "Few people are aware of the difficulty of the art of simple observation ; to observe properly in the simplest of the physical sciences requires a long and severe training. No one knows this so feel- ngly as the great discoverer. Faraday once said that e always doubts his own observations. Mitscherlich aid it required fourteen years to discover and establish a single new fact in chemistry. An enthusiastic student one day betook himself to Cuvier with a new muscle he supposed he had discovered. The master bade his scholar return to him with the same discovery in six months ! " But we must draw this notice of Locke in his char- acter of Doctor to a close. In the Philosophical Trans- actions for 1697, there is an account by him of an odd case of hypertrophied nails, which he had seen at La Charite when in Paris, and he gives pictures of the hornlike excrescences, one of them upwards of four inches long. The second Lord Shaftesbury, who was Locke's pupil, and for whom he chose a wife, in a letter to Furley, who seems to have been suffering from a re- lapse of intermittent fever, explains, with great distinct- ness and good sense, " Dr. Locke's and all our ingenious and able doctors' method " of treating this disease with the Peruvian bark; adding, " I am satisfied, that of all medicines, if it be good of its kind, and properly given, 't is the most innocent and effectual, whatever bugbear the world makes of it, especially the tribe of inferior physicians, from whom ;t cuts off so much business and gain." We now conclude our notices of Locke's medi- cal history - which, however imperfect, seem to us to 56 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. warrant our original assertion - with the following weighty sentence taken from the " Fragment on Study" given by Lord King, and which was written when Locke was at his studies at Oxford. It accords curiously with what we have already quoted from Dugald Stewart: - " Physic, polity, and prudence are not capable of dem- onstration, but a man is principally helped in them, 1, By the history of matter of fact; and, 2, By a sagao ity of inquiring into probable causes, and finding out an analogy in their operations and effects. Whether a cer- tain course in public or private affairs will succeed well - whether rhubarb will purge, or quinquina cure an ague, can be known only by experience." 1 Sydenham, the prince of practical physicians, whose character is as beautiful and as genuinely English as his name, did for his art what Locke did for the philosophy of mind - he made it, in the main, observational; he made knowledge a means, not an end. It would not be easy to over-estimate our obligations as a nation to these two men, in regard to all that is involved in the promo- 1 The all-accomplished, and, in the old sense, "the admirable" Dr. Thomas Young, puts this very powerfully in the preface to his Intro- duction to Medical Literature. "There is, in fact, no study more difficult than that of physic; it exceeds, as a science, the comprehen- sion of the human mind ; and those who blunder onwards, without at- empting to understand what they see, are often nearly on a level with hose who depend too much upon imperfect generalizations." " Some iepartments of knowledge defy all attempts to subject them to any didactic method, and require the exercise of a peculiar address, a judg- nent, or a taste, which can only be formed by indirect means. It appears that physic is one of those departments in which there is frequent necessity for the exercise of an incommunicable faculty oj •'udgment, and a sagacity which may be called transcendental, as ex- tending beyond the simple combination of all that can be taught b^ precept " LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 57 lion of health of body and soundness of mind. They were among the first in their respective regions to show their faith in the inductive method, by their works. They both professed to be more of guides than critics, and were the interpreters and servants of Nature, not her diviners and tormentors. They pointed out a way, and themselves walked in it; they taught a method and used it, rather than announced a system or a discovery; they collected and arranged their visa before settling their cogitata-a mean-spirited proceeding, doubtless, in the eyes of the prevailing dealers in hypotheses, being in reality the exact reverse of their philosophy. How curious, how humbling, to think that it was not till this time, that men in search of truth were brought to see that " it is not the insufficiency or incapacity of man's mind, but the remote standing or placing thereof that breedeth mazes and incomprehensions; for as the sense afar off is full of mistaking, but is exact at hand, so is it of the understanding, the remedy whereof is not to quicken or strengthen the organ, but to go nearer to the object." Well might this greatest of Lord Chancellors now even say, as he does in the context (he is treating of medi- cine) - " Medicine is a science which hath been more professed than labored, more labored than advanced, the labor being in my judgment more in a circle than in progression: I find much iteration but small addi tion ; " and he was right in laying much of this evil con- dition to the discontinuance of " the ancient and serious diligence of Hippocrates." This serious diligence, this aKpi/3eLa or nicety of observation by which the " divine old man of Cos " achieved so much, was Sydenham's master-principle in practice and in speculation. He pro- claimed it anew, and displayed in his own case its certain and inestimable fruits. 58 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. It appears to us one of the most interesting, as it is certainly one of the most difficult and neglected depart- ments of medical literature, to endeavor to trace the progress of medicine as a practical art, with its rules and instruments, as distinguished from its consolidation into a systematic science with its doctrines and laws, - and to make out how far these two, which conjoined form the philosophy of the subject, have or have not harmonized with, and been helpful to each other, at dif- ferent periods of their histories. Much might be done to make such an inquiry instructive and attractive, by marking out the history of medicine into several great epochs, and taking, as representative of each, some one distinguished artsman or practitioner, as well as teacher or discoverer. He might have Hippocrates and his epoch, Sydenham and his, John Hunter, Pinel, Laennec and theirs. These great men differed certainly widely enough in character and in circumstances, but agreed all in this, their possessing in large measure, and of rare quality, that native sagacity, that power of keen, serious, choice, patient, continuous, honest observation, which is at once a gift and a habit; that instinct for seeking and finding, which Bacon calls " experientia literata, saga- citas potius et odoratio qucedam venatica, quam scien- tia; " that general strength and soundness of under- standing, and that knack of being able to apply their knowledge, instantly and aright, in practice, which must ever constitute the cardinal virtues of a great physician, the very pith and marrow of his worth. Of the two first of these famous men, we fear there survives in the profession little more than the names; and we receive from them, and are made wiser and bet- ter by inheriting, their treasures of honest and exquisite LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 59 observation, of judicious experience, without, we fear, knowing or caring much from whom it has come. " One man soweth, and another reapeth." The young forget the old, the children their fathers ; and we are all too apt to reverse the saying of the wise king, " I praised the dead that are already dead, more than the living that are yet alive." As we are not sufficiently conscious of, so we assur- edly are not adequately grateful for, that accumulated volume of knowledge, that body of practical truth, which comes down as a heritage to each one of us, from six thousand years of human endeavor; and which, like a mighty river, is moving forever onwards - widening, deepening, strengthening, as it goes ; for the right ad- ministration and use of whose untold energies and wealth, we, to whom it has thus far descended, are re- sponsible to Him from whom it comes, and to whom it is hastening - responsible to an extent we are too apt to forget, or to underrate. We should not content our- selves with sailing victoriously down the stream, or with considering our portion of it merely ; we should go up the country oftener than we do, and see where the mighty feeders come in, and learn and not forget their names, and note how much more of volume, of momen- tum, and power, the stream has after they have fallen in. It is the lot of the successful medical practitioner, who is more occupied with discerning diseases and curing them, than with discoursing about their essence, and ar- ranging them into systems, who observes and reflects in order to act rather than to speak, - it is the lot of such Ven to be invaluable when alive, and to be forgotten goon after they are dead ; and this not altogether or 60 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. chiefly from any special ingratitude or injustice on the part of mankind, but from the very nature of the case. Much that made such a man what the community to their highest profit found him to be, dies, must die, with him. His inborn gifts, and much of what was most val- uable in his experience, were necessarily incommunica- ble to others, this depending somewhat on his forgetting the process by which, in particular cases, he made up his mind, and its minute successive steps, from his eagerness to possess and put in action the result, and likewise from his being confident in the general sound- ness of his method, and caring little about formally re- cording to himself his transient mental conditions, much less announcing them articulately to others ; but mainly, we believe, because no man can explain directly to an- other man how he does any one practical thing, the do- ing of which he himself has accomplished, not at once, or by imitation, or by teaching, but by repeated personal trials, by missing much, before ultimately hitting. You may be able to expound excellently to your son the doctrines of gunnery, or read him a course of lec- tures upon the principles of horsemanship, but you can- not transfer to him your own knack as a dead-shot, or make him keep his seat over a rasping fence. He must take pains to win these for himself, as you have done before him. Thus it is that much of the best of a man like Sydenham, dies with him. It is very different with those who frequent the field of scientific discovery. Here matters are reversed. No man, for instance, in teaching anatomy or physiology, when he comes to enounce each new subordinate discov- ery, can fail to unfold and to enhance the ever-increas- ing renown of that keen black-a-vised little man, with hi* LGCKE AND SYDENHAM. 61 piercing eye, " small and dark, and so full of spirit; " his compact, broad forehead, his self-contained, peremp- tory air, his dagger at his side, and his fingers playing with its hilt, to whom we owe the little book, De motu cordis et sanguinis circulations. This primary, capital discovery, which no succeeding one can ever supersede or obscure, he could leave consummate to mankind; but he could not so leave the secret of his making it; he could not transmit that combination of original genius, invention, exactness, perseverance, and judgment, which enabled him, and can alone enable any man, to make such a permanent addition to the fund of scientific truth. But what fitted Harvey for that which he achieved, greatly unfitted him for such excellence in piactice as Sydenham attained. He belonged to the science more than to the art. His friend Aubrey says of him, that " though all his profession would allow him to be an ex- cellent anatomist, I have never heard of any who ad- mired his therapeutic way." A mind of his substance and mettle, speculative and arbitrary, passing rapidly and passionately from the particular to the general, from multiformity to unity, with, moreover, a fiery temper and an extemporaneous dagger as its sting, was not likely to take kindly to the details of practice, or make a very useful or desirable family doctor. Sydenham, again, though his works everywhere manifest that he was gifted with ample capacity and keen relish for ab- stract truth, moved habitually and by preference in the lower, but at the time the usefuller sphere of every-day practice, speculating chiefly in order to act, reducing his generalizations back to particulars, so as to answer sume immediate instance, - the result of which was the sig- uallest success*of " his therapeutic way." We have had 62 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. in our own day two similar examples of the man of sci ence and the man of art; the one, Sir Charles Bell - like Harvey, the explorer, the discoverer, the man of genius and science, of principles and laws, having the royal gifts of invention and eloquence - was not equally endowed with those homelier, but in their degree not less rare qualities, which made Dr. Abercrombie, our Scottish Sydenham, what he was, as a master in the di agnosis and treatment of disease. The one pursued hi? profession as a science, to be taught, to be transmitted in its entireness - the other as an art to be applied. The one was, in the old phrase, luciferous ; the other frngiferous. One great object we have in now bringing forward the works and character of Sydenham, is to enforce the primary necessity, especially in our day, of attending to medicine as the art of healing, not less than as the science of diseases and drugs. We want at present more of the first than of the second. Our age is becoming every day more purely scientific, and is occupied far more with arranging subjects and giving names, and re- membering them, than with understanding and manag- ing objects. There is often more knowledge of words than of things. We have already stated our notion, that to the great body of modern physicians, Sydenham is little more than a name, and that his works, still more than those of his companion Locke, are more spoken of than read. Thi is owing to several causes: partly to their being buried in Latin, which men seem nowadays ashamed to know; partly to much in them being now scientifically obsolete »nd useless ; partly from their practical value being im- paired by our ignorance of his formulas of cure; and LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 63 greatly also, we fear, from what Baglivi calls " an inept derision and neglect of the ancients," which is more prev- alent than seemly. We include ourselves among these; for until we got Dr. Greenhill's edition, we had never read seriously and thoroughly these admirable .racts, which were all of an occasional character, and were forced from their author by the importunity of friends, or the envious calumny of enemies, often in the form of familiar letters. We had, when at college, picked up like our neigh- bors the current commonplaces about Sydenham; such as that he went by the name of " the Prince of English physicians ; " that Boerhaave (of whom by the way we knew quite as little, unless it were a certain awful ac- quaintance with his ugly, squab, and gilded visage, which regarded us grimly from above a druggist's door, as we hurried along the Bridges to the University) was wont to take his hat off, whenever he mentioned his name, and to call him " Anglice lumen, Artis Phcebum, veram Hippocratici veri speciem: " that his life was written by Samuel Johnson in the Gentleman's Magazine, and was one of his earliest and worst paid performances: that he was a Whig, and went into the field as a Parliament man. Moreover, that when asked by Sir Richard Black- more what he would advise him for medical reading, he replied, " Read Don Quixote, Sir," - an answer as full of sense as wit, and the fitness and wisdom of which it would be not less pleasant than profitable to unfold at length. We had been told also, in a very general way by our teachers, that Sydenham had done some things for his profession, which, considering the dark age in which he worked, were highly to his credit; that his name was well connected with the history and manage- 64 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. ment of the small-pox; the nature of epidemics, the con- stitutions of years, dropsies, etc., and that he had re- corded his own sufferings from the gout in a clever and entertaining way. All this was true, but by no means the whole truth. Not only are his observations invaluable to anyone en- gaged in tracing the history of medicine as a practical art, and as an applied science ; in marking in what re- spects it is changed, and in what unchanged; in how much it is better now than then, and in what little it is not so good. In addition to all this, they are full of val- uable rules for the diagnosis and treatment of disease; and we can trace to him as their origin, many of our most common and important therapeutic doctrines. They everywhere manifest how thoroughly he practised what he taught, how honestly he used his own "method," that of continued, close, serious observation. But we confess, after all, our chief delight is from the discovery he makes in his works of his personal character - the exemplar he furnishes in himself of the four qualities Hippocrates says are indispensable in every good physi- cian- learning, sagacity, humanity, probity. This per- sonality gives a constant charm to everything he writes, the warmth of his large, humane, practical nature is felt throughout. Above all, we meet with a habitual reference to what ought to be the supreme end of every man's thoughts and energies - the two main issues of all his endeavors, - the glory of God and the good of men. Human life was to him a sacred, a divine, as well as a curious thing, and he seems to have possessed through life, in rare acuteness, that sense of the value of what was at stake >f the perilous material he had to work in, and that LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 65 gentleness and compassion for his suffering fellow-men, without which no man - be his intellect ever so tran scendent, his learning ever so vast, his industry ever so accurate and inappeasable - need hope to be a great physician, much less a virtuous and honest man. This characteristic is very striking. In the midst of the most minute details, and the most purely professional state- ments, he bursts out into some abrupt acknowledgment of " The Supreme Judge," " The true Archiater and Archeus." We may give one among many such in- stances. He closes his observations on The Epidemic Cough and Pleurisy Peripueumony of 1675, with this sudden allusion to the Supreme Being: " Qui post se- quentur morbi, solus novit, Qui novit omnia. And again, after giving his receipt for the preparation of his laudanum liquidum, so much of Spanish wine, of opium, of saffron, of cinnamon, and cloves, he adds, " Profecto non hie mihi tempero, quin gratulabundus animadver tarn, Deum omnipotentem Trarraiv A(0T7}pa eawv non aliud remedium, quod vel pluribus malis debellandis par sit, vel eadem efficacius extirpet, humano generi in miseria- rum solatium concessisse, quam opiata." If we may adapt the simple but sublime saying of Sir Isaac Newton, Sydenham, though diligent beyond most other " children " in gathering his pebbles and shells on the shore of the great deep, and in winning for mankind some things of worth from the vast and formless infinite, was not unconscious of the mighty presence beside which he was at work; he was not deaf to the strong music of hat illimitable sea. He recognized in the midst of the Known, a greater, an infinite, a divine unknown; behind everything certain and distinct, he beheld something shadowy and unsearchable, pas* all finding out; and he 66 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. did not, as many men of his class have too often done, and still do, rest in the mere contemplation and recogni- tion of the ri Belov. This was to him but the shadow of the supreme substance, 6 How unlike to this fer- vor, this reverence and godly fear, is the hard, cool, non- chalant style of many of our modern men of science, each of whom is so intent on his own little pebble, so bent upon finding in it something no one else ever found, so self-involved and self-sufficient, that his eyes and his ears are alike shut to the splendors and the voices - the brooding darkness, and the " look that threatens the profane " - of the liberal sea, from out whose abyss it has been flung, and " Which doth with its eternal motion make A sound like thunder - everlastingly." This habit of Sydenham's mind is strikingly shown in the first sentence of his Preface to the first edition of his Medical Observations: " Qui medicinae dat operam, haec secum ut saepe perpendat oportet: Primo, se de tegrorum vita ipsius curae commissa, rationem aliquando Supremo Judici redditurum. Deinde quicquid artis aut scientiae Divino beneficio consecutus est, imprimis, ad Summi Numinis laudem, atque humani generis salu- tem, esse dirigendum: indignum autem esse, ut coelestia. ilia dona, vel avaritiae, vel ambitus officio inserviant. Porro, se non ignobilis alicujus aut contemnendi anima- lis curam suscepisse; ut enim, humani generis pretium agnoscas, Unigenitus Dei Filius, homo factus est adeoque naturam assumptam sua dignatione nobilitaviL Denique, nec se communi sorte, exernptum esse, sed jisdem legibus mortalitatis, iisdem casibus et aerumnis, obnoxium atque expositum, quibus alii quilibet; quo diliger.tius et quidem teneriori cum affectu, ipse plane o/zotoTra^jys aegrotantibus opem ferre conetur." LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 67 When it is the free outcome of an earnest, sincere, and mple nature, this sudden reference to Divine things - this involuntary Oh altitudo!- in the midst of a purely technical exposition, has an effect, and moves the hearer far beyond any mere elaborate and foreseen argumenta- tion. When a youth is told beforehand what you mean to make him believe, and, above all, what you mean .( 'nsist that he must/eeZ- you have much of him against you. You should take him before he is aware; and, besides, if this burst of emotion is the expression of an inward restraint, carried to its utmost, and then forced into utterance; if the speaker has resisted being moved, and is moved in spite of himself, then is he surest to move those upon whom he is acting. The full power of lightning is due to speed and concentration - you have it in the Teutonic Blitz, gone as soon as come. Such of our readers (a fast-lessening band!) as were pupils of that remarkable man and first-rate teacher, Dr. John Barclay, - must remember well his sudden bursts of this kind, made all the more memorable, that he disliked formal moralizing upon- his favorite science. There was one occasion when he never failed to break out. It was when concluding his description of the bones of the skull. His old pupils knew what was com- ing, the new ones were set a wondering; all saw some suppressed emotion working within him, - his language was more close and rapid; that homely, sensible, honest face, was eager with some unacknowledged central feel ing, and after finishing the Sella Turcica, and the clinoid processes, he threw down the sphenoid bone, and the time being up, and his hand on the open door of that well-known arena in which he moved, he seemed as if leaving; indeed, we believe he intended then to leave, 68 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. when turning round upon the class, with a face serious almost to anger, and a voice trembling with feeling, he said, " Yes, gentlemen! there is a God, omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal," as he vanished under the gal- lery into his room. Depend upon it, this single sentence made a deeper impression on his hearers than any more elaborate demonstration after the manner of Paley. The ardent old man did not linger among particulars, but passed at once, and with a sort of passionate fervor, to the full absolute assertion. Two examples of these brief lightnings, which at one flash " unfold both earth and heaven," occur to us now. Dr. Dick, in his System of Theology, at the close of his lecture on the Immensity and Omnipresence of the De- ity, pictures a man about to commit some great sin, as shutting himself in his room, or going into the depths of an unfrequented wood, so as to get absolutely by him- self, and then turning and looking and looking again to make sure- " let him turn and look again ! " And John Foster, in that intense bit of spiritual vivi- section, the Preface to Doddridge's Rise and Progress, when minuting the process of a step-by-step descent into the deepest meditative wickedness and impiety, the very " superfluity of naughtiness," represents the person as speaking his last thought aloud, and starting at his own voice, and his desperate sin, and then exclaiming, "If anyone were within hearing 1 " If anyone were within hearing! - as if some One had not all the while been within hearing. The following are a few quotations, taken at random, from Sydenham's various treatises and letters, in which we may see what he himself was as a practitioner, and wl at were his views as to the only way in which Medi sine, as an art, could be advanced. LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 69 In his Epistle to Dr. Mapletoft, prefixed to the Ob- servationes Medicce, his first publication, when he was forty-two years of age, he gives his friend a long and entertaining account of his early professional life, and thus proceeds: " Having returned to London, I began the practice of Medicine, which when I studied curiously with most intent eye (intento admodum oculo) and ut- most diligence, I came to this conviction, which to this day increases in strength, that our art is not to be better learned than by its exercise and use; and that it is likely in every case to prove true, that those who have directed their eyes and their mind, the most accurately and diligently, to the natural phenomena of diseases, will excel in eliciting and applying the true indications of cure. With this thread as my guide, I first applied my mind to a closer observation of fevers, and after no small amount of irksome waiting, and perplexing mental agi- tations, which I had to endure for several years, I at last fell upon a method by which, as I thought, they might be cured, which method I some time ago made public, at the urgent request of my friends." He then refers to the persecution and calumnies he had been exposed to from the profession, who looked upon him as a pestilent fellow, and a setter forth of strange doctrines; adopting the noble saying of Titus Tacitus in reply to Metellus : " Facile est in me dicere, cum non sim responsurus; tu didicisti maledicere; ego, conscientia teste, didici maledicta contemnere. Si tu linguae tuae dominus es, et quicquid lubet effutias; ego aurium mearum sum dominus, ut quicquid obvenerit audiant inoffensae."1 - It is easy to speak against me 1 Sydenham here quotes from memory, as Bacon, and many other tnen of that time, whose minds were full of the classics, often did, and 70 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. when I make no reply ; you have learned to speak evil; I, my conscience bearing me witness, have learned to despise evil speaking. You are master of your tongue, and can make it utter what you list; I am master of my ears, and can make them hear without being offended. And, after making the reference we have already mentioned, to his method having had the sanction and assistance of Locke, he thus concludes in regard to the ultimate success of his newly discovered way, - "As concerns the future, I cast the die, not overcareful how it may fall, for, since I am now no longer young, and have, by the blessing of the Almighty, a sufficient pro- vision for the remainder of my journey (tantum mihi est viatici, quantum restat vice), I will do my best to attain, without trouble to myself or others, that measure of happiness so beautifully depicted by Politian : - 'Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis, Quem non mendaci resplendens gloria fuco Sollicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus. Sed tacitos sinit ire dies, et paupere cultu Exigit innocuoe tranquilla silentia vitae.' " We shall now give more fully his peculiar views, and in order to render him due honor for originating and acting upon them, we must remember in the midst of what a mass of errors and prejudices, of theories actively mischievous, he was placed, at a time when the mania of hypothesis was at its height, and when the practical part of his art was overrun and stultified by vile and silly none of the commentators have discovered the exact passage. The remark is in Beyerlinck, Magn. Theatr. Vit. Human., tom. vi. page (>0, H. (Lugd. 1666, folio), referred to by Dr. Greenhill. It is as fob ,cws : "Tacitus Lucio Metello ei in Senatu maledicenti respondit. •Facile est in me dicere, quia non responsurus sum, potentia ergo tua non mea patientia est accusanda.' " Seneca r referred to by Beyer linck LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 71 nostrums. We must have all this- in our mind, or we shall fail in estimating the amount of independent thought, of courage and uprightness, and of all that de- serves to be called magnanimity and virtue, which was involved in his thinking and writing and acting as he lid. " The improvement of physic, in my opinion, depends ist, Upon collecting as genuine and natural a description or history of diseases as can be procured ; and, 2d, Upon laying down a fixed and complete method of cure. With regard to the history of diseases, whoever considers the undertaking deliberately will perceive that a few such particulars must be attended to: Is/, All diseases should be described as objects of natural history, with the same exactness as is done by botanists, for there are many diseases that come under the same genus and bear the same name, that, being specifically different, require a different treatment. The word carduus or thistle, is ap- plied to several herbs, and yet a botanist would be inac- curate and imperfect who would content himself with a generic description. Furthermore, when this distribu- tion of distempers into genera has been attempted, it has been to fit into some hypothesis, and hence this distri- bution is made to suit the bent of the author rather than the real nature of the disorder. How much this has ob- structed the improvement of physic any man may know. In writing, therefore, such a natural history of diseases, every merely philosophical hypothesis should be set aside, and the manifest and natural phenomena, how- ever minute, should be noted with the utmost exactness. The usefulness of this procedure cannot be easily ove'- rated, as compared with the subtle inquiries and trifling actions of modern writers; for car. there be a shorter, or 72 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. indeed any other way, of coming at the morbific causes; or of discovering the curative indications, than by a cer tain perception of the peculiar symptoms ? By these steps and helps it was that the father of physic, the great Hippocrates, came to excel; his theory (Oewpia) be- ing no more than an exact description or view of Nature. He found that Nature alone often terminates diseases, and works a cure with a few simple medicines, and often enough with no medicines at all. If only one person in every age had accurately described, and consistently cured, but a single disease, and made known his secret, physic would not be where it now is; but we have long since forsook the ancient method of cure, founded upon the knowledge of conjunct causes, insomuch that the art, as at this day practised, is rather the art of talking about diseases than of curing them. I make this digres- sion in order to assert, that the discovering and assigning of remote cau s, which nowadays so much engrosses the minds and feeds the vanity of curious inquirers, is an impossible attempt, and that only immediate and conjunct causes fall within the compass of our knowl- edge." Or as he elsewhere pithily states it: - " Cogni- tio nostra, in rerum cortice, omnis ferme versatur, ac ad to otl sive quod res hoc modo se habeat, fere tantum assurgit; to Slotl, sive rerum causas, nullatenus attingit." His friend Locke could not have stated the case more clearly or sensibly. It is this doctrine of "conjunct causes, this necessity for watching the action of com- nound and often opposing forces, and the having to do all this not in a machine, of which if you have seen one, you have seen all, but where each organism has often much that is different from, as well as common with aL others. Here you must mend your watch while it is go- LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 73 mg, you must shoot your game on the wing. It is this which takes medicine out of the category of exact sci- ences, and puts it into that which includes politics, ethics, navigation, and practical engineering, in all of which, though there are principles, and those principles quite within the scope of human reason, yet the application of these principles must, in the main, be left to each man' skill, presence of mind, and judgment, as to the case in hand. It is in medicine as in the piloting of a ship - rules may be laid down, principles expounded, charts exhib- ited ; but when a man has made himself master of all these, he will often find his ship among breakers and quicksands, and must at last have recourse to his own craft and courage. Gaubius, in his admirable chapter, De disciplind Medici, thus speaks of the reasonable cer- tainty of medicine as distinguished from the absolute certainty of the exact sciences, and at the same time gives a very just idea of the infinite (as far as concerns our limited powers of sense and judgment) multiplicity of the phenomena of disease : - " Nec vero sufficit med- icum communia modo intueri; oportet et cuivis homini vropria, quae quidem diversitas tarn immensa occurrit ut nulla observationum vi exhauriri possit. Sola denique contemplatione non licet acquiescere, inque obscuris rebus suspendere judicium, donee lux affulgeat. Actio- nem exigit officium. Captanda hinc agendi occasio, quee scepe prceceps, per conjecturam cogit determinare, quod per scientiam sat cito nequit. Audiant haac obtrectato- res, et cum didicerint scientias puras, ab iis quas ap- plicatas vocant, contemplativas a practicis, distinguere, videant quo jure mediemam prae aliis, ut omnis certi ex pertem, infament." 74 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. It would not be easy to put more important truth into clearer expression. Conjecture, in its good sense, as meaning the throwing together of a number of the ele- ments of judgment, and taking what upon the whole is the most likely, and acting accordingly, has, and will ever have, a main part to play in any art that concerns human nature, in its entireness and in action. When in obscure and dangerous places, we must not contemplate, we must act, it may be on the instant. This is what makes medicine so much more of an art than a science, and dependent so much more upon the agent than upon his instructions; and this it is that makes us so earnest in our cautions against the supposition that any amount of scientific truth, the most accurate and extensive, can in medicme supersede the necessity of the recipient of all this knowledge having, as Richard Baxter says, by nat- ure " a special sagacity, - a naturally searching and conjecturing turn of mind." Moreover, this faculty must be disciplined and exercised in its proper function, by being not a hearer only, but also a doer, an apprentice *s well as a student, and by being put under the tutor- age of a master who exercises as well as expounds his calling. This native gift and its appropriate object have been so justly, so beautifully described by Hartley Coleridge in his Life of Fothergill, that we cannot refrain from closing our remarks on this subject by quoting his words. Do our readers know his Biographia Borealis ? If they do, they will agree with us in placing it among the pleas- antest books in our language, just such a one as Plu- tarch, had he been an Englishman, would have written •- " There are certain inward gifts, more akin to genius than to talent, which make the physician prosper, and LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 75 deserve to prosper; for medicine is not like practical geometry, or the doctrine of projectiles, an application of an abstract, demonstrable science, in which a certain result may be infallibly drawn from certain data, or in which the disturbing forces may be calculated with sci- entific exactness. It is a tentative art, to succeed in which demands a quickness of eye, thought, tact, inven tion, which are not to be learned by study, nor, unless by connatural aptitude, to be acquired by experience; and it is the possession of this sense, exercised by a pa- tient observation, and fortified by a just reliance on the vis medicatrix, the self-adjusting tendency of nature, that constitutes the true physician or healer, as imagina- tion constitutes the poet, and brings it to pass, that some- times an old apothecary, not far removed from an old woman, and whose ordinary conversation savors, it may be, largely of twaddle, who can seldom give a rational account of a case or its treatment, acquires, and justly, a reputation for infallibility, while men of talent and erudition are admired and neglected ; the truth being, that there is a great deal that is mysterious in whatever is practical." But to return to our author. He was the first to point out what he called the varying " constitutions " of differ- ent years in relation to their respective epidemics, and the importance of watching the type of each new epi- demic before settling the means of cure. In none of his works is his philosophic spirit, and the subtlety and clearness of his understanding, shown more signally than in his successive histories of the epidemics of his time. Nothing equal to them has ever appeared since ; and the full importance of the principles he was the first to lay town, is only now beginning to be acknowledged. His 76 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. confession as to his entirely failing to discover what made one epidemic so to differ from another, has been amply confirmed by all succeeding observers. He says, - "I have carefully examined the different constitutions of different years as to the manifest qualities of the air, yet I must own I have hitherto made no progress, hav ing found that years, perfectly agreeing as to their tem- perature and other sensible properties, have produced very different tribes of diseases, and vice versa. The matter seems to stand thus: there are certain constitu- tions of years that owe their origin neither to heat, cold, dryness, nor moisture, but upon a certain secret and in- explicable alteration in the bowels of the earth, whence the air becomes impregnated with such kinds of effluvia as subject the human body to distempers of a certain specific type." As to the early treatment of a new epidemic, he says, - " My chief care, in the midst of so much darkness and ignorance, is to wait a little, and proceed very slowly, especially in the use of powerful remedies, in the mean- time observing its nature and procedure, and by what means the patient was relieved or injured ; " and he con- cludes by regretting the imperfection of his observations, and hoping that they will assist in beginning a work that, in his judgment, will greatly tend to the advantage of mankind. Had his successors followed in his track with equal sagacity and circumspection, our knowledge of these destructive and mysterious incursions of disease would, in all likelihood, have been greatly larger and more practical than it is now. Sydenham is well known to have effected a revolution in the management of the small-pox, and to have intro- duced a method of treatment upon which no materia* LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 77 improvement has since been made. We owe the cool regimen to him. Speaking of the propriety of attend- ing to the wishes of the sufferer, he says, with equal humanity and good sense, - "A person in a burning fever desires to drink freely of some small liquor; but the rules of art, built upon some hypothesis, having a lifferent design in view, thwart the desire, and instead hereof, order a cordial. In the mean time the patient, not being suffered to drink what he wishes, nauseates all kinds of food, but art commands him to eat. Another, after a long illness, begs hard, it may be, for some- thing odd, or questionable; here, again, impertinent art thwarts him and threatens him with death. How much more excellent the aphorism of Hippocrates - ' Such food as is most grateful, though not so wholesome, is to be preferred to that which is better, but distasteful.' Nor will this appear strange, if it be considered that the all-wise Creator has formed the whole with such exqui- site order, that, as all the evils of nature eminently con- spire to complete the harmony of the whole work, so every being is endowed with a Divine direction or in- stinct, which is interwoven with its proper essence, and hence the safety of mankind was provided for, who, not- withstanding all our doctoring, had been otherwise in c sad enough plight." Again - " He would be no honest tnd successful pilot who were to apply himself with less industry to avoid rocks and sands, and bring his vessel safely home, than to search into the causes of the ebbing and the flowing of the sea, which, though very well for a philosopher, is foreign to him whose business it is to secure the ship. So neither will a physician, whose province it is to cure diseases, be able to do so, though he be a person of great genius, who bestows less time 78 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. on the hidden and intricate method of nature, and adapt- ing his means thereto, than on curious and subtle specu- lations." The following is frank enough : - " Indeed, if I may- speak my mind freely, I have been long of opinion that I act the part of an honest man and a good physician as often as I refrain entirely from medicines, when, upon visiting the patient, I find him no worse to-day than he was yesterday ; whereas, if I attempt to cure the patient by a method of which I am uncertain, he will be endan- gered both by the experiment I am going to make on him and by the disease itself; nor will he so easily escape two dangers as one. " That practice, and that alone, will bring relief to the sufferer, which elicits the curative indications from the phenomena of the diseases themselves, and confirms them by experience, by which means the great Hippoc- rates made himself immortal. And had the art of med- icine been delivered by anyone in this wise, though the cure of a disease or two might come to be known to the common people, yet the art in its full extent would then have required men more prudent and skilful than it does now, nor would it lose any of its credit; for as there is in the operations of Nature (on the observa- tions of which a true medical praxis is founded) more of nicety and subtlety than can be found in any art sup- ported on the most specious hypotheses, so the science of Medicine which Nature teaches will exceed an ordi- nary capacity in a much greater degree than that which mere philosophy teaches." There is much profound truth in this. Observation in its strict sense, is not every man's gift, and but few men's actual habit of mind. Newton used to say, that LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 79 if in any one way he differed from other men, it was in his power of continued attention - of faithful, unbroken bservation ; his ladder had all its steps entire, and he went up with a composed, orderly foot. It requires more strength and fineness of mind, more of what de- serves to be called genius, to make a series of genuine bservations in Medicine, or any other art, than to spin ny amount of nice hypotheses, or build any number of castella in aeref as Sydenham calls them. The observ- er's object - and it is no mean one - is "To know what's what, and that's as high As Metaphysic wit can fly." Sydenham adds, " Nor will the publication of such observations diminish but rather increase the reputation of our art, which, being rendered more difficult, as well as more useful, only men of sagacity and keen sound Judgment would be admitted as physicians." How true to the sayings of his great master in his Novum Orga- num, "Nature is only subdued by submission." "The subtilty of nature is far beyond that of sense, or of the understanding, and the specious meditations and theories of mankind are but a kind of insanity, only there is no one to stand by and observe it! " There is a very re- markable passage in Sydenham's Treatise of the Dropsy, in which, after quoting this curious passage from Hip- pocrates, " Certain physicians and philosophers say that .t is impossible for any man to understand medicine without knowing the internal structure of man ; for my part, I think that what they have written or said of nat- ure pertains less to the medical than the pictorial art," he asserts not only his own strong conviction of the im- portance of a knowledge of minute anatomy to the prac- titiorer, but also his opinion that what Hippocrates 80 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. meant, was to caution against depending too much, on, and expecting too much help from, anatomical researches, to the superseding of the scrupulous observation of liv- ing phenomena, of successive actions.1 " For in all dis- eases, acute and chronic, it must be owned there is an inscrutable ti Oetov, a specific property which eludes the keenest anatomy." He then goes on to say, that as Hippocrates censured the abuse of anatomy, so in his own day, there were many who, in like manner, raised hopes for Physic from discoveries in Chemistry, which, in the nature of things, never could be realized, and which only served to dis- tract from the true Hippocratic method of induction; " for the chief deficiency of medicine is not a want of efficacious medicine. Whoever considers the matter thoroughly, will find that the principal defect on the 1 As far as the cure of diseases is concerned, Medicine has more to do with human Dynamics than Statics, for whatever be the essence of life - and as yet this ri Oeiov, this nescimus quid divinum, has defied all scrutiny - it is made known to us chiefly by certain activities or changes. It is the tendency at the present time of medical research to reverse this order. Morbid anatomy, microscopical investigations, though not confined to states or conditions of parts, must regard them fully more than actions and functions. This is probably what Stahl means when he says, " Ubi Physicus desinit, Medicus incipit; " and in the following passage of his rough Tudesque Latin, he plainly alludes .0 the tendency, in his day, to dwell too much upon the materials of the human body, without considering its actions "ut vivens." The passage is full of the subtilty and fire and depth of that wonderful man. "Undique hinc materice advertitur animus, et quae crassius in sensum impingit conformatio, et mutua proportio corporea considera- tur ; mutuum ordo, vis, et absoluta magis in materiam energia, tem- pora ejus, gradus, vices, maxime autem omnium, Jines obiter in ani- mm admittuntur." The human machine has been compared to a watch, and some hope that in due time doctors will be as good at the r craft as watchmakers are at theirs; but watchmakers are not cuLtc »n mend their work while it is going; this makes all the difference LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 81 part of physic proceeds, not from a scarcity of medicines to answer particular intentions, but from the want of lenowing the intentions to be answered, for an apotheca- ry's apprentice can tell me what medicine will purge, vomit, or sweat, or cool; but a man must be conversant with practice who is able to tell me when is the proper- est time for administering any of them." He is constantly inculcating the necessity of getting our diagnostic knowledge at first-hand, ridiculing those descriptions of disease which the manufacturers of " Bod- es of medicine," "Hand-books," and such like, make up in their studies, and which are oftener compositions than portraits, or at the best bad copies, and which the young student will find it hard enough to identify in real life. There is too much of this we fear still; and Montaigne, who rejoices in having a sly hit at his cro- nies the doctors, might still say with some reason, " Like him who paints the sea, rocks, and heavens, and draws the model of a ship as he sits safe at his table ; but send aim to sea, and he knows not how or where to steer ; so doctors oftentimes make such a description of our maladies as a town-crier does of a lost dog or donkey, of such a color and height, such ears, etc.; but bring the very animal before him, and he knows it not for all that" Everywhere our author acknowledges the vis medi- catrix natures, by which alone so many diseases are cured, and without or against which none, and by di- recting and helping which medicine best fulfils its end : "For I do not think it below me or my art to acknowl- edge, with respect to the cure of fevers and other dis- tempers, that when no manifest indication pointed out o me what should be done, I have consulted my pa- 82 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. tient's safety and my own reputation, most effectually, by doing nothing at olid But it is much to be lamented that abundance of patients are so ignorant as not to know, that it is sometimes as much the part of a skijful physician to do nothing, as at others to apply the most energetic remedies, whence they not only deprive them- selves of fair and honorable treatment, but impute it to ignorance or negligence." We conclude these extracts with a picturesque de- scription. It is a case of " the hysterics " in a man : - " I was called not long since to an ingenious gentleman who had recovered from a fever, but a few days before he had employed another physician, who blooded and purged him soundly, and forbade him the use of flesh. When I came I found him up, and heard him talking sensibly. I asked why I was sent for, to which one of his friends replied with a wink, Wait and you 'll see. Accordingly, sitting down and entering into discourse with the patient, I perceived his under lip was thrust outwards, and in frequent motion, as happens to peevish children, who pout before they cry, which was succeeded by the most violent fit of crying, with deep convulsive sobs. I conceived this was occasioned partly by his long illness, partly by the previous evacuations, and partly by emptiness ; I therefore ordered him a roast chicken, and a pint of Canary." Felix ille ! His shrewdness and humor are shown in the story Dr. Paris tells in his Pharmacologia. " This great physician, Sydenham, having long at- tended a gentleman of fortune with little or no advan- tage, frankly avowed his inability to render him any further service, adding at the same time, that there was a physician of the name of Robertson, at Inverness See note B. LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 83 *5 ho had distinguished himself by the performance of many remarkable cures of the same complaint as that under which his patient labored, and expressing a con- viction that, if he applied to him, he would come back cured. This was too encouraging a proposal to be re- jected ; the gentleman received from Sydenham a state- ment of his case, with the necessary letter of introduc- tion, and proceeded without delay to the place in question. On arriving at Inverness, and anxiously in- quiring for the residence of Dr. Robertson, he found to his utter dismay and disappointment that there was no physician of that name, nor ever had been in the mem- ory of any person there. The gentleman returned, vow- ing eternal hostility to the peace of Sydenham, and on his arrival at home, instantly expressed his indignation at having been sent on a journey of so many hundred miles for no purpose. ' Well,'replies Sydenham, ' are you better in health ? ' ' Yes, I am now quite well; but no thanks to you.' ' No,' says Sydenham, ' but you may thank Dr. Robertson for curing you. I wished to send you a journey with some object of interest in view ; I knew it would be of service to you ; in going, you had Dr. Robertson and his wonderful cures in con- templation ; and in returning, you were equally engaged in thinking of scolding me.' " In making these selections we have done our author great injustice, partly from having to give them either in Swan's translation or our own, and thereby losing much of the dignity and nerve - the flavor, or what artists would call the crispness of the original; partly also from our being obliged to exclude strictly profes- sional discussions, in which, as might be expected, his chief value and strength lie. 84 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM We know nothing in medical literature more finished than his letter to Dr. Cole on the hysterical passion, and his monograph of the gout. Well might Edward Hannes, the friend of Addison, in his verses on Syden- ham, thus sing: - " Sic te scientem non faciunt libri Et dogma pulchrum; sed sapientia Enata rebus, mensque facti Experiens, animusque felix." It would not be easy to over-estimate the permanent impression for good which the writings, the character, and the practice of Sydenham have made on the art of heal- ing in England, and on the Continent generally. In the writings of Boerhaave, Stahl, Gaubius, Pinel, Bordeu, Haller, and many others, he is spoken of as the father of rational medicine ; as the first man who applied to his profession the Baconian principles of interpreting and serving nature, and who never forgot the master's rule, " Non fingendum aut excogitandum, sed inveniendum, quid natura aut faciat aut ferat." He was what Plato would have called an " artsman" as distinguished from a doctor of abstract science. But he was by no means deficient in either the capacity or the relish for specula- tive truth. Like all men of a large practical nature, he could not have been what he was, or done what he did, without possessing and often exercising the true philoso- phizing faculty. He was a man of the same quality of mind in this respect with Watt, Franklin, and John Hunter, in whom speculation was not the less genuine that it was with them a means rather than an end. This distinction between the science, and the art or craft, or as it was often called the cunning of medicine, is one we have already insisted upon, and the importance LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 85 of which we consider very great, in the present condi- tion of this department of knowledge and practice. We are nowadays in danger of neglecting our art in master- ing our science, though medicine in its ultimate resort must always be more of an art than of a science. It be- ing the object of the student of physic to learn or know some thing or things, in order to be able safely, effectu- ally, and at once, to do some other thing; and inasmuch as human nature cannot contain more than its fill, a man may not only have in his head much scientific truth which is useless, but it may shut out and hinder and render altogether ineffectual, the active, practical work- manlike faculties, for whose use his knowledge was pri- marily got. It is the remark of a profound thinker, that all prof essional men labor under a great disadvan- tage in not being allowed to be ignorant of what is use- less ; every one fancies that he is bound to receive and transmit whatever is believed to have been known." " It appears to be possible," says Dr. Thomas Young, in his Life of Porson, " that a memory may in itself be even too retentive for real practical utility, as if of too microscopic a nature; and it seems to be by a wise and benevolent, though by no means an obvious, arrange- ment of a Creative Providence, that a certain degree of oblivion becomes a most useful instrument in the advance- ment of human knowledge, enabling us readily to look back on the prominent features only of various objects and occurrences, and to class them, and reason upon them, by the help of this involuntary kind of abstraction and generalization, with incomparably greater facility than we could do if we retained the whole detail of what had been once but slightly impressed on our minds. It s thus, for example, in physic, that the experienced 86 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. practitioner learns at length to despise the relation of individual symptoms and particular cases, on which alone the empiric insists, and to feel the value of the Hippocratic system of ' attending more to the prognos- tic than the diagnostic features of disease;' which, to a younger student, appears to be perfect imbecility." This subject of art and science is hinted at, with his usual sagacity, by Plato, in a singular passage in his Themtetus:-"Particulars," he says, "are infinite, and the higher generalities give no sufficient direction in medicine; but the pith of all sciences, that which makes the artsman differ from the inexpert, is in the middle prop- ositions, which, in every particular knowledge, are taken from tradition and inexperience."1 It would not be easy to convey in fewer words, more of what deserves the name of the philosophy of this entire subject, - and few things would be more for the advantage of the best interests of all arts and sciences, and all true progress in human knowledge and power, than the taking this passage and treating it exegetically, as a divine would say, - bringing out fully its meaning, and illustrating it by examples. Scientific truth is to the mind of a phy- 1 Being anxious to see what was the context of this remarkable passage, which Bacon quotes, as if verbatim, in his Advancement oj Learning, we hunted through the Theaetetus, but in vain. We set two friends, thoroughbred Grecians, upon the scent, but they could find no such passage. One of them then spoke to Sir William Hamilton, and he told him that he had marked that passage as not being a literal translation of any sentence in Plato's writings. He considered it a quotation from memory, and as giving the substance of a passage in the Philebus, which occurs in the 6th and 7th of the forty-two sections f that Dialogue. Perhaps the sentence which comes nearest to the words of Bacon is the last in the 6th section, beginning with the words ot pup riiiv avOpwLov Ta 5e petja awrous eKt^cvysc, of which he speaks, seem to be equivalent to "the middle propositions." LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 87 isician what food is to his body ; but, in order to his mind being nourished and growing by this food, it must be assimilated - it must undergo a vital internal change «- must be transformed, transmuted, and lose its original form. This destruction of former identity - this losing of itself in being received into the general mass of truth - is necessary in order to bring abstract truth into the condition of what Plato calls "the middle propositions," or, as Mr. Mill calls them, the generalia of knowledge.1 These are such truths, as have been appropriated, and vitally adopted, by the mind, and which, to use Bacon's strong words, have been " drenched in flesh and blood," have been turned " in succum et sanguinem ; " for man's mind cannot, any more than his body, live on mere ele- mentary substances; he must have fat, albumen, and sugar; he can make nothing of their elements, bare car- bon, azote, or hydrogen. And more than this, as we have said, he must digest and disintegrate his food be- 1 The following we give as a sort of abstract of a valuable chapter n Mill's Logic on "The Logic of Art: " -An art, or a body of art, 'nsists of rules, together with as much of the speculative propositions ns comprises the justification of those rules. Art selects and arranges the truths of science in the most convenient order for practice, instead of the order most convenient for thought - science following one cause to its various effects, while art traces one effect to its multiplied and diversified causes and conditions. There is need of a set of intermedi- ate scientific truths, derived from the higher generalities of science, and destined to serve as the gencralia or first principles of art. The art proposes for itself an end to be gained, defines the end, and hands it ver to science. Science receives it, studies it as a phenomenon or effect, ; tid having investigated its causes and conditions, sends it back to art, with a rationale of its cause or causes, but nothing more. Art then examines their combinations, and according as any of them are or are not in human power, or within the scope of its particular end, pro- nounces upon their utility, and forms a rule of action. The rules of art do Bot attempt to comprise more conditions than require to be at- ended to in ordinary cases, and therefore are always imperfect. 88 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. fore it can be of any use to him. In this view, as in another and a higher, we may use the sacred words, -• " That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die; except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit; " for as it is a law of vegetable life, that a seed does not begin to pass into a new form, does not be- gin to grow into a plant, until its own nature is changed, and its original condition is broken up, until it " dies " in giving birth to something better, - so is it with scien- tific truth, taken into or planted in the mind, - it must die, else it abides alone - it does not germinate. Had Plato lived now, he might well have said, "par- ticulars are infinite." Facts, as such, are merely so many units, and are often rather an encumbrance to the practical man than otherwise. These " middle prop- ositions " stand mid-way between the facts in their in- finity and speculative truth in its abstract inertness; they take from both what they need, and they form a tertium quid, upon which the mind can act practically, and reason upon in practice, and form rules of action.1 1 Locke thus puts it: - "As a help to this, I think it may be pro- posed that, for the saving the long progression of the thoughts to re- mote and first principles in every case, the mind should provide itself several stages; that is to say, intermediate principles, which it might have recourse to in the examining those positions that come in its way. These, though they are not self-evident principles, yet if they have been made out from them by a wary and unquestionable deduction, may be depended on as certain and infallible truths, and serve as un- questionable truths to prove other points depending on them by a nearer and shorter view than remote and general maxims. These may serve as landmarks to show what lies in the direct way of truth, or is quite besides it. . . . Only in other sciences great care is to be taken that they establish those intermediate principles with as much caution exactness, and indifferency, as mathematicians use in the settling any )f their great theorems. When this is not done but men take vp th« LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 89 Sydenham, Hippocrates, Abernethy, Pott, Hunter, Bail- lie, Abercrombie, and such like, among physicians, are great in the region of the " middle propositions." They selected their particulars - their instances, and they made their higher generalities come down, they appropriated them, and turned them into blood, bone, and sinew. The great problem in the education of young men for the practice of medicine in our times, is to know how to make the infinity of particulars, the prodigious treas- ures of mere science, available for practice - how the art may keep pace with, and take the maximum of good out of the science. We have often thought that the ap- prenticeship system is going too much into disrepute. It had its manifest and great evils ; but there was much good got by it that is not to be got in any other way. The personal authority and attachment, the imitation of their master - the watching his doings, and picking up the odds and ends of his experience - the coming under the influence of his mind, following in his steps, looking with his eyes, and unconsciously accumulating a stock of knowledge, multifarious it might be, the good of which was not fully known till after-years explained and con- firmed its worth. There were other practical things besides jokes learned and executed in the apprentices' room, and there were the friendships for life, on which so much, not merely of the comfort, but the progress, of a physician depends. Now, everything, at least most, is done in public, in classes ; and it is necessarily with principles in this or that science upon credit, inclination, interest, etc., in haste, without due examination and most unquestionable proof, they lay a trap for themselves, and as mucn as in them lies captivate their understandings to mistake, falsehood, and error."- Of ike Con- duct of the Understanding, pp. 53, 54. London 1859. 90 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. the names of things rather than the things themselves, or their management, that the young men have chiefly to do. The memory1 is exercised more than the senses or the judgment; and when the examination comes, as a matter of course the student returns back to his teacher as much as possible of what he has received from him, and as much as possible in his very words. He goes over innumerable names. There is little opportunity even in anatomy for testing his power or his skill as a workman, as an independent observer and judge, under what Sir James Clark justly calls " the demoralizing system of cramming." He repeats what is already known; he is not able to say how all or any of this knowledge may be turned to practical account. Epictetus cleverly illustrates this very system and its fruits : " As if sheep, 1 Professor Syme, in his Letter to Sir James Graham on the Med- ical Bill, in which, in twelve pages, he puts the whole of this tiresome question on its true footing, makes these weighty observations: - "As a teacher of nearly twenty-five years' standing, and well ac- quainted with the dispositions, habits, and powers of medical students, I beg to remark, that the system of repeated examinations on the same subject by different Boards, especially if protracted beyond the age of twenty-two, is greatly opposed to the acquisition of sound and useful knowledge. Medicine, throughout all its departments, is a science of observation; memory alone, however retentive, or diligently assisted by teaching, is unable to afford the qualifications for practice, and it is only by digesting the facts learned, through reflection, com- parison, and personal research, that they can be appropriated with im- proving effect; but when the mind is loaded with the minutiae of ele- mentary medical and collateral study, it is incapable of the intense and devoted attention essential to attaining any approach to excellence in practical medicine and surgery. It has accordingly always ap- peared to me, that the character of medical men depends less upon what passes during the period even of studentship than upon the mode in which they spend the next years, when, their trials and examina tioYis being over the whole strength of a young and disciplined intel ect may be preparing itself for the business of life." LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 91 after they have been feeding, should present their shep- herds with the very grass itsef which they had cropped and swallowed, to show how much they had eaten, instead of concocting it into wool and milky Men of the " middle propositions " are not clever, glib expounders of their reasons ; they prefer doing a thing to speaking about it, or how it may be done. We remember hearing a young doctor relate how, on one occasion when a student, he met with the late Dr. Aber- crombie, when visiting a man who was laboring under what was considered malignant disease of the stomach. He was present when that excellent man first saw the patient along with his regular attendant. The doctor walked into the room in his odd, rapid, indifferent way, which many must recollect; scrutinized all the curiosities on the mantelpiece; and then, as if by chance, found himself at his patient's bedside ; but when there his eye settled upon him intensely ; his whole mind was busily at work. He asked a few plain questions ; spoke with great kindness, but briefly; and coming back to consult, he said, to the astonishment of the surgeon and the young student, " The mischief is all in the brain, the stomach is affected merely through it. The case will do no good; he will get blind and convulsed, and die." He then, in his considerate, simple way, went over what might be done to palliate suffering and prolong life. He was right. The man died as he said, and on exam- ination the brain was found softened, the stomach sound. The young student, who was intimate with Dr. Aber- crombie, ventured to ask him what it was in the look of the man that made him know at once. " I can't tell you, I can hardly tell myself; but I rest with confidence upon the exactness and honesty of my past observations 92 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. I remember the result, and act upon it; but I can't put you, or, without infinite trouble, myself, in possession of all the steps." " But would it not be a great saving if you could tell others?" said the young doctor. "It would be no such thing ; it would be the worst thing that could happen to you ; you would not know how to use it. You must follow in the same road, and you will get as far, and much farther. You must miss often before you hit. You can't tell a man how to hit; you may tell him what to aim at." " Was it something in the eye ? " said his inveterate querist. " Perhaps it was," he said good-naturedly; " but don't you go and blister every man's occiput, whose eyes are, as you think, like his." 1 It would be well for the community, and for the real good of the profession, if the ripe experience, the occa- sional observations of such men as Sydenham and Aber- crombie, formed the main amount of medical books, in- stead of Vade-Mecums, Compendiums, and Systems, on 1 This is very clearly stated by Dr. Mandeville, the acute and no- torious author of the Fable of the Bees, in his Dialogues on the Hypo- chondria, one of his best works, as full of good sense and learning as of wit. " If you please to consider that there are no words in any language for an hundredth part of all the minute differences that are obvious to the skilful, you will soon find that a man may know a thing perfectly well, and at the same time not be able to tell you why or how he knows it. The practical knowledge of a physician, or at least the most considerable part of it, is the result of a large collection of obser- vations that have been made on the minutiae of things in human bodies in health ami sickness; but likewise there are such changes and differ- ences in these minutiae as no language can express: and when a man has no other reason for what he does than the judgment he has formed from such observations, it is impossible he can give you the one without the other-that is, he can never explain his reasons to you, unless he could communicate to you that collection of observations of which hi. /kill is the product." LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 93 the one hand, and the ardent but unripe lucubrations of very young men. It is said that facts are what we want, and every pe- riodical is filled with papers by very young physicians made up of practical facts. What is fact? we would ask; and are not many of our new facts little else than the opinions of the writers about certain phenomena, the reality, and assuredly the importance of which, is by no means made out so strongly as the opinions about them are stated?1 In this intensely scientific age, we need some wise heads to tell us what not to learn or to un- learn, fully as much as what to learn. Let us by all means avail ourselves of the unmatched advantages of modern science, and of the discoveries which every day is multiplying with a rapidity which confounds; let us convey into, and carry in our heads as much as we safely can, of new knowledge from Chemistry, Statistics, the Microscope, the Stethoscope, and all new helps and methods; but let us go on with the old serious diligence, - the experientia as well as the experimenta - the forg- ing and directing, and qualifying the mind as well as the furnishing, informing, and what is called accomplishing it. Let us, in the midst of all the wealth pouring in from without, keep our senses and our understandings well exercised on immediate work. Let us look with our own eyes, and feel with our own fingers.2 1 Louis, in the preface to the first edition of his Researches on Phthisis, says - "Few persons are free from delusive mental tenden- cies, especially in youth, interfering with true observation ; and I am »f opinion that, generally speaking, we ought te place less reliance on cases collected by very young men • and, above all, not intrust the task f accumulating facts to them exclusively. " 2 We all know Cullen's pithy saying, that there are more false facts than theories in medicine. In his Treatise on the Materia Medica, which was given to the world when its author was in his seventy- 94 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. One natural consequence of the predominance in our days of the merely scientific element is, that the elder seventh year, we came upon the full statement of the many mistakes and untruths which are drawn from "false experience." These he iivides into eight classes : - Isi, In respect to those supposed remedies, which, from their nature, and their being placed at a distance from the human body, cannot be supposed to have any action upon it. Such are charms, inodorous amulets, sympathetic powders, etc. 2d, Another instance of false experience is with respect to the vir- tues imputed to substances which, when taken into the body, pass through it unchanged, such as mountain crystal, gems, and precious stones, which formerly had a place in our dispensatories. 3d, Whenever to substances obviously inert, or such as have little power of changing the human body, we find considerable effects im- puted. Thus when the excellent Linnseus tells us he preserved him- self from gout by eating every year plentifully of strawberries ! (Here we suspect the Swede was wiser and righter than the Scot.) 4th, When medicines are said to cure what we have no evidence ever existed. As when Dr. Boerhaave says certain medicines correct an atrabilis, a condition he nowhere proves the existence of. The 5th refers to solvents of the stone taken by the mouth,.to many emmenagogues and diuretics. The 6th, where effects that do really take place are imputed to medi- cines employed, when they are due to the spontaneous operations of the animal economy, or of nature, as we commonly speak; and he in- stances the vegetables mentioned in the Materia Medica as Vulnera- ries. The Tth and 8th are instances of false experience from mistakes con- cerning the real nature of the disease treated, and of the drug em- ployed. It is curious to us who are seventy years older, and it may be wiser (in the main) to note how permanently true much of this still is, and how oddly and significantly illustrative of the very fallacies classified by himself, is the little that is not true. Then follows what we had chiefly in view in this quotation. Dr. Cullen, after stating that these false experiences of writers upon the Materia Medica were mistakes of judgment, and not made under any consciousness of falsehood, reprobates with much severity the manu- facture of facts in medicine, which have, for reasons of various kinds, oeen obtruded on the public by persons aware of their being false, or Miich, at least, they have never proved to be true ; and he ends with this remarkable statement, the moral of which is not peculiar to 1789 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 95 too much serves the younger. The young man teaches and talks, and the old man learns and is mute.1 This is excellent when it is confined to the statement of dis- covery, or the constantly evolving laws of knowledge, or of matter. But the young men have now almost the whole field to themselves. Chemistry and Physiology iave become, to all men above forty, impossible sciences ; hey dare not meddle with them; and they keep back from giving to the profession their own personal experi- ence in matters of practice, from the feeling that much of their science is out of date; and the consequence is, that, even in matters of practice, the young men are in possession of the field. Fruit is pleasantest and every way best when it is ripe; and practical observations, to be worth anything, must be more of a fruit than a blos- som, and need not be plucked when green. " Plutarch," says old Heberden, " has told us that the life of a vestal virgin was divided into three portions: in the first she learned the duties of her profession, in the second she practised them, and in the third she taught them to others." This he maintained, and we cordially agree with him, was no bad model for the life of a physician, and he followed it himself, as shown by his motto prefixed to his Classical Commentaries, -- Tepinv Kai Kapvetv ovkItl Swapevos, tovto to ^l(3Xlov eypaipa. - " This leads me to observe, that a very fertile source of false facta has been opened for some time past. There is in some young phy- sicians the vanity of being the authors of observations, which are often too hastily made, and sometimes perhaps entirely dressed in the doset. We dare not at present be too particular, but the next age will discern many instances of perhaps the direct falsehoods, and certainly Tie many mistakes in fact, produced in the present age concerning the powers and virtues of medicine." - Treatise on the Materia Medica, -hap. ii. article iv. pp. 142-153. 1 See Note C. 96 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. George filius may explain to the admiring George vater, the merits and arcana of his Prichett rifle, or his Deane and Adams' revolver, - any scientific improve- ment the youngster may teach his " governor," but don't let him go further, and take to giving him instructions in the art of finding and bagging his game. This is ex- actly where we are so apt to go wrong in medicine, as well as in fowling. Let it not be supposed that we despair of Medicine gaining the full benefit of the general advance in knowl- edge and usefulness. Far from it. We believe there is more of exact diagnosis, of intelligent, effectual treat- ment of disease, - that there are wider views of princi- ples - directer, ampler methods of discovery, at this moment in Britain than at any former time; and we have no doubt that the augmentation is still proceeding, and will defy all calculation. But we are likewise of opinion, that the office of a physician, in the highest sense, will become fully more difficult than before, will require a greater compass and energy of mind, as work- ing in a wider field, and using finer weapons; and that there never was more necessity for making every effort to strengthen and clarify the judgment and the senses by inward discipline, and by outward exercise, than when the importance and the multitude of the objects of which they must be cognizant are so infinitely increased. The middle propositions must be attended to, and filled up as the particulars and the higher generalities crowd in. It would be out of place in a paper so desultory as the present, to enter at large upon the subjects now hinted at-the education of a physician - the degree of certainty in medicine - its progress and prospects and the beneficial effects it may reasonably expect front LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 97 the advance of the purer sciences. But we are not more firmly persuaded of anything than of the importance of such an inquiry, made largely, liberally, and strictly, by a man at once deep, truthful, knowing, and clear. How are we to secure for the art of discerning, curing, and preventing disease, the maximum of good and the min- imum of mischief, in availing ourselves of the newes1 discoveries in human knowledge ? To any one wishing to look into this most interesting, and at the present time, vital question, we would recom- mend a paper by Dr. Sellar, admirable equally in sub- stance and in expression, entitled, " On the Signification of Fact in Medicine, and on the hurtful effects of the incautious use of such modern sources of fact as the microscope, the stethoscope, chemical analysis, statistics, etc.; " it may be found in No. 177 of the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. We merely give a sam- ple or two, in which our readers will find, in better words, much of what we have already asserted. " Med- icine still is, and must continue for ages to be, an em- pirico-rationalism." " A sober thinker can hardly ven- ture to look forward to such an advanced state of chem- ical rationalism as would be sufficient for pronouncing a priori that sulphur would cure scabies, iodine goitre, citric acid the scurvy, or carbonate of iron neuralgia." " Chemistry promises to be of immediate service in the practice of medicine, not so much by offering us a rational chemical pathology, but by enlarging the sources from which our empirical rules are to be drawn." Here we have our "middle propositions." "The great bulk of practical medical knowledge is obviously the fruit of individual minds, naturally gifted for excellence in medi- cine ; " - but the whole paper deserves serious continu- 98 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. ous study. We would also, in spite of some ultraisms in thought and language, the overflowings of a more than ordinarily strong, and ardent, and honest mind, recommend heartily the papers of Dr. Forbes, which appeared at the close of the British and Foreign Medica* Review, in which he has, with what we cannot call else or less than magnanimity, spoken so much wholesome, though, it may be, unpalatable truth: and finally, we would send every inquiring student who wishes to know how to think and how to speak on this subject at once with power, clearness, and compactness, and be both witty and wise, to Dr. Latham's little three volumes on Clinical Medicine. The first two lectures in the earliest volume are " lion's marrow," the very pith of sense and sound-mindedness. We give a morsel - " The medical men of England do and will continue to keep pace with the age in which they live, however rapidly it may ad- vance. I wish to see physicians still instituted in the same discipline, and still reared in fellowship and com- munion with the wisest and best of men, and that not for the sake of what is ornamental merely, and becoming to their character, but because I am persuaded that that discipline which renders the mind most capacious of wis- dom and most capable of virtue, can hold the torch and light the path to the sublimest discoveries in every sci- ence. It was the same discipline which contributed tc form the minds of Newton and of Locke, of Harvey and of Sydenham." He makes the following beautiful remark in leading his pupils into the wards of St. Bartholomew's : - "In entering this place, even this vast hospital, where there is many a significant, many a wonderful thing, you shall take me along with you, and I will be your guide. But LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 99 it is by your own eyes, and your ears and your own minds, and (I may add) by your own hearts, that you must observe, and learn, and profit. I can only point to the objects, and say little else than ' See here and set there.' " This is the great secret, the coming to close quarters with your object, having immediate, not mediate cogni- zance of the materials of study, apprehending first, and then doing your best to comprehend. For, to adapt Bacon's illustration, which no one need ever weary ol giving or receiving, - a good practical physician is more akin to the working-bee than to the spider or the ant. Instead of spinning, like the schoolmen of old, endless webs of speculation out of their own bowels, in which they were themselves afterwards as frequently caught and destroyed as any one else, or hoarding up, grain af- ter grain, the knowledge of other men, and thus becom ing "a very dungeon of learning," in which (Hibernice) they lose at once themselves and their aim - they should rather be like the brisk and public-hearted bee, who, by divine instinct, her own industry, and the accuracy oi her instrument, gathers honey from all flowers. " For- mica colligit et utitur, ut faciunt empirici; aranea ex se fila educit neque a particularibus materiam petit; apis denique cseteris se melius gerit, hasc indigesta a floribus mella colligit, deinde in viscerum cellulas concocta ma turat, iisdem tandem insudat donee ad integram perfee tionem perduxerit." We had intended giving some account of the bear- ing that the general enlightenment of the community has upon Medicine, and especially of the value of the labors uf such men as Dr. Andrew Combe, Dr. Henry Mar shall, Sir James Clark, and others, in the collateral sub 100 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. jects leading into, and auxiliary to, pure Medicine, - but we have no space to do them any measure of justice. The full importance, and the full possibility of the pre- vention of disease - in all its manifold, civil, moral, and personal bearings, - is not yet by any means adequately acknowledged; there are few things oftener said, or less tearched into, than that prevention is better than cure. Let not our young and eager doctors be scandalized at our views as to the comparative uncertainty of medi- cine as a science: such has been the opinion of the wis- est and most successful masters of the craft. Radcliffe used to say, that " when young, he had fifty remedies for every disease; and when old, one remedy for fifty diseases." Dr. James Gregory said, " Young men kill their patients; old men let them die." Gaubius says, " Equidem candide dicam, plura me indies, dum in artis usu versor, dediscere quam discere, et in crescente aetate, minui potius quam augeri, scientiam," meaning by li sci- entia" an abstract systematic knowledge. And Bordeu gives as the remark of an old physician, " J'etois dogma- tique a vingt ans, observateur a trente, a quarante je fus empirique; je n'ai point de systeme a cinquante." And he adds, in reference to how far a medical man must personally know the sciences that contributed to his art, - "Iphicrates, the Athenian general, was hard pressed by an orator before the people, to say what he was, to be so proud: ' Are you a soldier, a captain, an engi- neer : a spy, a pioneer, a sapper, a miner?' 'No,' says Iphicrates, ' I am none of these, but I command them all.' So if one asks me, Are you an empiric, a dogma- tist, an observer, an anatomist, a chemist, a microscopist ? I answer, No, but I am captain of them all." And to conclude these desultory notes in the opening LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 101 words of the Historia Vitce et Mortis, - " Speramus enini et cupimus futurum, ut id plurimorum bono fiat; atque ut medici nobiliores animos nonnihil erigant, neque toti sint in curarum sordibus, neque solum pro necessitate honorentur, sed fiant demum omnipotentice et elementice divines administri." " Etsi enim," as he pa- thetically adds, " nos Christian! ad terram promissionis oerpetuo aspiremus et anhelemus; tamen interim itine- rantibus nobis, in hac mundi eremo, etiam calceos istos et tegmina (corporis scilicet nostri fragilis) quam mini- mum atteri, erit signum divini favoris." 1 We have left ourselves no space to notice Dr. Green- hill's collected edition of Sydenham's Latin works- It is everything that the best sholarship, accuracy, and judgment could make it. We regret we cannot say so much for Dr. R. G. Latham's translation and Life. The first is inferior as a whole to Swan's, and in parts to Pechey's and Wallis's: and the Life, which might have contained so much that is new, valuable, and entertain- ing, is treated with a curious infelicity and clumsiness, that is altogether one of the oddest, most gauche and limping bits of composition we ever remember having met with; and adds another to the many instances to which Bishop Lowth and Cobbett are exceptions, of a grammarian writing, if not ungrammatically, at least 1 " For it is our earnest hope and desire, that the efficacy of medi- cine may be infinitely increased, and that physicians may bear them- selves more erect and nobly, and not be wholly taken up with sordid gains and cares, not be honored from necessity alone, but may at length become the executors of Divine omnipotence and mercy ; for though we who are Christians do without ceasing long for, and pant after, the land of promise, we cannot fail to regard it as a token of the favor of God, when, as we travel through this wilderness of the world, these shoes and garments of our frail bodies are rendered, as little as may be, subject to decay." 102 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. without elegance, and occasionally without clearness. It is one thing to know, and often quite another to do, the right thing. We cannot close these notices of Sydenham without thanking Dr. Latham for printing in the Appendix to his second volume, the manuscript preserved in the pub- lic library of the University of Cambridge, and referred to in the Biographia Britannica, under Sydenham's name. Dr. Latham states that it is in a more modern handwriting than that of the author's time, and is headed Theologia Rationalis, by Dr. Thomas Sydenham. This is all that is known, but we think it bears strong inter- nal evidence of being authentic. The following note upon it, by a kind friend,1 who is well able to judge, gives a just estimate of this remarkable relic: - " I have looked with much interest over the fragment you point out in Sydenham's works. I think it is quite misnamed. It should be Ethica Rationalis, or Naturalis, since its avowed aim is not to examine closely the foun- dations of natural theology, but rather ' the question is, how far the light of Nature, if closely adverted to, may be extended toward the making of good men? This question is closely pursued throughout, and leads to the result that there is an order in man's nature, which leads to a threefold set of obligations, according to the com- mon division, - towards God, society, and one's-self. This is the plan according to which the fragment is blocked out. The perfections and providence of God are discussed solely as laying a foundation for man's duties; and these, - adoration, prayer, submission, confession of sin - are summed up in pages 312, 313. Next fol 1 Rev. Jolin Cairns, D. D. LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 103 ow the duties to society, very speedily despatched; and those to self discussed more at length, such as temper- nce, truth, modesty, prudent enjoyment in subservience to reason. With the same ethical aim the question of !mmortality is discussed, solely as a help to virtue and to the predominance of reason. In arguing this from mmateriality, the author is entangled in the usual diffi- ulty about the souls of the brutes, but escapes by the Jartesian denial of their true thinking power ; and more satisfactorily by urging the sentimental argument from men's desire of immortality, and the more strictly moral one, from unequal retribution. All this, I think, bears out the view I have taken. There is not, perhaps, so much originality in the views of the author as general soundness and loftiness of moral tone, with that fine power of illustration which you have noticed. I agree with you in seeing much of the spirit both of Locke and Butler: of Locke, in the spirit of observation and geni- ality ; of Butler, in the clear utterances as to the su- premacy of reason, and the necessity of living according to our true nature, not to speak of other agreements in detail. I think the paper well deserves a cordial recog- nition, though it hardly reaches out, perhaps in any one direction, beyond the orthodox ethics of the seventeenth century." We give at random some extracts from the Theologia Rationalis: - " Nor indeed can I entertain any thoughts more derogatory from the majesty of this Divine Being, than not supposing him to be a free agent; but having mice put all his works out of his own hands, to be con- iluded within the limits of his own establishm* - hath determined irrational beings to act in some uniform course, suitable to the good of themselves and the 104 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. whole. And tho' he hath set up certain lights in intel- lectual natures, whch may direct them to pursue ends suitable to their natures, yet having given these a lib- erty of will incident to the very nature of reasonable beings, he retains his power of inclining or not inclin- ing such intellectual natures to pursue courses leading to their welfare." " Also, from the same consideration (the excellence of my mind above my body) it is that I am neither to thinke, speake, or act anything that is indecorous or dis- gracefull to this Divine inmate, whose excellency above my body Nature hath tacitly pointed out, by impressing upon me a vereciindia, or being ashamed of many ac- tions of my body, wch therefore I hide from those of my own species. But now, forasmuch as I consist likewise of a body wch is submitted to the same conditions with other animals, of being nourished and propagating my kind, and, likewise, wch wants many other conveniences of clothing, housing, and the like, which their nature re- quires not; all those likewise are to be respected by me, according to my several wants; but still with a subser- vience to my reason, which is my superior part, and acts flowing from the same, my chiefest business ; as an em- bassador who is sent into a foreign country, is not sent to eat and to drink, tho' he is enforced to do both." " When I consider that the infinite Governour of the universe hath so made me, that in my intellect I have some small glympses of his being, whilst I can n't but ap- prehend that immensity of power and wisdom wch is in him, and doth appear in whatsoever I see, and this I must apprehend, even if I endeavour not to do it, it being closely riveted, and as it were co-essential to my natuie; or if I have gotten of it by hearsay onely, it being so LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 105 fitted to my nature, that I must needs believe it, wch two make up the same thing. Now how can I think that this Divine Being, that hath admitted me to this little acquaintance wth him, will let the laying down of my body perfectly break off this acquaintance, and not rather that the throwing of this load of corruption will put my soul into a condition more suitable to its own nature, it being much more difficult to think how such a noble substance as the soul should be united to the body, than how it should subsist separately from it. But add to this, that I have not only faculties of knowing this Divine Being, but in complyance with him, I have adored him with all the attention I could screw up my heavy mind unto, and have endeavoured to yield obedi- ence to those lawes wch he hath written upon my nat- ure ; that I who have done this (supposing that 1 have done it), should extinguish when my body dies, is yet more unlikely. Moreover I consider that this Maker of the universe hath brought his ends so together, that he hath implanted no affections upon the meanest ani- mal, but hath made objects to answer them ; as he that hath made the eye hath made colours, and he that hath made the organs of hearing hath likewise made sounds, and so of an infinite number of other affections, not only in animals, but even in those natures inferior to them all, wch have objects suited to them ; and if they had not, there would be a flaw even in the constitution of the universe, wch can't be charged upon the infinitely wise Creator. But now that there should be found in man- kind a certain appetite or reaching out after a future hap- p'ness, and that there should be no such thing to answer 1c it, but that this cheat should be put upon the rational part of man, wch is the highest nature in the globe where we live, is to me very improbable." 106 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. We subjoin, with Mr. Black's kind permission, a por- tion of the Life of Sydenham, in the last edition of his admirable Encyclopaedia ; it contains, I believe, all the old and some new facts : - " Sydenham, Thomas - the greatest name in Eng- lish practical medicine - was born in 1624 at Winford Eagle, Dorsetshire, where his father, William Syden- ham, had a fine estate. He was a commoner of Mag- dalen Hall, Oxford, 1642, but was obliged to leave that city when it became a royal garrison, not having taken up arms for the king, as the students of those days gen erally did. In 1649, after the garrison delivered up Oxford to the Parliamentary forces, he returned to Magdalen Hall, and was created Bachelor of Physic on the Pembrokean creation, when Lord Pembroke became Chancellor of the University, and honorary degrees were conferred. This was in April 1648. He had not previously taken any degree in arts. He then, on sub- mitting to the authority of the visitors appointed by the Parliament, was made by them (at the intercession of a relative) Fellow of All Souls, in the room of one of the many ejected Royalists. He continued for some years earnestly prosecuting his profession, and left Oxford without taking any other degree. He was also, accord- ing to his own account, in a letter to Dr. Gould, fellow- commoner of Wadham College in the year Oxford sur- rendered. It is not easy to understand why he went to Wadham, as he was not a fellow but a fellow-commoner •- equivalent to a gentleman-commoner in Cambridge •- unless it was that, on returning to Magdalen Hall he found himself, as a Parliamentarian, more at home m Wadham - where the then head was John Wilkins, Cromwell's brother-in-law - a. man of genius and of a LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 107 keen scientific spirit, and afterwards and still famous as Bishop of Chester - one of the founders of the Royal Society, which first met at Oxford; and author, among other works, of a discourse on a Universal Language and of an Inquiry as to the best Way of Travelling to the Moon ; a man of rare parts and worth, and of a liberal- ity in religion and science then still rarer, being, accord- ing to Anthony Wood,an "excellent mathematician and experimentist, and one as well seen in the new philoso- phy as any of his time; such a man would be sure to cordialize with Sydenham, who was of the Baconian or genuine Empiric school; and who, in the ' new philos- ophy,' saw the day-spring of all true scientific progress. It is not clear when Sydenham settled in London, or more properly speaking in Westminster; it certainly was before 1661. In 1663 he was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London, he never was a fellow; his degree of doctor of medicine was taken at Cambridge in 1676, long after he was in full practice, his college being Pembroke ; his diploma is signed by Isaac Barrow. His reason probably for taking a Cam- bridge degree may have been that his eldest son was a pensioner at that college. " Sydenham's elder brother, William, was a distin- guished soldier and politician during the Commonwealth. This, along with his own likings, and his love of the new philosophy, prevented him during the reigns of the second Charles and James, from enjoying court favour. It has often been doubted whether Sydenham actually served in the army of the Parliament; but from an anecdote known generally as Dr. Lettsom's, but which appears first in a curious old controversial book by Dr. Andrew Brown, the Vindicatory Schedule, published 108 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM- two years after Sydenham's death, it is made quite cer- tain that he did. " Before settling in London he seems, on the authority of Desault, to have visited Montpellier, and to have at- tended the lectures of the famous Barbeyrac. After this he devoted himself to his profession, and became the greatest physician of his time, in spite of the court, and of the College of Physicians; by one of whose fel- lows - Lister - he was called ' a miserable quack.' He suffered for many of the later years of his life from the gout, his description of which has become classical, and died in his house, Pall-Mall - or as he spells it, Pell-Mell - in 1689. He lies buried in St. James's, Westminster, with the following noble because true in- scription : - ' Prope hunc locum sepultus est Thomas Sydenham, medicus in omne avum, nobilis, natus erat A. d. 1624: vixit annos 65.' His works, which be- came rapidly popular during his lifetime, and to an extraordinary extent soon after his death - there were upwards of twenty-five editions in less than a hundred years - consist chiefly of occasional pieces, extorted from him by his friends, and often in the form of let- ters ; none of them are formal treatises, and all are plainly the result of his own immediate reflection and experience. One is greatly struck at the place he oc- cupies in the writings of all the great medical authors at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. Morton, Willis, Boerhaave, Gau- bius, Bordeu, etc., always speak of him as second in sagacity to ' the divine Hippocrates ' alone. Boerhaave never mentioned him in his class without lifting his hat, xnd called him Anglia lumen, artis Phoebum, veram Hip pocratici viri speciem. His simple, mnnly views of the LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 109 nature and means of medicine as an art seem to have come upon the profession like revelations; it was as if the men in Plato's cavern, who had been all their lives with their backs to the light, studying their own shad- ows, had suddenly turned round and gazed on the broad face of the outer world, lying in sunshine before them. "All Sydenham's works are in Latin, and though from his education and tastes, and the habits of his time, and also from the composition of the Processus Integri - brief notes left by him for his sons' use, and published after his death - there is little doubt he could have written them in that tongue, there seems every likeli- hood that he was assisted in doing so by his friends Drs Mapletoft and Havers. There are three English trans- lations- one by Dr. Pechey, another by Dr. Swan, to which is prefixed a life by Samuel Johnson, among his earliest performances, and published by Cave, and the last, the Sydenham Society's edition, by Dr. Latham." The following hitherto unpublished letters I had the good fortune to find in the British Museum. The first must have been written two months later than the one quoted at page 50, and refers to the same subjects: - LETTER EROM JOHN LOCKE TO DR. MAPLETOFT. Paris, 9tA Aug. 1677. Dear Sir, - I had noe sooner don my letter on the other side, but I found it answered by yours of July 25, and though it hath satisfied me that you are very well, and given me $ew proofs that you are very much my friend, yet it hath put new doubts into me, and methinkes I see you going tc loose yourself. I will say noe worse of it, not knowing how <r the matter is gon, e se I would aske you whether the 110 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. men, young, old, or middle aged, each of which is sure tc meet you with the hornes of a dilemma. I see you are, whatever you think, hot upon the scent; and if you have noething else to defend you, but those maxims you build on, I feare the chase will lead you where yourself will be caught. For be as grave and steady as you please, resolve as much as you will, never to goe out of your way or pace, for never an hey trony nony whatsoever, you are not one jot the safer for all this steadiness. For, believe it, sir, this sorte of game having a designe to be caught, will hunt just at the pursuer's rate, and will goe no further before them than will just serve to make you follow; and let me assure you upon as good authority as honest Tom Bagnall's that virus videns- que pereo, is the lamentable ditty of many an honest gentle- man. But if you or the Fates (for the poor Fates are still to be accused in the case), if your mettle be up, and as hard as Sir Fr. Drake, you will shoot the desperate gulph ; yet consider that though the riches of Peru lie that way, how will you can endure the warme navigation of the Mare de Zur, which all travellers assure us is nicknamed pacificum. But hold, I goe too far. All this, perhaps, nottwithstand- ing your ancient good principles, will be heresie to you by that time it comes to England, and therefore, I conjure you by our friendship to burne this as soon as you have read it, that it may never rise up in judgment against me. I see one is never sure of one's-self, and the time may come when I may resigne myself to the empire of the soft sex, and abominate myself for these miserable errors. How- ever, as the matter now stands, I have discharged my con- science, and pray do not let me suffer for it. For I know your lovers are a sort of people that are bound to sacrifice everything to your mistresses. But to be serious with you, if your heart does hang that way, I wish you good luck May Hymen be as kinde to you as ever he was to anybody and then, I am sure, you will be much happier than any for- 'orne batchelor can be. If it be like to be, continue your LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 111 care of my interest in the case (to get him his chair in Gres- ham), and remember it is for one that knows how to value the quiet and retirement you are going to quit. You have no more to do for me than lovers use to doe upon their own account, viz., keepe the matter as secret and private as you can, and then when it is ripe and resolved, give me but no- tice and I shall quickly be with you, for it is by your direc- tions I shall better governe my motives than by the flights of thrushes and fieldfares. Some remains of my cough, and something like a charge is fallen into my hands lately here, will, if noething else happen, keepe me out probably longer than the time you mention. But not knowing whether the aire of France will ever quite remove my old companion or noe, I shall neglect that uncertainty upon the consideration of soe comfortable an importance; and for the other affaire I have here, if you please to let me hear from you sometimes how matters are like to goe, I shall be able to order that enough to come at the time you shall thinke seasonable. Whatever happens, I wish you all the happiness of one or t' other condition. - I am perfectly, dear Sir, your most humble and obedient servant. To Dr. Mapletoft, at Gresham College. In the same ms. volume in which I found this letter, is a case-book of Locke's in his own neat hand, written in Latin (often slovenly and doggish enough), and which shows, if there were any further need, that he was in active practice in 1667. The title in the Museum vol- ume is " Original Medical Papers by John Locke, pre- sented by Wm. Seward, Esq.and its contents are - 1. Hydrops. 2. Rheumatismus. 3. Hydrops. 4. Febris Infiammatoria. 112 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. To us now it seems curious to think of the author of the Essay on Human Understanding recording all the aches and doses, and minute miseries of an ancilla culi~ naria virgo, and to find that after a long and anxious case he was turned off, when, as he says, his impatient patient alio advocato medico erumpsit (/) The copy of a Letter of Dr. Tho. Sydenham to Dr. Govld, the original of which was communicated to me by Dr. Mead, Octob. 1, 1743. Sir,-I conceive that the Salivation, though raised by Mercury, in your variolous Patient doeth noe more contra- indicate the giving of Paregoricke, than if the same had come on of its own accord in a confluent Pox ; and therefore it will be convenient for you to give him every night such a quieting medicine as this : B Hy Cerasor nigrorum §ii, and gut xiiii: Syr de Mecon §ss. But if it shall hap- pen, y' the Mercury shall at any time exert its operation by stooles, you may repeat it oftener as there should be occa- sion, after the same manner as it ought to be don. In the first Days of Mercuriall Unctions where when Diarrhoea comes on, there is noe course so proper as to turn the opera- 'ion of the Mercury upwards, and thereby cause a laudable salivation as y° giving of Laudanum till the Looseness is stopt. As to what you are pleassed to mention concerning success, which yourself and others have had in the trying of my Processus, I can only say this, that I have bin very careful to write nothing but what was the product of careful obser- vation, soe when the scandall of my person shall be layd aside in my grave, it will appear that I neither suffered my selfe to be deceived by indulging to idle speculations, nor have deceived others by obtruding anything to them bid downright matter of fact. Be pleased to doe me the favour to give my humble service to Mr. Vice-Chancellor your warden, whose father, Bp. of Bristol!, was my intimate LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 113 friend and countryman. I myself was once a fellow-com- moner of your house (Wadham College, Oxford), but how long since I would be glad to know from you, as I remember it was in the year Oxford surrendered, though I had one of Magdalen Hall some time before. Thomas Sydenham. Pell Mell, Deer. 10, 1667. There is interesting matter in this letter besides its immediate subjects, and some things, I rather think, un- known before of Sydenham's College life. It is the only printed bit of English by its author, except a letter to the Honourable Robert Boyle, quoted in Latham's Life. " The real physician is the one who cures : the obser- vation, which does not teach the art of healing, is not that of a physician, it is that of a naturalist." - Brous- sais. NOTE A.-P.45. LORD GRENVILLE. The reader, we are sure, will not be impatient of the following ex- tracts from Lord Grenville's Tract, entitled Oxford and Locke, already mentioned. It is now rare, and is not likely to be ever reprinted sep- arately. It would not be easy to imagine anything more thoroughly or more exquisitely done than this tract ; it is of itself ample evidence of the accuracy of Lord Brougham's well-known application to its author of Cicero's words : - " Erant in eo plurimce liters, nec ece vulgares sed interiores qucedam et reconditce, divina memoria, summa verbomm gravitas et elegantia, atque hcec omnia vitae decorabat dignitas et integ- ritas. Quantum pondus in verbis ! Quam nihil non consideratum, exi- bat ex ore ! Sileamus de illo ni ^ugeamus dolo-em." Our extracts are from the First Chapter " Of Locke's Medical Studies: " - 114 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. " In the printed Life of Locke, commonly prefixed to his works, we are told that he applied himself at the university with great diligence to the study of medicine, 'not with any design of practising as a physician, but principally for the benefit of his own constitution, which was but weak.' The self-taught scholar, says the Italian proverb, has an ignorant master; and the patient who prescribes for himself, has not often, I believe, a very wise physician. No such purpose is as- cribed to Locke by Le Clerc, from whom our knowledge of his private history is principally derived. Nor can we believe that such a man chose for himself in youth that large and difficult study, with no view to the good of others, but meaning it to begin and end only with the care of his own health. "From the very first dawn of reviving letters to the present mo- ment, there never has been a period in this country, when the great masters of medicine among us have not made manifest the happy in- fluence of that pursuit on the cultivation of all the other branches of philosophy. And accordingly we find, that while Locke was still proceeding, as it is termed, in the academical course of that noble sci- ence, he was already occupied in laying the foundations of the Essay on the Human Understanding, which, as we learn from Le Clerc, was commenced in 1670. " Mr. Stewart thinks it matter of praise to Locke, that in that work 'not a single passage,' he says, 'occurs, savouring of the Anatomical Theatre, or of the Chemical Laboratory.' This assertion is not to be too literally taken. Certainly no trace of professional pedantry is to be found in that simple and forcible writer. He had looked abroad into all the knowledge of his time, and in his unceasing endeavors to make his propositions and his proofs intelligible and perspicuous to all, he delighted to appeal to every topic of most familiar observation. Among these some reference to medical science could scarcely have been avoided. Nor has it been entirely so. Mr. Stewart himself has elsewhere noticed Locke's ' homely ' illustration of the nature of sec- ondary qualities, by the operation of manna on the human body. A more pleasing example of medical allusion is to be found in one of the many passages where Locke points out to us how often men whose opinions substantially agree, are heard wrangling about the names and watchwords of parties and sects, to which they respectively attach quite different significations. He tells us of a meeting of physicians, at which he himself was present. These ingenious and learned men debated long, he says, ' whether any liquor passed through the fila- ments of the nerves,' until it appeared, on mutual explanation, that they all admitted the passage of some fluid and subtle matter through those channels, and had been disputing only whether or not it should LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 115 be called a liquor, 'which, when considered, they thought not worth contending about.' " In his Letters on Toleration, and in his Essay on the Conduct of the Understanding, his two most valuable, because most practical works, he indulges much more freely in such allusions. It is fre- quently by their aid that, in the first of those admirable productions, he ridicules his unequal adversary's project of enforcing universal con formity by moderate and lenient persecution. In one place he com- pares him to a surgeon using his knife on the sick and sound alike, on bad subjects and on good, without their consent, but, as he assures them, always solely for their own advantage; and in another place to an empiric, prescribing, says Locke, his 'hiera picra' (his holy bitters), to be taken in such doses only as shall be sufficient for the cure, without once inquiring in what quantities of that poisonous drug such sufficiency is at all likely to be found. Again, we find him illus- trating in a similar way the proper conduct to be pursued by a mind devoting itself in any case to a genuine search for truth. A diligent and sincere, a close and unbiased examination, he powerfully insists upon as 'thesurest and safest' method for that purpose. Would not this, he asks, be the conduct of a student in medicine wishing to ac- quire just notions of that science, ' or of the doctrines of Hippocrates, or any other book in which he conceived the whole art of physic to be infallibly contained ? ' These, and many other passages of a like de- scription, are beauties, surely, not blemishes, in Locke's powerful com- position and certainlv in no decree less valuable, for bearing some tincture of the current in which that great man's thoughts and studies had been so long carried forward." This Hiera Picra still survives under the name of Hickery Pickery; and appears in the London Pharmacopoeia of 1650, as thus com- posed : - R Cinnamon. Lignum aloes. Asarum root. Spikenard. Mastick. • Saffron, aa. 3vj. Aloes (unwashed) 3xijss. Clarified honey, Ibiv. 3 iij. Mix. - Ft. elect, sec. art. 116 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. NOTE B. - P. 82. THE WISDOM OF DOING NOTHING. The reader will mark the coincidence of thought, and even expres- sion, between Locke and his friend: - "I commend very much the discretion of Mrs. Furley, that she would not give him precipitates - 1°. Because physick is not to be given to children upon every little disorder. 2°. Physick for the worms is not to be given upon every bare suspicion that there may be worms. 3°. If it were evident that he had worms, such dangerous medicines are not to be given till after the use of other and more gentle and safe remedys. If he continue still dull and melancholy, the best way is to have him abroad to walke with you every day in the air; that, I believe, may set him right without any physic, at least if it should not, 't is not fit to give him remedys till one has well examined what is the distemper, unless you think (as is usually doune), that at all hazard something is to be given ; a way, I confess, I could never thinke reasonable, it being better in my opinion to doe no thing, than to doe amiss." - Locke to Furley in Forster. NOTE C. - P. 95. THE ELDER SERVING THE YOUNGER. Bordeu puts this well, in his candid, lively, and shrewd way. The whole passage is full of his peculiar humor and sense. Boideu was in many respects a sort of French Sydenham, like and unlike, as a Frenchman is like and unlike an Englishman. He was himself, to use his own phrase, one " des m^decins les plus sensds." It is no gooc sign of our medical tastes that he is so little known. "Les Serane, p^re et fils, dtoient mddecins de I'hopital de Montpel lier. Le fils ^toit un theoricien l^ger, qui savoit par coeur et qui redi- soit continuellement tous les documens de I'inflammation, comme ces enfans qui vous rdpetent sans cesse et avec des airs plu^ou moins ti- ais, La cigale ayant chante tout I'ete, etc., Malt re corbeau sur un arbre perche, etc. Serane pere dtoit un bon homme qui avoit dtd instruit par de grands maitres. Il avoit appris a trailer les fluxions de poitrine avec 1'em^tique ; il le donnoit pour le moins tous les deux jours, avec ou sans 1'addition de deux onces de manne. C'^toit son grand cheva. de bataille. Je le lui ai vu lacher plus de mille fois, et partout et pour tout. Le fils se proposa de convertir le pere et le le mettre a la mode, LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. 117 c'est-a-dire, lui faire craindre la phlogose, Veretisme, les d&hirures des petits vaisseaux. Le cher pfere tornba dans une esp^ce d'indecision singuliere: il ne savoit ou donner de la tete. Il tenoit pourtant ferme contre la saignde; mais lorsqu'il etoit aupres d'un malade, il murmu- roit et s'en alloit sans rien ordonner. Je l'ai vu a plusieurs reprises, apostropher son fils avec vivacitd et lui crier, lorsqu'il auroit voulu donner I'^m^tique, Mon fil, m'abes gastat! (Mon fils, vous m'avez g&te!) Jamais cette scime singuliere ne sortira de ma memoire. Je 'ui ai bien de 1'obligation, et les malades de 1'hopital lui avoient aussi beaucoup. Ils gudrissoient sans etre presque saign^s, parce que le vieux Serane, n'aimoit pas la saignee : et sans prendre 1'emdtique parce que le jeune Serane avoit prouvd a son pere que ce remade augmente 1'in- flammation. Les malades gu^rissoient, et j'en faisois mon profit. J'en concluois que les saigndes que Serane le fils multiplioit lorsqu'il ^toit seul, £toient tout au moins aussi inutiles que I'^metique r&tdrd auquel Serane le pere etoit trop attache. D'aprds cette aventure (jointe a celle que je viens de rapporter, et a plusieurs autres de la meme espSce), je crus voir bien sensiblement, et je me crois aujourd'hui en droit de publier, qu'on multiplie trop les remfedes et que les meilleurs de- viennent perfides a force de les presser. Cette profusion de mddicamens rend la maladie m^connoissable, et forme un obstacle sensible a la guerison. La fureur de traiter les maladies en faisant prendre drogues sur drogues ayant gagnd les tetes ordinaires, les m^decins sont au- jourd'hui plus n^cessaires pour les empecher et les defendre, que pour les ordonner. Les pratiques nationales, les observations des mddecins les plus senses, se ressentent plus ou moins du penchant invincible qu'ont les hommes a donner la prdfdrence a de certaines id^es, sur d'autres, tout aussi bien fondles que celles qu'ils pr^f^rent. Je le de- clare sans passion, et avec la modestie a laquelle mes foibles connois sances me condamnent; lorsque je regarde derriere moi, j'ai honte d'avoir tant insists, tantot sur les saigndes, tantot sur les purgatifs et les em^tiques. Tous les axiomes rappel^s ci-dessus, et dont on abuse tous les jours, sont d^truits par de beaucoup plus vrais, et malheureuse- ment trop peu connus. Il me semble entendre crier la Nature : ' Ne vous pressez point ; laissez-moi faire ; vos drogues ne gudrissent point, surtout lorsque vous les entassez dans le corps des malades; c'est moi seule qm gueris. Les momens qui vous paroissent les plus ora- geux sont ceux oil je me sauve le mieux, si vous ne m'avez pas otd mes forces. Il vaut mieux que vous m'abandonniez toute la besogne que d'essayer des remMes douteux.' "Un hasard heureux commen^a a mod^rer en moi le brfilant d^sir d'instrumenter, ou de faire voir aux assistans ^bahis et aux malades eux-memes, la cause de la maladie d«<'.s un grand £talage de palettes 118 LOCKE AND SYDENHAM. et de bassins. J'dtois fort jeune encore, et le quatridme mddecin d'un malade attaque de la tidvre, de la couleur de cotd et du crachement de sang ; je n'avois point d'avis a donner. Un des trois consultans pro- pose une troisidme saignee (c'dtoit le troisidme jour de la maladie); le second proposa 1'dmdtique combine avec un purgatif; et le troisidme, un vdsicatoire aux jambes. Le ddbat ne fut pas petit, et personne ne voulut cdder. J'aurois jurd qu'ils avoient tous raison. Enfin, on aura peine a croire que par une suite de circonstances inutiles a rapporter, cette dispute intdressa cinq ou six nombreuses families, parfagdea comme les mddecins, et qui prdtendoient s'emparer du malade ; elle dura, en un mot, jusques passd le septidme de la maladie. Cependant, malgrd les terribles menaces de mes trois maitres, le malade reduit a la boisson et a la didte gudrit trds-bien. Je suivis cette gudrison parce que j'dtois restd seul: je la trouvai tracde par 1'dcole de Cos, et je m'dcriai, c'dtoit done la route qu'il falloit prendre! " -Recherches sur le Tissu Muqueux, 1767. BOOKS CONSULTED. 1. Biblioth&que Choise, tome vi. : 1716.-2. Oxford and Locke; by Lord Grenville: London, 1829. - 3. Life of John Locke; by Lord King. - 4. Original Letters of John Locke, Algernon Sidney, and Lord Shaftesbury ; edited by T. Forster ; 2d edition: London, privately printed, 1847. - 5. Ward's Lives of the Professors of Gresham Col- lege.- 6. Thomae Sydenham, M. D., Opera omnia; edidit G. A Greenhill, M. D.: Londini, impensis Societatis Sydenhamianae, 1844 - 7. The Works of Thomas Sydenham, M. D.; with a Life of ths Author; by R. G. Latham, M. D., 2 vols.: printed for the Sydenham Society. - 8. MSS. Letters and Common-place Books of John Locke in the possession of the Earl of Lovelace. DR. ANDREW COMBE. ". . . Valetudinis conservationem, qua sine dubio primum est hujus vita bonum, et caterorum omnium fundamentum. Animus enim adeb a temperamento et organorum corporis dispositione pendet, ut si ratio aliqua possit inveniri, qua homines sapientiores et ingeniosiores reddat quam hactenus fuerunt, credam illam in Medicind quari debere." - Renatus Descartes De Methodo, vi. " Ovid observes that there are more fine days than cloudy ones in the year - * Si numeres anno soles et nubila toto, Invenies nitidum sapius esse diem.' It may be said likewise, that the days wherein men enjoy their health are in greater number than those wherein they are sick. But there is perhaps as much misery in fifteen days' sickness, as there is pleasure in fifteen years' health." - Bayle, under the word Pericles. " Ewnt homines mirari altu montium, ingentes fluctus maris, altissi- mos lapsus fluminum, oceani ambitum et gyros siderum - seipsos relin~ quunt nec admirantur." - St. Austin. DR. ANDREW COMBE. ■ E do not know a worthier subject for an essay in one of our larger Medical Journals, than to determine the just position of such a man as Dr. Combe in the history of Medicine - showing what it was in theory and in practice, in its laws as a science, and in its rules as an art - when he made his appear- ance on its field, and what impression his character and doctrines have made upon the public as requiring, and upon his brethren as professing to furnish, the means of health. The object of such an essay would be to make out how far Dr. Combe's principles of inquiry, his moral postulates, his method of cure, his views of the powers and range of medicine as a science, estimative, rather than exact, his rationale of human nature as com- posite and in action, - how far all these influences may be expected to affect the future enlargement, enlighten- ment, and quickening of that art which is, par excellence the art of life, -and whose advance, in a degree of which we can, from its present condition, form little conception, was believed by one of the greatest intellects of any age (Descartes) to be destined to play a signal part in making mankind more moral, wiser, and hap- pier, as well as stronger, longer-lived, and healthier. The cause of morality - of everything that is connected with the onward movement of the race - is more de- pendent upon the bodily health, upon the organic 122 DR. ANDREW COMBE. soundness of the human constitution, than many poli ticians, moralists, and divines seem ready to believe. Dr. Combe was not, perhaps, what is commonly called a man of genius; that is, genius was not his foremost and most signal and efficient quality. He made no brill- iant discovery in physiology or threapeutics, like some of his contemporaries. He did not, as by a sudden flash of light, give form, and symmetry, and meaning to the nervous system, as did Sir Charles Bell, when he proved that every nerve is double; that its sheath, like the Britannia Bridge, contains two lines, carrying two trains - an up and a down ; the sensory, as the up, bringing knowledge from without of all sorts to the brain; the motory, as the down, carrying orders from the same great centre of sensation and will. Neither did he, like Dr. Marshall Hall, render this discovery more exquisite, by adding to it that of the excito-motor nerves - the system of reflex action, by which, with the most curious nicety and art (for Nature is the art of God), each part of our frame, however distinct in function, different in structure, and distant from the others, may intercom- municate with any or every part, as by an electric mes- sage, thus binding in one common sympathy of pleasure and pain, the various centres of organic and animal life with each other, and with the imperial brain. Neither did he, as Laennec, open the ear, and through it the mind of the physician, to a new discipline, giving a new method and means of knowledge and of cure. Nor, finally, did he enrich practical medicine, as Dr. Aber- crombie and others have done, with a selection of capi- tal facts, of " middle propositions," from personal expe- rience and reflection, and with the matured results of a long-exercised sagacity and skill in diagnosis and in DR. ANDREW COMBE. 123 treatment. He did not do all this for various reasons, but mainly and simply because his Maker had other and important work for him, and constituted and fitted him accordingly, by a special teaching from within and from without, for its accomplishment, vouchsafing to him what is one of God's best blessings to any of his creatures - an innate perception of law, a love of first principles, a readiness to go wherever they lead, and no- where else. He discovered - for to him it had all the suddenness of a first sight - that all the phenomena of disease, of life, and of health, everything in the entire round of the economy of man's microcosm, move accord- ing to certain laws, and fixed modes of procedure - laws which are ascertainable by those who honestly seek them, and which, in virtue of their reasonableness and benefi- cence and their bearing, as it were, the " image and su- perscription " of their Divine Giver, carry with them, into all their fields of action, the double burden of reward and punishment; and that all this is as demonstrable as the law of gravitation, which, while it shivers an erring planet in its anger, and sends it adrift to " hideous ruin and combustion," at the same moment, and by the very same force, times the music of the spheres, compacts a dew-drop, and guides, as of old, Arcturus and his sons. This is Dr. Combe's highest - his peculiar distinction, among medical writers. He burns, as with a passionate earnestness, to bring back the bodily economy of man to its allegiance to the Supreme Guide. He shows in his works, and still more impressively in his living and dying, the divine beauty and power and goodness that shine out in every, the commonest, and what we cal', meanest instance, of the adaptation of man by his Maker to his circumstances, his duties, his sufferings, and his 124 DR. ANDREW COMBE. destiny. This may not be called original genius, per haps ; we are sorry it is as yet too original; but in the calm eye of reason and thoughtful goodness, and we may in all reverence add, in the eye of the all-seeing Unseen, it is something more divinely fair, more to be desired and honored, than much of what is generally called genius. It is something which, if acted upon by ten thousand men and women for five-and-twenty years, with the same simplicity, energy, constancy, and intelli- gence, with which, for half his lifetime, it animated Dr. Combe, - would so transform the whole face of society, and work such mighty changes in the very substance, so to speak, of human nature, in all its ongoings, as would as much transcend the physical marvels and glories of our time, and the progress made thereby in civilization and human wellbeing, as the heavens are higher than the earth, and as our moral relations, our conformity to the will and the image of God are - more than any advance in mere knowledge and power - man's highest exercise and his chief end. We are not so foolish as to think that in recognizing the arrangements of this world, and all it contains, as being under God's law, Dr. Combe made a discovery in the common sense of the word; but we do say that he unfolded the length and breadth, the depth and height of this principle as a practical truth, as a rule of life and duty, beyond any men before him- And thus it was, that though he did not, like the other eminent men we have mentioned, add formally to the material of knowledge, he observed with his own eyes more clearly, and explained the laws of healthy, and through them, of diseased action, and promulgated their certain rewards and punishments more convincingly than anyone else. He made this plainer than othej DR. ANDREW COMBE, 125 men, to every honest capacity, however humble. He showed that man has an internal, personal activity, im- planted in him by his Creator, for preserving or re- covering that full measure of soundness, of wholeness, of consentaneous harmonious action, of well-balanced, mutually concurring forces, - that "perfect diapason," which constitutes health, or wholth, and for the use or abuse of which he, as a rational being, is answerable on soul and conscience to himself, to his fellow-men, and to his Maker. Dr. Combe has so beautifully given his own account of this state and habit of mind and feeling, this princi- pled subjection of everything within him to God's will, as manifested in his works and in his creatures, that we quote it here. " The late Rev. Mr. of stopped me one day, to say that he had read my Physiology with great satis- faction, and that what pleased him greatly was the vein of genuine piety which pervaded every page, a piety uncontaminated by cant. Some of my good friends who lave considered me a lax observer of the outward forms of piety, might laugh at this. Nevertheless, it gave me pleasure, because in my conscience I felt its truth. There is scarcely a single page in all my three physiolog- ical works, in which such a feeling was not active as 1 wrote. The unvarying tendency of my mind is to re- gard the whole laws of the animal economy, and of the universe, as the direct dictates of the Deity ; and in urging compliance with them, it is with the earnestness and reverence due to a Divine command that T do it. / almost lose the consciousness of self in the anxiety to attain the end; and where I see clearly a law of God m our own nature, I rely upon its efficiency for good 126 DR. ANDREW COMBE. with a faith and peace which no storm can shake, and feel pity for those who remain blind to its origin, wis- dom, and beneficence. I therefore say it solemnly, and with the prospect of death at no distant day, that I ex- perienced great delight, when writing my books, in the consciousness that I was, to the best of my ability, ex- pounding £ the ways of God to man,' and in so far fulfilling one of the highest objects of human existence. God was, indeed, ever present to my thoughts." - Life, p. 401. This was the secret of his power over himself and others - He believed and therefore he spake ; he could not but speak, and when he did, it was out of the abun- dance of his heart. Being impressed and moved, he be- came of necessity impressive and motive. Hence if there be not in his works much of the lightning of genius, resolving error into its constituent elements by a stroke, unfolding in one glance both earth and heaven, and bringing out in bright relief some long-hidden truth - if he but seldom astonish us with the full-voiced thunder of eloquence ; there is in his pages, everywhere pervad- ing them as an essence, that still small voice, powerful but not by its loudness, which finds its way into the deeper and more sacred recesses of our rational nature, and speaks to our highest interests and senses - the voice of moral obligation calling us to gratitude and obe- dience. His natural capacity and appetite for knowl- edge, his love of first principles, his thoughtful vivacity, his unfeigned active benevolence, his shrewdness, his affections, his moral courage and faithfulness, his clear definite ideas, his whole life, his very sufferings, sor- rows, and regrets, were all, as by a solemn act of his entire nature, consecrated to this one absorbing end. DR. ANDREW COMBE. 127 Thus it was that he kept himself alive so long, with a mortal malady haunting him for years, and was enabled to read to others the lessons he had learned for himself in the valley of the shadow of death. We have been struck, in reading Dr. Combe's works, and especially his Memoir by his brother, by the resem- blance, not merely in principles and rules, and in the point from which they view their relations to their pro- fession, but in more special characteristics of tempera- ment and manner, between him and the illustrious Sy- denham, and the still more famous " divine old man of Cos." We allude to the continual reference by them to Nature, as a regulating power in the human body; their avoiding speculations as to essence, and keeping to the consideration of conjunct causes ; their regarding them- selves as the expounders of a law of life, and the inter- preters and ministers of Nature. This one master idea, truly religious in its character, gives to them a steady fervor, a calm persistent enthusiasm or " entheasm " (er and ©eos), which we regret, for the honor and the good of human nature, is too rare in medical literature, an- cient or modern. The words " Nature," and " the Al- mighty," " the Supreme Disposer," etc., occur in Syden- ham's works as frequently and with the same reference as they do in Dr. Combe's. The following passage from Sydenham, on Nature, will illustrate our meaning: - "I here [in the conclusion of his observations on the fever and plague of 1665 and 1666] subjoin a short note, lest my opinion of Naturt be taken in a wrong sense. In the foregoing discourse, I have made use of the term Nature, and ascribed vari ous effects to her, as I would thereby represent some one self-existent being, everywhere diffused throughout* 128 DR. ANDREW COMBE. the machine of the universe, which, being endowed with reason, governs and directs all bodies - such an one as some philosophers seem to have conceived the soul of the world to be. But I neither affect novelty in my sentiments or expressions; I have made use of this an- cient word in these pages, if I mistake not, in a qualified sense; for by Nature I always mean a certain assem- blage of natural causes, which, though destitute of reason and contrivance, are directed in the wisest manner while they perform their operations and produce their effects; or, in other words, the Supreme Being, by whose power all things are created and preserved, disposes them all in such manner, by his infinite wisdom, that they pro- ceed to their appointed functions with a certain regular- ity and order, performing nothing in vain, but only what is best and fittest for the whole frame of the uni- verse and their own peculiar nature, and so are moved like machines, not by any skill of their own, but by that of the artist." And Hippocrates briefly says, " Nature in man is the aggregate of all things that concur to perfect health, and the foundation of all right reasoning and practice in physic"1 - exactly the same great truth which Dr. Combe and Sir John Forbes, thousands of years after- wards, are abused by their brethren for proclaiming; and the old Ephesian cry is raised loud and long among the craftsmen, who, like Demetrius and his crew, are less filled with reason than with wrath. As we have already said, Dr. Combe was distin- guished neither as a discoverer nor as a practitioner. Owing to feeble health, he was not permitted the oppor- tunity of being the latter, though he possessed some of 1 See Note, p. 161. DR. ANDREW COMBE. 129 the highest qualities of a great physician ; and the even- ness of his powers probably would have prevented him from making any one brilliant hit as the former: for it is our notion, for which we have not space here to assign the reasons, that original geniuses in any one depart- ment, are almost always odd1 - that is, are uneven, have some one predominant faculty lording it over the rest. So that, if we look back among the great men in medicine, we would say that Dr. Combe was less like Harvey, or even Sydenham, than Locke, who, though not generally thought so, was quite as much of a physi- cian during his life, as of a philosopher and politician. It was not merely in their deeper constitutional qualities - their love of truth, and of the God of truth - their tendency towards what was immediately and mainly use- ful - their preferring observation to speculation, but not declining either, as the help and complement of the Other; their choosing rather to study the mind or body as a totum quid, a unit, active and executive, and as a means to an end, than to dogmatize and dream about its transcendental constitution, or its primary and ultimate condition; their valuing in themselves, and in others, soundness of mind and body, above mere strength and quickness; their dislike to learned phrases, and their at- tachment to freedom - political, religious, and personal - it was not merely in these larger and more substan- tial matters that John Locke and Andrew Combe were 1 " We usually say that man is a genius, but he has some whims and oddities. Now, in such a case, we would speak more rationally, did we substitute therefore for but. He is a genius, therefore he is whimsical." - Dr. John Aitkin. To be sure, it is one thing to have genius, and another to be one, the difference being between possessing and being possessed by. 130 DR. ANDREW COMBE. alike: they had in their outward circumstances and his tories some curious coincidences. Both were grave, silent, dark-haired, and tall; both were unmarried, both were much in the company of women of culture, and had much of their best pleasure from their society and sympathy, and each had one of the best of her sex to watch over his declining years, and to close his eyes; to whose lot it fell, in the tender words of Agricola's stern son-in-law - " assidere valetu- dini, fovere deficientem, satiari vultu, complexu." More- over, both were educated for medicine, but had to relin- quish the active practice of it from infirm health, and in each the local malady was in the lungs. Both, by a sort of accident, came in close contact with men in the highest station, and were their advisers and friends - we refer to Lord Shaftesbury, and to the Third William and Leo- pold, two of the wisest and shrewdest of ancient or mod- ern kings. They resided much abroad, and owed, doubt- less, not a little of their largeness of view, and their superiority to prejudice, to having thus seen mankind from many points. Both had to make the art of keeping themselves alive - the study of their health - a daily matter of serious thought, arrangement, and action. They were singularly free from the foibles and preju- dices of invalids; both were quietly humorous, playful in their natures, and had warm and deep, but not de- monstrative affections ; and to each was given the honor of benefiting their species to a degree, and in a variety of ways, not easily estimated. Locke, though he may be wrong in many of his views of the laws and opera- tions of the human mind, did more than any one man ever did before him, to strengthen and rectify, and re. Etore to healthy vigor, the active powers of the mind DR. ANDREW COMBE. 131 - observation, reason, and judgment; and of him, the weighty and choice words of Lord Grenville are literally true: " With Locke commenced the bright era of a new philosophy, which, whatever were still its imperfections, had for its basis clear and determinate conceptions ; free inquiry and unbiassed reason for its instruments, and for its end truth, - truth unsophisticated and undisguised, shedding its pure light over every proper object of the human understanding, but confining itself with reveren- tial awe within those bounds which an all-wise Creator has set to our inquiries." While, on the other hand, Dr. Combe, making the body of man his chief study, did for it what Locke did for the mind : he explained the laws of physiology, rather than the structure of the organs ; he was more bent upon mastering the dynamics than the statics of health and disease; but we are too near his time, too imperfectly aware of what he has done for us, to be able to appreciate the full measure or quality of the benefit he has bestowed upon us and our posterity, by his simply reducing man to himself-bringing him back to the knowledge, the acknowledgment, and the obedience of the laws of his nature. Dr. Combe's best-known publications are, his Princi- ples of Physiology applied to Health and Education, his Physiology of Digestion, and his Treatise on the Physio- logical and Moral Management of Infancy. The first was the earliest, and is still the best exposition and ap- plication of the laws of health. His Digestion is perhaps the most original of the three. It is not so much taken up - as such treatises, however excellent, generally are - with what to eat and what not to eat, as with how to eat anything and avoid nothing, how so to regulate the great ruling powers of the body, as to make the stomach 132 DR. ANDREW COMBE. do its duty upon whatever that is edible is submitted to it. His book on the Management of Infancy is to us the most delightful of all his works : it has the simplicity and mild strength, the richness and vital nutriment of " the sincere milk " - that first and best-cooked food of man. This lactea ubertas pervades the whole little vol- ume ; and we know of none of Dr. Combe's books in which the references to a superintending Providence, to a Divine Father, to a present Deity, to be loved, hon- ored, and obeyed, are so natural, so impressive, so nu- merous, and so child-like. His Observations on Mental Derangement have long been out of print. We sincerely trust that Dr. James Coxe, who has so well edited the last edition of his uncle's Physiology, may soon give us a new one of this important work, which carries his princi- ples into an important region of human suffering. Apart altogether from its peculiar interest as an application of Phrenology to the knowledge and cure of Insanity - it is, as Dr. Abercrombie, who was not lavish of his praise, said, "full of sound observation and accurate thinking, and likely to be very useful." There is, by the by, one of Dr. Combe's papers, not mentioned by his brother, which we remember reading with great satisfaction and profit, and which shows how he carried his common sense, and his desire to be useful, into the minutest arrangements. It appears in Cham- bers's Journal for August 30, 1834, and is entitled, " Sending for the Doctor; " we hope to see the nine rules therein laid down, in the next edition of the Life. We shall now conclude this curious survey of Dr. Combe's relations, general and direct, to medicine, by earnestly recommending the study of his Memoirs to al' medical men, young and old, but especially the young DR. ANDREW COMBE. 133 They will get not merely much instruction of a general kind, from the contemplation of a character of singular worth, beauty, and usefulness, but they will find lessons everywhere, in their own profession, lessons in doctrine and in personal conduct; and they will find the entire history of a patient's life and death, given with a rare fulness, accuracy, and impressiveness ; they will get hints incidentally of how he managed the homeliest and most delicate matters ; how, with order, honesty, and an ar- dent desire to do good, he accomplished so much, against and in spite of so much. We would, in fine, recommend his letter to Sir James Clark on the impor- tance of Hygiene as a branch of medical education (p. 311); his letter to the same friend on medical education (p. 341), in regard to which we agree with Sir James, that the medical student cannot have a better guide dur- ing the progress of his studies; a letter on the state of medical science (p. 400) ; his remarks on the qualifica- tions for the superintendent of a lunatic asylum ; and, at p. 468, on scepticism on the subject of medical sci- ence. These, and his three admirable letters to Dr. Forbes, would make a choice little book. We conclude with a few extracts taken from these papers at random. It would be difficult to put more truth on their subjects into better words. " I have always attached much less importance than is usually done, to the abstract possibility or impossibil- ity of finishing the compulsory part of professional edu- cation, within a given time, and have long thought that more harm than good has been done by fixing too early a limit. The intelligent exercise of medicine requires not only a greater extent of scientific and general attain- ments, hut also readier comprehensiveness of mind, and 134 DR. ANDREW COMBE. greater accuracy of thinking and maturity of judgment, than perhaps any other profession; and these are quali- ties rarely to be met with in early youth. So generally is this felt to be the case, that it is an all but universal practice for those who are really devoted to the profes- sion, to continue their studies for two or three years, or even more, after having gone through the prescribed curriculum, and obtained theii' diplomas ; and those only follow a different course who are pressed by necessity to encounter the responsibilities of practice, whether satis- fied or not with their own qualifications ; and if this be the case, does it not amount to a virtual recognition, that the period now assigned by the curriculum is too short, and ought to be extended ? In point of fact, this latter period of study is felt by all to be by far the most instructive of the whole, because now the mind is com- paratively matured, and able to draw its own inferences from the facts and observations of which it could before make little or no use; and it is precisely those who en- ter upon practice too early who are most apt to become routine practitioners, and to do the least for the advance- ment of medicine as a science." - P. 343. " The only thing of which I doubt the propriety is, requiring the study of logic and moral philosophy at so early an age. For though a young man before eighteen may easily acquire a sufficient acquaintance with one or two books on these subjects, such as Whately and Paley, to be able to answer questions readily, I am quite con- vinced that his doing so will be the result merely of an intellectual effort in which memory will be exercised much more than judgment, and that the subjects will not become really useful to him like those which he feels and thorcughly understands, but will slip from him th$ DR. ANDREW COMBE. 135 moment his examination is at an end, and probably leave a distaste for them ever after. To logic, so far as connected with the structure of language, there can be no objection at that age ; but as an abstract branch of science, I regard it, in its proper development, as fit only for a more advanced period of life. The whole basis and superstructure of moral philosophy, too, imply for their appreciation a practical knowledge of human na- ture, and of man's position in society, of his proper aims and duties, and of his political situation, - which it is impossible for a mere youth to possess ; and, in the ab- sence of acquaintance with, and interest in the real sub- jects, to train the mind to the use of words and phrases descriptive of them (but, to him, without correct mean- ing) is likely to be more injurious than beneficial. A man must have seen and felt some of the perplexities of his destiny, and begun to reflect upon them in his own mind, before he can take an intelligent interest in their discussion. To reason about them sooner, is like reason- ing without data; and besides, as the powers of reflec- tion are always the latest in arriving at maturity, we may fairly infer that Nature meant the knowledge and experience to come first." - P. 348. Sir William Hamilton, who differs so widely from Dr. Combe in much, agrees with him in this, as may be seen from the following note in his edition of Reid, p. 420.1 1 As a corollary of this truth ("Reflection does not appear in chil- dren. Of all the powers of the mind, it seems to be of the latest growth, whereas consciousness is coeval with the earliest"), Mr. Stewart makes the following observations, in which he is supported DV every competent authority in education. The two northern uni- versities ha"e long withdrawn themse'jves from the reproach of plac- ing Physw last in their curriculum of arts. In that of Edinburgh, 136 DR. ANDREW COMBE. " If there is one fault greater than another, and one source of error more prolific than another, in medical investigations, it is the absence of a consistent and phil- osophic mode of proceeding ; and no greater boon could be conferred upon medicine, as a science, than to render its cultivators familiar with the laws or principles which inquiry ought to be directed. I therefore regard what I should term a system of Medical Logic as of inestimable value in the education of the practitioner; but I think that the proper time for it would be after the student had acquired a competent extent of knowl- edge, and a certain maturity of mind." - P. 350. " The one great object ought to be the due qualifica- no order is prescribed ; but in St. Andrews and Glasgow, the class of Physics still stands after those of mental philosophy. This absurdity is, it is to be observed, altogether of a modern introduction. For, when our Scottish universities were founded, and long after, the phi- 'osophy of mind was taught by the professor of physics. "lappre- uend," says Mr. Stewart, "that the study of the mind should form the last branch of the education of youth; an order which Nature her- self seems to point out, by what I have already remarked with respect to the development of our faculties. After the understanding is well stored with particular facts, and has been Conversant with particular scientific pursuits, it will be enabled to speculate concerning its own powers with additional advantage, and will run no hazard in indulg- ing too far in such inquiries. Nothing can be more absurd, on this as well as on many other accounts, than the common practice which is followed in our universities [in some only], of beginning a course of philosophical education with the study of logic. If this order were completely reversed ; and if the study of logic were delayed till after the mind of the student was well stored with particular facts in phys- ics, in chemistry, in natural and civil history, his attention might be led with the most important advantage, and without any danger to his power of observation, to an examination of his own faculties, Khich, besides opening to him a new and pleasing field of speculation would enable him to form an estimate of his own powers, of the acqui Bitions he has made, of the habits he has formed, and of the furtha improvements of which his mind is susceptible." - H. DR. ANDREW COMBE. 137 lion of the practitioner; and whatever will contribute to that end ought to be retained, whether it may happen to agree with or differ from the curricula of other uni- versities or licensing bodies. The sooner one uniform system of education and equality of privileges prevails throughout the kingdom, the better for all parties." - P 359. " The longer I live, the more I am convinced that medical education is too limited and too hurried, rather than too extended ; for, after all, four years is but a short time for a mind still immature to be occupied in master- ing and digesting so many subjects and so many details. Instead of the curriculum being curtailed, however, I feel assured that ultimately the period of study will be extended. Supposing a young man to be engaged in the acquisition of knowledge and experience till the age of twenty-three instead of twenty-one, can it be said that he will then be too old for entering upon independ- ent practice ? or that his mind is even then fully ma- tured, or his stock of knowledge such as to inspire full confidence ? It is in vain to say that young men will not enter the profession if these additions are made. The result would inevitably be to attract a higher class of minds, and to raise the character of the whole pro- fession."- P. 360. " The bane of medicine and of medical education at present is its partial and limited scope. Branches of knowledge, valuable in themselves, are studied almost always separately, and without relation to their general bearing upon the one grand object of the medical art, viz., the healthy working or restoration of the whole jodily and mental functions. We have abundance of Bourses of lectures on all sorts of subjects, but are no- 138 DR. ANDREW COMBE. where taught to group their results into practical masses or principles. The higher faculties of the professional mind are thus left in a great measure unexercised. The limited and exclusive knowledge of the observing powers is alone sought after, and an irrational experience is substituted for that which alone is safe, because com- prehensive and true in spirit. The mind thus exercised within narrow limits, becomes narrowed and occupied with small things. Small feelings follow, and the natural result is that place in public estimation which narrow- mindedness and cleverness in small things deserves. The profession seeks to put down quacks, to obtain medical reform by Act of Parliament, and to acquire public in- fluence ; and a spirit is now active which will bring forth good fruit in due time. An Act of Parliament can remedy many absurdities connected with the privileges of old colleges and corporations, and greatly facilitate improvement; but the grand reform must come from within, and requires no Act to legalize its appearance. Let the profession cultivate their art in a liberal and comprehensive spirit, and give evidence of the predomi- nance of the scientific over the trade-like feeling, and the public will no longer withhold their respect or deny their influence." - P. 400. " If you ask, Why did not God effect his aim with- out inflicting pain or suffering on any of us ? that just opens up the question, Why did God see fit to make man, man, and not an angel ? I can see why a watch- maker makes a watch here and a clock there, because my faculties and nature are on a par with the watch- maker's ; but to understand why God made man what he is, I must have the faculties and comprehension of ehe Divine Being; or, in other words, the creature mus> DR. ANDREW COMBE. 139 be the equal of the Creator in intellect before he can understand the cause of his own original formation. Into that, therefore, I am quite contented not to in- quire." - P. 403. " I should say that the province of Hygiene is to ex- amine the relations existing between the human consti- tution on the one hand, and the various external objects or influences by which it is surrounded on the other; and to deduce, from that examination, the principles or rules by which the highest health and efficiency of all our functions, moral, intellectual, and corporeal, may be most certainly secured, and by obedience to which we may, when once diseased, most speedily and safely regain our health. But perhaps the true nature of Hy- giene will be best exhibited by contrasting what at pres- ent is taught, with what we require at the bedside of the patient, and yet are left to pick up at random in the best way we can." - P. 312 " Hygiene, according to my view, really forms the connecting link by which 'll the branches of profes- sional knowledge are bound together, and rendered available in promoting human health and happiness ; and, in one sense, is consequently the most important subject for a course of lectures, although very oddly almost the only one which has not been taught syste- matically; and I consider the absence of the connecting principle as the main cause why medicine has advanced so slowly, and still assumes so little of the aspect of a certain science, notwithstanding all the talent, time, and labor devoted to its cultivation." - P. 319. 140 DR. ANDREW COMBE. NOTE.-P. 128. VIS MEDICATRIX NATURE. Dr. Adams, in his Preliminary Discourse to the Sydenham Socie- ty's Edition of the Genuine Works of Hippocrates, translated and an- notated by him - a work, as full of the best common sense and judg- ment, as it is of the best learning and scholarship - has the following passage : - " Above all others, Hippocrates was strictly the physician of experi- ence and common sense. In short, the basis of his system was a rational experience, and not a blind empiricism, so that the Empirics in after ages had no good grounds for claiming him as belonging to their sect. " One of the most distinguishing characteristics, then, of the Hippo- cratic system of medicine, is the importance attached in it to prognosis, under which was comprehended a complete acquaintance with the previous and present condition of the patient, and the tendency of the disease. To the overstrained system of Diagnosis practised in the school of Cnidos, agreeably to which diseases were divided and sub- divided arbitrarily into endless varieties, Hippocrates was decidedly opposed; his own strong sense and high intellectual cultivation hav- ing, no doubt, led him to the discovery, that to accidental varieties of diseased action there is no limit, and that what is indefinite cannot be reduced to science. "Nothing strikes one as a stronger proof of his nobility of soul, when we take into account the early period in human cultivation at which he lived, and his descent from a priestly order, than the contempt which he everywhere expresses for ostentatious charlatanry, and his perfect freedom from all popular superstition.1 Of amulets and com- 1 " This is the more remarkable, as it does not appear to have been the es- tablished creed of the greatest literary men and philosophers of the age, who Btill adhered, or professed to adhere, to the popular belief in the extraordi- nary interference of the gods with the works of Nature and the affairs of mankind. This, at least, was remarkably the case with Socrates, whose mind, like that of most men who make a great impression on the religious feelings of their age, had evidently a deep tinge of mysticism. See Xenoph Memor. i. 1. 6-9 ; Ibid. iv. 7. 7 ; also Grote's History of Greece, vol. i. p. 499 The latter remarks, ' Physical and astronomical phenomena are classified by Socrates among the divine class, interdicted to human study.' - (Mem. i 1. 13.) He adds, in reference to Hippocrates, ' On the other hand, Hippoc- rates, the contemporary of Socrates, denied the discrepancy, and merged DR. ANDREW COMBE. 141 plicated machines to impose on the credulity of the ignorant multitude, there is no mention in any part of his works. All diseases he traces to natural causes, and counts it impiety to maintain that any one more than another is an infliction from the Divinity. How strikingly the Hippocratic system differs from that of all other nations in their in- fantine state, must be well known to every person who is well acquainted with the early history of medicine. His theory of medi- cine was further based on the physical philosophy of the ancients, more especially on the doctrines then held regarding the elements of things, and the belief in the existence of a spiritual essence diffused through he whole works of creation, which was regarded as the agent that presides over the acts of generation, and which constantly strives to preserve all things in their natural state, and to restore them when they are preternaturally deranged. This is the principle which he called Nature, and which he held to be a vis medicatrix. ' Nature,' says he, or at least one of his immediate followers says, ' is the phy- sician of diseases.' " Stahl, in one of his numerous short occasional Tracts, Schediasmata, as he calls them, in which his deep and fiery nature was constantly finding vent, thus opens on the doctrine of "Nature," as held by the ancients. Besides the thought, it is a good specimen of this great man's abrupt, impetuous, pregnant, and difficult expressions : - " Notanter Hippocrates 6. Epidem. 5. 'AvaiSevTos ^va-is eovaa km ov /xa^oOtra, ra Seopra woieet. Cum a nullo informata sit natura, neque quicquam didicerit, ea tamen quibus opus est, efficit. Efficere et ope- rari, dioit; neque incongrua et aliena, sed quae necessaria sint, quae convenient: Operari autem ipsam per se, non ex consilio (intellige, alieno) lin. praeced. monet. Effectivum hoc & operativum Principium, t^p (bvaw, appellat, to STipioupycicop iq/wp airiov circumscribit Galen, de Placit. Hipp. $ Platon. I. 9. hunc eundem locum attingens. De hac Nature prolixius idem Galenus lib. de Natur. facult. asserit, quod ilia, suis viribus usa, quee noxia sunt, exp ell ere noverit, quee utilia, usut servare. Quod idem et lib. i. cap. s. de diff. Febb. repetit. Sapien- tissimam ipsam esse, itidem adstruit lib. de arte. Et omnia facere salutis hominum causa, in Comm, ad nostrum locum interpretatur. Ne- que hoc tantum de statu Cornoris Humani tranquillo, et sibi constante, intelligendum, sed monent etiam iidem, Naturam hactenus dictam, consulere corpori in dubiis rebus, ingruente nocumentorum periculo, Into one the two classes of phenomena - the divine and the scientifically de- terminable- which the latter had put asunder. Hippocrates treated all phe- nomena as at once both divine and scientifically determinable.' " 142 DR. ANDREW COMBE. imo actuales, noxas illatas, ita depellere, corrigere, exterminare, resar- cire, ut propterea Hippocrates, paulb antb sententiam hactenus citatam, diserte affirmet, Natural* mederi morbis. In quam ipsam assertionem, ut satis fusb consentit Galenus, ita notabilia sunt ejus verba, quod Na- tura malum sentiens, gestiat magnopere mederi. Et Corn. Celsus, lib. 3. c. i. Repugnante Natura, ait, nihil proficit Medicina. Imo nec deficients eadem, ut Hipp. lib. de arte monet, quicquam obtinet Med- ica ars, sed peril ceger. Dies deficiat, neque haec charta capiat, si plerosque tantum, qui comparent, testes Medicos Practices scriptores, citare liberet. Nimirum Quod tale Activum et Effectivum, Gubernans, dirigens, regens, Principium in Corpore Vivo praesto sit, tam in statu sano quam concusso, agens, vigilans, propugnans, omnes agnoscunt. " Ut undique NATURA, hoc sensu, ut Effectivum quoddam, et qui- dem Kvpiwi tale, Principium asseratur, quod, arbitrarie, agere non agere, recte aut perperam Organa sua actuare, iisque non magis uti, quam abuti queat. " Adornarunt hanc Doctrinae Medicae partem complures, turn Anti- quiores, turn propiorum temporum Doctores, sed non eodem omnes suc- cessu, nec forth eadem intentione. Prolixiores fuerunt Veteres, in illis 8 I'a/xeo'iv, als SioKiKetrai. rd c/oop, ut ipsam Hippocratis describit Galenus lib. de Crisibus, et 1. 5. de Sympt. Caus. Facultatem Corporis nostri Rectricem optima jure Natures nomine insigniendam, decernit. Sed inundavit hinc Facultatem variarum, congeries, & omnem Phy- siologies antiquioris paginam adeo absolvit, ut nihil offenderetur, quam merae Facilitates, Vitalis, Naturalis, Animalis, Genitalis, Rationalis, Eapultrix, Retentrix, Attractrix, Locomotrix, Coctrix, Excretrix, Sanguifica, Chylifica, &x. &c." To the Homoeopathic delusion, or shall we call it "persuasion," whose chief merit and mischief it is to be "not anything so much as a nothing which looks like a something," we owe the recognition, in a much more practical way than before, of the self-regulating principle in living bodies - the physician inside the skin. It is hardly neces- sary to state, that the best modern exposition of this doctrine, and its relation to therapeutics, is to be found in Sir John Forbes' courage- »us, thoughtful, and singularly candid little book, Art and Nature in the Cure of Disease. Many years ago, a countryman called on a physician in York. He was in the depths of dyspeptic despair, as often happens with the chaw- bacons. The doctor gave him some plain advice as to his food, mak- ing a thorough change, and ended by writing a prescription for some tonic, saying, "Take that, and come back in a fortnight." In ten *ay Gil ;s came in, blooming and happy, quite well. The doctor was DR. ANDREW COMBE. 143 delighted, and not a little proud of his skill. He asked tc see what he had given him. Giles said he had n't got it. " Where was it? " "I took it, Sir." "Took it ! what have you done with it ? " "I ate it, Sir ! you told me to take it! " We once told this little story to a Homoeopathic friend, adding, "Perhaps you think the iron in the ink may be credited with the cure ?" "Well," said my much-believing friend, "there is no saying." No saying, indeed ! and no thinking aither ! such matters lie at least in the region of the non-knowa 'e. DR. HENRY MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. " Te labor diligently, and to be content," says the son of Sirach, ' is a sweet life." " My greatest delight has been to promote a melioration of the con- dition of soldiers, and in the prosecution of this important object, 1 hope I have done some good." - Db. Marshall. DR. HENRY MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. BWENTY-FIVE years ago, the British soldier (taking ninety-nine out of a hundred) was a man who, when in the eye of the law a minor, had in a fit of passion, or when drunk, or from idleness, want, or to avoid civil punishment, sold his personal lib- erty, his life - in one word, himself - to the State with- out reservation. In return for this, he got a bounty of £3, 10s., which was taken back as soon as he was at- tested, to pay for his outfit - his kit, at it is called - and he enjoyed an annuity of Is. Id. a day, out of which, after paying his share of the mess, his shoes, etc., there remained of daily surplus abou 3d. The State provided lodging and medical attendance, and the name, but little else, of religious and general education. In (eturn, he put his will in the hands of the State, and was bound, at any time, and upon any ground, to destroy any other man's life, or lose his own, at the word of com- mand.1 He was, as rapidly as possible, drilled into that 1 Every one knows Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrbck's account of this in that fantastic and delightful book Sartor Resartus:- "What, speak- ing in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of sol- diers and of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil in the British village of Drumdrudge, usually some five hun- dred souls. From these, by certain 'natural enemies' of the French, there are necessarily selected, during the French war, say thirty able- bodied men. Drumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and 148 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. perfect man-slaying instrument, that consummate de- stroyer, that we and our enemies know him to be. And having no hope, no self-respect, no spiritual progression, nothing to look forward to, he sank into the sullen, stupid, indomitable human bull-dog. He lived in hope- less celibacy, shut out from the influence of any but the worst of the other sex. He became proverbially drunken, licentious, and profane. He knew his officer only to obey him, and often to hate and despise him. Memory and hope died within him ; for what had he to remember but his own early follies and fatal enlistment, or to anticipate but the chances of his being killed, or dying wretchedly of disease, or being turned off a stupid, helpless, and friendless old man ? No wonder that he nursed them ; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, and another build, another hammer or stitch, and the weakest can stand under thirty pounds avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected, all dressed in red, and shipped away at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain, and fed and scourged there till wanted. And now to that same spot in the south of Spain are thirty French handicraftsmen from a French Drumdrudge, in like manner wending ; till at length, after infinite effort and expense, the two parties actually meet, and thirty stand confronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word 'fire' is given, and they blow the souls out of one another ; and in place of sixty brisk, useful workmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as the devil is, not the smallest ; they lived far enough apart, nay, in so wide a world, there was even unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them How then 'I Simpleton ! Their governors had fallen out, and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make their poor block- heads shoot. In that fiction of the English Smollett, it is true, the final cessation of war is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth when the 'two natural enemies' (France and Britain) in person take each a tobacco-pipe filled with brimstone, light the same, and smoke in each ather's faces till one or both give in." DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 149 was, as is proved by the greater frequency of suicide in military than in civil life, more miserable and less care- ful of himself than other men. His daily routine was somewhat as follows : - He was drummed out of bed at five o'clock, his room being a large common dormitory, where three or four blackguards might make all the rest comfortless and silent. He rushed out of doors to the oump, and washed himself out of his hands, there being no basin provided for him, as he best could, and went to drill; breakfasted substantially, then out to parade, where he must be in proper trim, pipe-clay immaculate ; then through the everlasting round of " Attention! Eyes right! Stand at ease," etc. Dinner at one o'clock, of broth and boiled meat, and after that nothing to do till nine at night, or to eat till breakfast next morning. Can there be any wonder that the subjects of this system became so often drunkards, and ran into all sorts of low dissipation, ruining themselves, soul and body? Much of this evil is of course inherent and necessary; it is founded in the constitution of man that such should be, in the main, the result of such an unnatural state of things. But within these five-and-twenty years there have been numerous improvements. The soldier is now a freer, happier, healthier man, more intelligent and moral, and certainly not less efficient than he ever was since the institution of a standing army. In an admirable speech in February last, when mov- ing the estimates for the army, Mr. Sidney Herbert made the following remark : - " He did not believe that at any period had the soldier been more comforta- ble than at the present moment; " he might safely have said as comfortable as at the present moment. After showing that, by strict and continuous vigilance in this 150 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. department, in eighteen years, since 1835, " the pat* tern year of economy," there had been a reduction of £132,766, as compared with the estimate of that year, while, for the smaller sum, we maintained 21,000 men more, the cost of each man being £42, 15s. lid. in 1835, and in the present year £40, 3s. 6d., £10 of this being for the cost of the officers, making the expense of each private £30, 3s. 6d.; after making this exposition of the greater economy in the production and maintenance of our soldiers, Mr. Herbert went on to show that this had been effected not only without in any way curtailing their comforts^ but with an immense increase in their material and moral wellbeing. We shall mention some of the more marked causes and proofs of this gratifying and remarkable improvement in the condition of the army, as regards the intelligence, morality, health, and general condition of the common soldier. ls£, The Good-Conduct Pay has been increased to £65,000 a year. Formerly, every man got an increase of pay for long service ; now he gets Id. a day added to his pay at the end of every five years - it was at first seven - provided he has been clear of the defaulter's books for two years, and he carries one-half of it to his oension, in addition to the amount he is entitled to for length of service. This scheme is working well. 2d, Barrack Libraries have been instituted, and with signal benefit. There are now 150 libraries, with 117,000 volumes, and 16,000 subscribers, the men giv- ing a penny a month. 3d, Regimental Schools, remodelled by Mr. Herbert, whose plans were excellently carried out by Lord Pan- mure. After encountering much prejudice and objec- tion, this plan is going on prosperously. There are now DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 151 employed with different corps, sixty trained masters and sixteen assistants, a class of men very different from the old schoolmaster-sergeant. In the 77th Regiment, the school-roll amounts to 538 adults; the 35th, to 371; the 82d, to 270. This attendance is voluntary, and is paid for ; the only compulsory attendance being in the case >f recruits, so long as drilling lasts. 4th, Savings' Banks, established in 1844. In 1852, uhe number of depositors was 9447 ; the amount depos- ited, £111,920. 5th, Diminution of Punishments. - In 1838, the number of corporal punishments was 879; in 1851, 206 ; and in 1852 - the return being for the troops at home, and half the force on foreign stations - they were as low as 96, and all this without the slightest relaxa- tion of discipline. In 1838, the number of persons tried by courts-martial was in proportion to the entire effec- tive force as 1 in 11|. Now, it is only 1 in 16. bth, Increased Longevity. - There never were so few deaths per annum as at present. At the Mauritius and Ceylon the mortality has fallen from 43^ to 22J per 1000 - nearly one-half ; and at Hong-Kong, too famous for its deadly climate, more than one-half -150 to 69; while, in the East and West Indies and the Cape, in spite of pestilence and war, the diminution of deaths is most strongly marked. Add to all this, that unlimited service - the legal sanction of a man selling himself for life - no longer exists, having been abolished in 1847 •- thanks to Lord Panmure's courage and wisdom ; and we have an amount of misery, degradation, and crime prevented, and of comfort, health, and workmanlike efficiency gained, which it would be no easy matter to estimate at its full value and degree. In the case of such 152 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. an immense public benefit, it is well to do our best to discover in what quarter, and in what measure, as a nation, whom all this concerns so deeply, our gratitude and praise are due. To what, and to whom, do we owe all this ? The what is not far to seek. Under God, we owe this change for the better, like so many others which we are enjoying and forgetting, to that mighty agent which is in our day doing such wonders, and which will yet do more and greater - the spirit of the age-public opinion - of which, when so manifestly working out the highest interests of man, we may conditionally, and with rever- ence, say, in the words of " the Book of Wisdom," that it is " the very breath of the power of God - an under- standing spirit - kind to man, ready to do good, one only, yet manifold, not subject to hurt, which cannot be letted." This great social element, viewless, impalpa- ble, inevitable, untamable as the wind; vital, elastic, all- penetrating, all-encompassing as the air we breathe, the very soul of the body politic, is - like the great laws of nature - of which, indeed, it is itself one - for ever at its work; and like its Divine Author and Guide goes about continually doing good. Without it, what could any man, any government, do for the real good of man- kind ? It cannot be letted. If you are against it, get out of its way as you best can, and stand aside and won- der at its victorious inarch. But why not rather go with it, and by it ? This is that tide in the affairs of men - a Deo ad Deum - that onward movement of the race in knowledge, in power, in worth, and in happiness, which has gladdened and cheered all who believe, and who, through long ages of gloom, and misery, and havoc, have still believed that truth is strong, next to the Al- DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 153 mighty - that goodness is the law of His universe, and happiness its end, and who have faith in " That God which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off Divine event, To which the whole creation moves." It is a tide that has never turned; unlike the poet's, it answers the behest of no waning and waxing orb, it follows the eye of Him who is without variableness or the shadow of turning. And no man has yet taken it at its flood. It has its flux and reflux, its ebb and flow, its darkness and its bright light, its storm and calm; and, as a child who watched the rising tide, and saw the wave in the act of withdrawing itself, might, if it saw no more, say the sea was retreating, so with the world's progress in liberty, happiness, and virtue; some may think its best is over, its fulness past, its ebb far on; but let the child look again - let the patriot be of good cheer, and watch for the next wave, it may be a ninth, curling his monstrous head and hanging it - how it sweeps higher up the beach, tosses aside as very little things, into ruin and oblivion, or passes clear over them, the rocks and the noisy bulwarks of man's device, which had for long fretted and turned aside and baffled all for- mer waves ; and to the historic eye, these once formida- ble barriers may be seen far down in the clear waters, mdisturbing and undisturbed - the deep covering them, - it may be seen what they really were, how little or how big. If our readers wish to imagine how the power of public opinion, this tide of time, deals with its ene- mies and with its friends - how it settles its quarrels and attains its ends, and how, all at once and unexpect- edly, it may be seen flowing in, without let or hindrance 154 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE " Whispering how meek and gentle it can be," let him go down to the sea-shore, and watch the rising tide, coming on lazily at first, as if without aim or pith, turned aside by any rock, going round it, covering it by and by, swayed and troubled by every wind, shadowed by every passing cloud, as if it were the ficklest of all things, and had no mind of its own; he will, however, notice, if he stays long enough, that there is one thing it is always doing, the one thing it most assuredly will do, and that is, to move on and up, to deepen and ex- tend. So is it with the advance of truth and goodness over our world. Whatever appearances may be, let us rest assured the tide is making, and is on its way to its fulness. We are aware that in speaking of such matters, it is not easy to avoid exaggeration both in thought and ex- pression ; but we may go wrong, not less by feeling and speaking too little, than by feeling and speaking too much. It is profane and foolish to deify public opinioiz, or, indeed, anything; but it is not right, it is not safe to err on the other' side, to ignore and vilipend. In one sense, public opinion is a very commonplace subject; in another, it is one of the chiefest of the ways of God, one of the most signal instruments in his hand, for mov- ing on to their consummation his undisturbed affairs. There never was a time in the world's history, and there never was a nation, in which this mighty agent made head as it is doing now, and in ours. Everywhere and over every department of human suffering and need, it is to be found arising with healing under its wings That it goes wrong and does wrong is merely to say that it works by human means; but that in the main it on the right road and on the right errand, and that DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 155 thus far it is Divine, and has in it the very breath of the power of God, no man, surely, who discerns the times and the seasons will deny; to use the eloquent words of Maurice : " In a civilized country - above all, in one which possesses a free press - there is a certain power, mysterious and indefinite in its operations, but producing the most obvious and mighty effects, which we call pub- lic opinion. It is vague, indefinite, intangible enough, no doubt; but is not that the case with all the powers which affect us most in the physical world ? The further men advance in the study of nature, the more these in- controllable, invincible forces make themselves known. If we think with some of mysterious affinities, of some one mighty principle which binds the elements of the universe together, why should we not wonder, also, at these moral affinities, this more subtle magnetism, which bears witness that every man is connected by the most intimate bonds with his neighbor, and that no one can live independently of another?" We believe that in the future, and it may be not very far-off history of our world, this associative principle, this attractive, quickening power, is destined to work wonders in its own region, to which the marvels of phys- ical science in our days will be as nothing. Society, as a great normal institute of human nature, is a power whose capacities in its own proper sphere of action, such as it now exhibits, or has ever exhibited, and such as it is destined hereafter to exhibit, are to each other as is the weight, the momentum of a drop of water, to the energy of that drop converted into steam and compressed and s§t a-working. We believe this will be one of the crowning discoveries and glories of our race, about which, as usual, we have been long enough, and of which, when 156 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. it comes, every one will say, " How did we never dis- cover that before ? - how easy ; how simple 1 " Soci- ety is of the essence of unfallen man ; it is normal; it preceded and will survive the loss of Eden ; it belongs to the physiology of human nature. Government, be it of the best, must always have to do (and the more strictly the better) with its pathology - with its fall. Were original sin abolished to-morrow, the necessity, the very materials of Government would cease. Society and all her immense capabilities would once more be at home, and full of life, and go on her way rejoicing. Education, religion, and many other things, all belong by right and by natural fitness to Society ; and Govern- ment has been trying for thousands of years to do her work and its own, and has, as a matter of course, bun- gled both. But we have less to do at present with this wonder- working power, than with those who were the first to direct and avail themselves of it, for forwarding and se- curing the welfare of the common soldier, who had been so long shut out from its beneficent impulse. These men, simple-minded, public-hearted, industrious, resolute, did not work for gratitude - they would not have worked the worse, however, with it. They are gone elsewhere, where no gratitude of ours can affect them; but it is not the less right, and good, and needful for that great creature, the public, to be made to feel this gratitude, and to let it go forth in hearty acknowl- edgment. This is a state of mind which blesses quite as much him who gives, as him who receives; and nothing would tend more to keep the public heart right, £nd the public conscience quick and powerful, than doing our best to discover what we owe, and .o whom; and as DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 157 members of the body politic, let our affection and admi ration take their free course. One of the best signs of our times is the extension, and deepening, and clarifying of this sense of public duty, of our living not for our- selves, of what we owe to those who have served their generation - the practical recognition, in a word, not only that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, but that, according to the interpretation of the word reserved for the Divine Teacher, every man is our neighbor. The difficulties in the way of any amelioration in the moral condition and bodily comforts of the soldier must of necessity be great, and all experience confirms this. A body of men such as, in a country like ours, a stand- ing army with service for life, and pay below the wages of the laboring classes, must unavoidably consist of, is one the reform of which might deter and dishearten any man, and excuse most. Haw often have we been told that flogging was a necessary evil; that unlimited ser- vice was the stay of the army ; that knowledge would make the men discontented, useless, and mischievous I "Soldiers," said Mr. Pulteney in 1732, "are a body of men distinct from the body of the people; they are gov erned by different laws. Blind obedience is their only principle." Bruce, in his Institutions of Military Law, 1717, gives what we doubt not was a true account of the composition of European armies in his day: - "If all infamous persons, and such as have committed capital crimes, heretics, atheists, (!) and all dastardly and effem- inate men, were weeded out of the army, it would soon be reduced to a pretty moderate number, the greater part of the soldiery being men of so ignoble, disingenu* ous tempers, that they cannot be made obedient to the Allurements of rewards ; nay, coercion being, generally 158 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. speaking, the surest principle of all vulgar obedience. There is, therefore," he grimly adds, " another part of military institution fitted to such men's capacities, and these are the various punishments" (and such a cata- logue of horrors!) " awarded to their crimes, which, as goads, may drive these brutish creatures who will not be attracted." 1 We are now at last trying the principle of attraction, and are finding it succeeds here, as it does elsewhere - keeping all thing sweet and strong, from the majestic ordinances of heaven, to the guidance of a village school. It is too true that Lord Melville in 1808, in his place in the House of Lords, when opposing Mr. Wyndham's most humane and judicious Army Bill, said, " the worst men make the best soldiers ; " and if we look back on the history of the army, the degradations, the miseries, and hardships of the common soldier, we can- not help inferring that this monstrous dogma had been even improved upon, so as to reduce to their lowest the characteristics of humanity, and resolve his entire nature into a compound of strength and stupidity. With such opinions as Lord Melville's prevailing in civil, and not less in military life, it was no easy matter to set up as a military reformer. If the worst man made the best soldier, it was a contradiction in terms to think of mak- ing the man in any degree better. The converse was the logical sequence; to find the worst man, and by all means make him a worser still. Things are changed, and have been changing; and that humane spirit, that sense of responsibility as regards the happiness and wel- 1 This was not the principle of one of the greatest of men and of soldiers. Cicero says of Julius Caesar, there was never an ito in his commands, but only a veni, as if he scorned to be less or more than kheir leader. DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 159 fare of our fellow-men on which we have already en- larged, and which is one of the most signal blessings of our time, has penetrated into this region, and Lord Mel ville's dogma is in the fair way of being overthrown and reversed. It is now no longer legal for a British subject to sell himself, body and soul, for life. For this we have mainly to thank Lord Panmure, one of the ablest and best secretaries the War Office has ever seen. But while we most heartily acknowledge the great services of Lord Hardinge, Lord Grey, Mr. Ellice, Sir George Arthur, Sir Charles Napier, Colonel Lindsay, Lord Panmure, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and many others, in urg- ing and carrying out all these ameliorations and re- forms ; and while we cannot easily overrate the value of the labors of Lieutenant-Colonel Tulloch and Dr. Graham Balfour in working out the vital statistics of the army, and demonstrating their practical bearing on the prevention of misery and crime and death, and the increased comfort and efficiency of the service; we are, we feel sure, only saying what every one of these public- spirited men will be readiest to confirm, that to the late Dr. Henry Marshall is due the merit of having been the first in this great field, - the sower of the seed - the setter agoing of this current of research and reform which has achieved so much. There is not one of these many improvements which he did not, in his own quiet, but steady and unflinching wa^, argue for, and urge, and commend, and prove, many years before they were ac- knowledged or taken up by the higher authorities. We find him, when a mere lad, at the Cape, in the begin- ning of the century, making out tables of the diseases of the soldiers, of the comparative health of different sta- tions and ages and climates; investigating the relation 160 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. of degradation, ignorance, crime, and ill-usage, to the efficiency of the army and to its cost; and from that time to the last day of his life devoting his entire ener- gies to devising and doing good to the common soldier. And all this, to say the least of it, without much assist- ance from his own department (the medical), till the pleasant time came when the harvest was to be reaped, and the sheaves taken victoriously home. " Have you seen Marshall's Miscellany 2 " said a friend to Lord Panmure, when he was Secretary at War. " Seen it! " exclaimed he, " why, Marshall's book is my Bible in all that relates to the welfare of the soldier." And it is not less honorable to our late Com mander-in-Chief than to Dr. Marshall, that when pre- sented by the author with a copy of this book, his Lord- ship said, " Your book should be in the hands of every army surgeon, and in every orderly-room in the service." Any man who knows what the army is and was, and what the prejudices of the best military men often were, - and who has also read thoroughly the work we refer to, and has weighed well all it is for, and all it is against, and all that it proves, - will agree with us in saying, that for Lord Hardinge to express, and for Dr. Marshall to deserve, such a compliment, is no small honor to both. Dr. Marshall, to have done so much good, made the least noise about it of any public man we ever knew. He was eminently quiet in all his ways; the very re- verse of your loud man; he made no spasmodic efforts, he did nothing by fits or starts, nothing for effect; he flowed on incredibili lenitate, with a ceaseless and clear but powerful flow. He was a philosopher without know- ing it, and without many others knowing it; but, if to ^ace effects up to their causes, to bring good out of evil DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 161 and order out of confusion, to increase immensely the happiness of his fellow-men, be wisdom, and the love of it, then was this good man a philosopher indeed. Henry Marshall was born in the parish of Kilsyth in 1775. His father was a man of singular simplicity and worth, and besides his own excellent example, and in spite of his slender means, he gave both his sons a col- lege education. In May 1803, Henry became surgeon's mate in the royal navy, a service he left in September 1804; and in January 1805 was appointed assistant- surgeon to the Forfarshire regiment of militia. In April 1806, he became assistant-surgeon to the first bat- talion of the 89th regiment, which embarked in Febru- ary 1807 for South America, thence to the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon. In May 1809, he was ap- pointed assistant-surgeon to the 2d Ceylon Regiment, and in April 1813, was promoted to be surgeon of the 1st Ceylon Regiment. In December of the same year he was removed to the staff, but continued to serve in the island till the spring of 1821, when he returned home; and soon after his arrival he was appointed to the staff of North Britain, his station being Edinburgh. We shall now give a short account of his principal writings, and of the effect they had in attaining the great object of his long and active life, which, in his own words, was " to excite attention to the means which may meliorate the condition of the soldier, and exalt his moral and intellectual character." 1817.-"Description of the Laurus Cinnamomum," read before the Royal Society at the request of Sir Jo- seph Banks, and published in the Annals of Philosophy of that year. 1821. - "Notes on the Medical Topography of the 162 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. interior of Ceylon, and on the Health of the Troops employed in the Provinces during the years 1815 to 1820, with brief Remarks on the prevailing Diseases." London, 1821. 8vo, pp. 228. The great merit of this little book consisted in the numerical statistics it con- tains regarding the mortality and diseases of the troops - a new feature in medical works at the time it was published. His next publication was in 1823. - "Observations on the Health of the Troops in North Britain, during a period of Seven years, from 1816 to 1822." - London Medical and Physical Journal. The numerical portion of these observations was an attempt, and at the same time a novel one, to collect and arrange the facts illus- trative of the amount of sickness and the ratio of mor- tality among a body of troops for a specific period. In November 1823, Dr. Marshall was removed from Edinburgh to Chatham, and in April 1825, was ap- pointed to the recruiting depot, Dublin. In 1826, he published " Practical Observations on the Inspection of Recruits, including Observations on Feigned Diseases." .Edin. Med. and Surgical Journal, vol. xxvi. p. 225. 1828. - " Hints to Young Medical Officers of the Army on the Examination of Recruits and the Feigned Disabilities of Soldiers." London, 1828. 8vo, pp. 224. The official documents contained in this volume are in- teresting, in as far as they show the difficulty of the duty of selecting recruits, and the very limited informa- tion the authorities, both military and medical, appear to have had on the subject. It is full of interest even to the general reader, opening up one of the most sin- gular and most painful manifestations of human charac- ter, and affording the strongest proofs of the inherent DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 163 misery and degradation of the life of the British com- mon soldier. In reading it, it is difficult to know which to wonder most at - the despair and misery that must prompt, the ingenuity that can invent, and the dogged resolution that can carry out into prolonged execution, and under every species of trial, the endless fictions of every conceivable kind therein described ; or the shrewd- ness, the professional sagacity, and the indomitable energy with which Dr. Marshall detects, and gives to others the means of detecting, these refuges of lies. This was the first, and still is the best work in our lan- guage on this subject; the others are mere compilations, indebted to Dr. Marshall for their facts and practical suggestions. In January 1828, Sir Henry (afterwards Viscount) Hardinge was appointed Secretary at War. One of the numerous important subjects connected with the admin- istration of the war department which early engaged his attention was the large and rapidly increasing pen- sion list. For a period of several months he labored hard to obtain information on the practical working of the existing pensioning warrants, chiefly from the un- satisfactory documents found at Chelsea Hospital. He soon discovered many abuses in the system then in oper- ation. As a means of helping him to abate the abuses in question, he directed a Medical Board to assemble, of which Dr. Marshall was appointed a member, the spe- cific duty of the Board being as follows: - " For the purpose of revising the regulations which relate to the business of examining and deciding upon the cases of soldiers recommended for discharge from the service." The object of the proposed inquiry is to ascertain what description of disabilities ought to be pensioned, and 164 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. what not." The pension list at this time stood as fol- lows : - 19,065 pensioners, at 6d. a day, average age thirty-one years ; alleged causes of being discharged, in- juries or bad health. 16,630 at 9d. a day, for service and disability combined. 21,095 at Is. a day, for length of service and wounds. 1,100 at Is. 9d., blind. 27,625 no causes of disability assigned. 85,515 The list had increased greatly during a period of peace, and it was annually increasing. The mean rate of pension was 10|d., and the annual amount £1,436,663 ; the annual rate of mortality among the pensioners being about four per cent. During the sitting of the Board, Dr. Marshall collected some practical information on the pensioning question; and on returning to Dublin, in December 1828, he drew up a comprehensive scheme for pensioning soldiers, upon what he considered improved principles. Under the title of " Cursory Observations on the Pensioning of Sol- diers," he forwarded his scheme to Lord Hardinge; and he had the satisfaction of finding that a new pension warrant was made, founded on the same principles as his " Scheme," namely, ls^, length of service; 2d, wounds received before the enemy ; 3d, greatly impaired health after fifteen years' service; ^th, anomalous disabilities, special cases, which require to be particularly considered. By Mr. Wyndham's Act of 1806, every man who was discharged as disabled was entitled to a pension fcr life, without reference to the time he had served ; and, by the subsequent amendments and alterations, disabilities DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 165 and not service constituted the chief claim for a pension. This mode of obtaining a pension opened a wide door for fraud of various kinds. The Pensioning Warrant of the Secretary at War went through a number of editions, both in manuscript and in print. In 1829, Dr. Marshall published "Observations on the Pensioning of Soldiers." - United Service Journal, 1829, part ii. p. 317. - This paper has a peculiar inter- est, inasmuch as it gives an account of the frauds which had been committed in the army by the erasure and alteration of figures, and which had only lately been dis- covered. The falsification of records by this means was found, upon investigation, to have been practised to a considerable extent in almost every regiment in the ser- vice. 1829. - " Historical Notes on Military Pensions." - United Service Journal. 1830. - "Notes on Military Pensions."-United Service Journal. Early in 1830, Dr. Marshall communicated to Lord Hardinge a paper on the abuse of intoxicating liquors by the European troops in India, and on the impolicy of uniformly and indiscriminately issuing spirit rations to soldiers. An abstract of this paper was subsequently published under the following title : - 1830. - "Observations on the Abuse of Spirituous Liquors by the European Troops in India, and of the Impolicy of uniformly and indiscriminately issuing Spirit Rations to Soldiers."-Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xli. p. 10. Lord Hardinge carried into effect the suggestions contained in this paper with remarkable promptitude; 166 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. indeed, it would be difficult to praise too highly his Lordship's conduct in this matter, whether in regard to his discrimination in perceiving and appreciating the evils of the usage, his firmness in abolishing it at once, or his wisdom and courage in surmounting the preju- dices xof a large portion of all ranks in the army. Within a week after he received it, he had commenced measures to abolish the indiscriminate issue of spirit rations to sol- diers on board ship and on foreign stations. So long as a quantity of spirits, amounting to about six or seven ounces (in India it was the 20th part of a gallon), formed part of the regular diet or daily ration of a soldier which he was obliged to swallow or to throw away, what ra- tional hope could be entertained that the exertions of commanding officers, however well directed, would have much effect in checking drunkenness ? The indiscrimi- nate daily use of spirits is not necessary for the efficiency or health of troops in any climate, and their abuse is a fertile source of disabilities, diseases, and crimes, both moral and military. To drink daily nearly half a pint of spirits was then a part of the duty of a soldier; and that this duty might be effectually executed, it was the usage of the service, in many stations, to have it per- formed under the superintendence of a commissioned officer, who certified to his commanding officer that he had witnessed each man drink his dram or ration of spirits. Perhaps a more successful plan for converting temperate men into drunkards could not have been in- vented. During 1829, Dr. Marshall was attached to the War Office, and in 1830, he was promoted to the rank of deputy-inspector of hospitals by Lord Hardinge. Here ended his active service in the army, and he was placed an half-pay. DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 167 Shortly after the promulgation of the instructions for the guidance of medical officers in the duty of examin- ing recruits, which were drawn up by Dr. Marshall, and were the result of a most laborious and difficult in- quiry, it occurred to Lord Hardinge, that the publica- tion of this document, together with the pensioning warrant, and other relative papers, accompanied by a suitable commentary, would be useful, in the form of a small volume, for the information of officers of the army; with this object, Dr. Marshall published in - 1832. - " On the Enlisting, the Discharging, and the Pensioning of Soldiers, with the Official Documents on these Branches of Military Duty." London, 1832. 8vo, pp. 243. In the summer of this year, Dr. Marshall married Anne, eldest daughter of James Wingate, Esq. of West- shiels. This union was, as we often said, the best earthly blessing of a long and happy life. 1833. - "Contributions to Statistics of the Army, with some Observations on Military Medical Returns. No. I." - Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xl. p. 36. It would be a work of supererogation for us to say one word in favor of military statistics, as a means of illus- trating the condition of an army. For some time, how- ever, after the publication of this paper, the utility of condensing and arranging medical returns was but very partially recognized; and Dr. Marshall's " array " of figures was laughed and sneered at by some who ought to have known better. 1833. - "Contributions to Statistics of the Army. No. II." - Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. xl. p. 307. 168 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 1834. - "Sketch of the Geographical Distribution of Diseases." - Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Jour nal, vol. xxxviii. p. 330. 1834. - "Abstract of the Returns of the Sick of the Troops belonging to the Presidency of Fort - George, Madras, for the years 1827 to 1830." - Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xxxix. p. 133. 1834. - " On the Mortality of the Infantry of the French Army."-Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Jour- nal, vol. xlii. p. 34. 1835. - " Observations on the Influence of a Tropical Climate upon the Constitution and Health of natives of Great Britain."-Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Jour- nal, vol. xliv. p. 28. 1835. - "Contributions to Statistics of the British A my. No. III." - Edinburgh Medical and Surgicac Journal, vol. xliv. p. 353. In 1835, Dr. Marshall, along with Sir A. M. Tulloch (who has done such excellent service since) was ap- pointed to investigate the statistics of the sickness, mor- tality, and invaliding of the British army. Their report on the sickness, mortality, and invaliding among the troops in the West Indies was laid before Parliament the following year. This report produced a change which was nothing short of a revolution in this department of military pol- ty; it destroyed the old established notion of seasoning. The period of service in Jamaica used to be nine or ten years ; this is now divided between it and the Medi- terranean stations and British America. The reason alleged for keeping them so long, in so notoriously un healthy a station, was the military and medical fallacy that Europeans by length of residence became " sea DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENF. 169 Boned." This fallacy, which had been the source of so much misery, and crime, and death, and expense, was completely dissipated by these statistical returns, from which it was found that (as in every other case) mortal- ity depended upon age, and that young soldiers lived longer there than older ones, however " seasoned " by residence or disease. The annual mortality of the tioops in Jamaica was thirteen in the hundred by the medical returns, but the actual mortality amounted to about two per cent, more, a mortality of which we may give some idea, by stating that a soldier serving one year in Jamaica encountered as much risk of life as in six such actions as Waterloo,- there one in forty fell, in Jamaica one in seven annually. No wonder that the poor soldier, knowing that eight or nine years must elapse before he left this deadly place, and seeing a seventh comrade die every year, lost all hope, mind and body equally broken down, and sank into drunkenness and an earlier grave. He eventually concluded, that it is a glorious climate where a man is always " dry " and has always plenty to drink. Another evil pointed out by this able report was that produced by the use of salted provisions. This practice was immediately changed. It also brought to light a curious and important fact, that in the barracks situated at Maroon Town, Jamaica, 2000 feet above the sea, the annual mortality was only 32 per 1000, while at Up-Park Camp, nearly on the level of the sea, it was 140 per 1000. The knowledge of this extraordinary, but till the report, undiscovered fact,1 has been acted upon with eminent benefit; so much so, that, had it been known during the seventeen years previ- ously, the lives of 1387 men, and £27,740, might have 1 See Note at the end of this Paper. 170 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. been saved. We never met with a more remarkable in stance of the practical effects of statistics.1 1837.-"Contribution to Statistics of the Sickness and Mortality which occurred among the Troops em- ployed on the Expedition to the Scheldt, in the year 1809." - Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xlviii. p. 305. 1839. -" Contribution to Statistics of Hernia among Recruits for the British, and Conscripts for the French Army." - Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. 1. p. 15. 1839. - "On the Enlisting, Discharging, and Pen- sioning of Soldiers, with the Official Documents on these branches of Military Duty." Second Edition. Edinburgh, 1839. 1846. - " Military Miscellany." 8vo. London, 1846. This most entertaining and effective book is a com- plete epitome of its author's mind and character; it has something of everything that was peculiar to him. Al- though dissuaded by his military friends - with only one exception - from publishing it, as being likely to produce dissatisfaction in the ranks, and offend com- manding officers; no such effect followed, but the re- verse. It is, as its name denotes, not so much a treatise, as a body of multifarious evidence, enabling any man of ordinary humanity and sense to make up his mind on 'he various questions handled in it, - Recruiting - en- listment- moral and physicial qualities of recruits - duration of engagement - suicide in the army, its greater frequency than in civil life, and the reason of this - 1 Any one wishing a fuller account of this memorable experiment and its results will find it in an admirable paper by Sir A. M. Tul loch, K. C. B., read before the Statistical Society in 1847. DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 171 punishments - rewards-vices and virtues of soldiers •- pensions - education ; these, and such like, are the subjects which are not so much discussed, as exhibited and proved. At the time the Miscellany came out, many things concurred in rapidly promoting its great end. The public mind having been enlightened on the evils of flogging in the army, and of perpetual service, was bestirring itself in its own rough and vague but energetic way; there was a "clamour" on these sub- jects; Dr. Fergusson's eloquent and able though some- what exaggerative "Notes and Reminiscences of Pro- fessional Life," published after his death, advocated much the same views as Dr. Marshall, and three elabor- ate and powerful articles in the Times on these two books and their subjects, written with great ability and tact, had excited the attention of the nation, when this was brought to its operative point, by one of those de- plorable incidents out of which not seldom comes imme- diate and great good ; the sort of event which beyond all others rouses the British people and makes it act as one man, and in this case, fortunately, they were well informed before being roused. The first of the three articles in the Times appeared on the 2d of July 1846, and straightway, - as a practical lecture concludes by the exhibition of a crucial and decisive experiment, - on the Uth of the same month a soldier died at Houns- low, apparently from the effects of punishment inflicted in the previous month. This sealed the fate of the flogging system. The idea of Frederick John White of the 7th Hussars, "a brave fellow, who walked away whistling," and was said to be "gentlemanly, affable, and mild," dying of flogging at John Bull's very door, was too much for John and his family, and one of the 172 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. things he could stand no longer. The Commander-in« Chief instantly directed that henceforth fifty lashes should be the maximum. At the time, much of this re- sult was attributed, in the public prints and in Parlia- ment, to Dr. Marshall's book. Next session of Parlia- ment more was done for bettering the lot of the common soldier.1 The present Lord Panmure introduced a bill into Parliament, limiting the period for which a soldier enlists to twelve years in the cavalry and ordnance, and ten in the infantry, instead of as formerly for life, which, after considerable discussion, was passed; continual ref- erence was made in the debates to the Miscellany, and its author had the satisfaction of witnessing the com- pletion of those cardinal ameliorations. We cannot convey a juster idea of this homely, unpretending vol- ume, than in the generous words of a distinguished Bel- gian physician (M. Fallot):-" C'est 1'ouvrage d'un homme possedant parfaitement la matiere, ayant passe la plus grande partie de sa vie & dtudier le caractere, les moeurs et les besoins des soldats au milieu desquels il vivait et au bien-etre desquels il avait voue son exist- ence. Ayant autant d'eldvation dans les vues que d'in- dependance dans 1'esprit, il a aper^u les defauts partout oil ils existaient, et a eu le courage de les mettre a nu et de les signaler. A ceux qui craindraient que le me- 1 The sale of spirituous liquors in canteens was abolished at this time, and with the very best results. Colonel the Hon. James Lind- say, M. P., has the merit of having contributed mainly to the removal of this crying evil. His speech on moving for an inquiry into the canteen system is a model of the manner in which such subjects should be handled - clear, compact, soldier-like. He makes the fol. .owing just, but often overlooked distinction -" He believed it woula not be difficult to show, that though an habitual drunkard and an hab itual drinker were two different things, the one was as great an ex Dense to the country as the other." DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 173 moire ne fut trop serieux ou trop monotone, je dois dire que la foule d'anecdotes piquantes, de citations heureuses et opportunes, dont le memoire est seme, reposent et distraient agreablement 1'esprit du lecteur." Dr. Marshall's last publication on military subjects was in 1849 - "Suggestions for the Advancement of Alilitary Medical Literature." These were his parting vords for the service he had devoted the energies of a *ong lifetime to - a sort of legacy bequeathed to those who were going forward in the same good work. He was then laboring under a mortal disease, one of the most painful and terrible to which our flesh is heir - of ts real nature and only termination he was, with his usual sagacity, aware from the first, and yet with all this, we never got a kinder welcome, never saw one more cheerful, or more patient in listening to what con- cerned only others. He used to say, " This is bad, very bad, in its own way as bad as can be, but everything else is good: my home is happy ; my circumstances are good; I always made a little more than I spent, and it has gathered of course; my life has been long, happy, busy, and I trust useful, and I have had my fill of it; I have lived to see things accomplished, which I desired, ardently longed for, fifty years ago, but hardly hoped ever to see." With that quiet, rational courage, which was one of his chief but hidden qualities, he possessed his soul in patience in the midst of intense suffering, and continued to enjoy and to use life for its best pur- noses to the last. Of religion, and especially of his own religion, he was not in the habit of speaking much; when he did, it was shortly and to the purpose, and in a way which made every one feel that the root of the matter was in him. 174 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. His views of God, of sin, and of himself, and his relation to his Maker and the future, were of the simplest and most operative kind. When in Ceylon, and living much alone, away from religious books and ordinances, and religious talk, and controversy, and quarrel, - away also from that religiosity which is one of the curses of our time, - he studied his New Testament, and in this, as in every other matter, made up his mind for himself. Not that he avoided religious conversation, but he seemed never to get over the true sacredness of anything con- nected with his own personal religion. It was a favorite expression of his, that religion resolved itself into won- der and gratitude - intelligent wonder; humble and ac- tive gratitude - such wonder and such gratitude as the New Testament calls forth. Dr. Marshall, as may readily be supposed, was not what the world calls a genius; had he been one, he prob- ably would not have done what he did. Yet he was a man of a truly original mind; he had his own way of saying and doing everything; he had a knack of taking things at first-hand; he was original,inasmuch as he con trived to do many things nobody else had done; a sort of originality worth a good deal of "original genius." And like all men of a well-mixed, ample, and genial nature, he was a humorist of his own and that a very genuine kind; his short stories, illustrative of some great principle in morals or in practical life, were admirable and endless in number; if he had not been too busy about more serious matters, he might have filled a vol- ume with anecdotes, every one of them at once true and new, and always setting forth and pointing some vital truth. Curiously enough, it was in this homely humor that the strength and the consciousness of strength. DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 175 which one might not have expected from his mild man- ner and his spare and fragile frame, came out; his sa- tire, his perfect appreciation of the value and size of those he had in view, and his " pawky " intuition into the motives and secret purposes of men, who little thought they were watched by such an eye, - was one of the most striking and gravely comic bits of the mental picturesque; it was like Mind looking at and taking the measure and the weight of Body, and Body standing by grandly unconscious and disclosed ; and hence it was that, though much below the average height, no one felt as if he were little - he was any man's match. His head and eye settled the matter; he had a large, com- pact, commanding brain, and an eye singularly intelli- gent, inevitable, and calm. Dr. Marshall died on the 5th May 1851, at Edin- burgh, where he had for many years lived. Though out of the service, he was constantly occupied with some good work, keeping all his old friends, and making new and especially young ones, over whom he had a singular power ; he had no children, but he had the love of a father for many a youth, and the patience of a father too. In his married life, to use his own words, " I got what I was in search of for forty years, and I got this at the very time it was best for me, and I found it to be better and more than I ever during these forty long years had hoped for." Had such a man as Dr. Marshall appeared in France, or indeed anywhere else than in Britain, he would have been made a Baron at the least. He did not die the less contented that he was not; and we must suppose, that there is some wise though inscrutable final cause why aur country, in such cases, makes virtue its own and 176 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. only reward, and is leonum arida nutrix, a very dry nurse indeed. Besides the publications we have mentioned, in con- nection with military statistics and hygiene, Dr. Mar- shall published a history and description of Ceylon, which, after all the numerous works on " the utmost Indian isle," remains at once the shortest, the fullest, and the best. He also published on the cocoa-nut tree, and a sketch of the geographical distribution of disease, besides many other occasional papers, in all of which he makes out something at once new and true. In the well-weighed words of Dr. Craigie: " He was the first to show how the multiplied experience of the medical officers of the British Army at home and abroad, by methodical arrangement and concentration, might be ap- plied by the use of computation, to furnish exact and useful results in medical statistics, medical topography, the geographical relations of diseases, medical hygiene, and almost every other branch of military medicine. Dr. Marshall must indeed be regarded as the father and founder of military medical statistics, and of their varied applications." We end our notice of this truly excellent public servant, with his own dying words: " In many respects, I consider myself one of the most fortunate in- dividuals who ever belonged to the medical department of the army. Through a long life I have enjoyed almost uninterrupted good health, and my duties have been a pleasure to me. Having generally had some literary undertaking on hand, more or less connected with mili tary hygiene, I have enjoyed much intellectual gratifica- tion. ' To labor diligently, and to be content (says the son of Sirach), is a sweet life.' My greatest delight has been to promote a melioration of the condition of sol DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 177 diers, and in the prosecution of this important object, I hope I have done some good. I have much reason to be grateful to Divine Providence for the many blessings I have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy. Although my elementary education was extremely limited, my profes- sional instruction defective, and my natural talents mod- erate, I have no reason to complain of my progress and standing in the service.- Every step of advancement which I gained in the army was obtained without diffi- culty. When I look back upon my progress in life, it seems to me that I have been led ' in a plain path,' and that my steps have been ' ordered.' " We had intended giving some account of the medical military worthies who preceded Dr. Marshall, but we have left ourselves no space. Among them may be reckoned Sir John Pringle, the earliest and one of the best;1 Drs. Brocklesby, the 1 Sir John Pringle was truly what his epitaph in Westminster Abbey calls him, egregius vir - a man not of the common herd; a man in ad- rance of his age. He is our earliest health reformer, the first who in this country turned his mind and that of the public to hygiene as a part of civil polity. In the Library of the Royal College of Physicians jf Edinburgh, there were deposited by him, in 1781, a year before his leath, ten large folios of mss., entitled "Medical Annotations," form- ng the most remarkable record we have ever seen of the active intelli- gence and industry of a physician in the course of an immense London practice. Among other valuable matter, these volumes contain a ''Treatise on Air, Climate, Diet, and Exercise," as subjects concern- jig public as well as personal health, which indicates, in a very inter- esting manner, the infantile condition of this science at that time, and the author's singularly liberal, sagacious, and practical opinions. This treatise is continued from time to time through many volumes, and jnust have been many years in writing. It is much to be regretted, that by the terms of his gift of these mss., the College is forbidden ever to publish any of them. When a history of vital statistics and hygiene is written, as we trust it may soon be, and we know of only ■jne man (Dr. Farr) who can fulfil this task, this treatise, fating nearly 178 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. generous friend of Burke and Johnson ; D. Monro; R Somerville; R. Jackson, whose system of arrangement and discipline for the medical department of the army is most valuable and judicious, and far in advance of its date, 1805; Cheyne, Lempriere, and Fergusson. All these reformers, differing as they often did in the specific objects and expedients they each had in view, agreed in the great, but then imperfectly known and recognized, principle, that prevention is not only better, but easier and cheaper, than cure - that health is more managea- ble than disease - and that in military, as in civil life, by discovering and attending to the laws by which God regulates the course of nature, and the health of his ra- tional creatures, immense evils may be prevented with the utmost certainty, which evils, if once incurred, no skill and art can countervail: in the one case, nature in her courses fights for, in the other against, us; - serious odds! When and how is the world to be cured of its passion 100 years back, will deserve its due, as the herald of so much after good. Besides being, what only one other Scotchman, we believe, ever has been (the Earl of Morton), President of the Royal Society, he was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh ; and his observations on the diseases of the army, so famous in his day, with his discourse on some late improvements in preserving the health of mariners, may still be read with advantage for their accurate de- scription, their hum me spirit, and plain good sense, and stand out in marked contrast to the error, ignorance, and indifference then preva- lent in all matters concerning the prevention of disease. His greatest glory in his own day is his least now, his epitaph bearing on its front hat he was the man - " Quem celcissima Walli® Princessa Regina serenissima, Ipsius denique Regis Majestas, Medicum sibi comprobavit." DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE 179 for the game of war ? As to the when, ^ve may safely say it is not yet come. In her voyage down the great stream, our world has not yet slid into that spacious and blessed Pacific, where " Birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave." We have no more got this length than we have that to which a friend of the author of The New Moral World so eagerly looked forward, when she asked him - ' When shall we arrive at that state of pudity, When we shall all walk about in our native nudity ? " We fear we cannot yet dispense altogether either with our clothes or our cartridges. We cannot afford to beat all our swords into ploughshares. But we as firmly be- lieve that we are on our way to this, and that the fight- ing peace-men are doing much good. The idea of peace, as a thing quite practicable, is gaining the ear of the public, and from thence it will find its way into its brain, and down to its heart, and thence out in act by its will. We have no doubt that the time is coming when, for a great trading nation like ours, supplying a world with knowledge, calico, and tools, to keep an im- mense army and navy will be as manifestly absurd and unbusiness-like, as it would be for a bagman from Man- chester, or a traveller from " The Row," to make his rounds among his customers, armed cap-a-pie, soliciting orders with his circular in one hand, and a Colt's re- volver in the other. As to the how, chiefly in three ways: First, By the commercial principle of profit and loss, - of a heavy balance against, coming to influence the transactions of nations, as it has long done those of private and social life - free-trade, mutual connection and intercourse, the proof, publicly brought out, that the 180 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. interest of the body-politic is also that of every one of its members, and the good of the whole that also spe- cially of each part - the adoption, not merely in theory but in practice, of a law of nations, by the great leading powers, and the submitting disputes regarding territory, commerce, and all the questions arising out of active multifarious trading among the nations, to reason and fixed rules, and settling them by the arbitration of intel- ligent humane men, instead of by the discharge of a park of artillery. Secondly, By the art of war being by sci- entific discovery so advanced in the degree and the im- mediateness of its destructiveness, so certain utterly to destroy one of the sides, or it may be both, that it would come to be as much abolished among well-bred, enlight- ened nations as the duel would be among civilized men were it certain that one or both of the combatants must be extinguished on the spot. " Satisfaction " would not be so often asked by nations or individuals, and dissatis- faction not so often expressed, were this accomplished. Thirdly, and chiefly, By nations not only becoming shrewder and more truly aware of their own interests and of what " pays " - or such " dead shots " as to make the issue of any war rapid and fatal, but most of all by their growing, in the only true sense, better, - more under the habitual influence of genuine virtue, more in- formed with the knowledge, and the fear, and the love >f God and of His laws. Since finishing this paper, we have seen a copy of the new statistical report on the sickness and mortality of the British army, submitted on the 31st of March to the Secretary at War, and presented the other day to Par- .iament. It does infinite credit to the energy, and accu racy, and judgment, of Sir A. M. Tulloch and Dr. Gra^ DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 181 ham Balfour, by whom it has been prepared ; and is one of the most valuable results yet obtained from that method of research of which Dr. Marshall was, as we have seen, the originator. It is not easy to make an abstract of what is itself the concentrated essence of an immense number of voluminous reports - the two valuable public servants above mentioned have always heartily acknowledged their obligations to Dr. Marshall, and they conclude their prefatory notice by saying,- " The death of Dr. Marshall, inspector-general of hos- pitals, has deprived us of the valuable aid previously afforded by that officer, in the medical details, for which his long acquaintance with the statistics of his profession so well qualified him." We shall make a few random extracts, to show how well grounded Mr. Sidney Her- bert's statement is, that the common soldier never was better off than now. The report begins with enumerat- ing the improvements in the condition of the soldier since their last report in 1841. We have already men- tioned the chief of these. During seven years upwards of*£l6,000 have been expended in the purchase of books for barrack libraries, and it is found that the numbers who avail themselves of this new source of occupation are every year on the increase, and thus much of the time formerly wasted in the canteen, to the injury alike of health and morals, is now devoted to reading. Great improvements have been made in the construction and ventilation of barracks and the means of ablution. The good-conduct pay is found to work excellently. Prior to 1837, the maximum of pay to a private could never exceed Is. 2d. per day in the infantry, Is. 5d. in the cavalry, exclusive of beer - money, even after twenty gears' service and the best character; but by the opera- tion of the good-conduct warrants, a soldier bv the same 182 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. service may now obtain Is. 4d. a day in infantry, and Is. 7d. in cavalry. This has greatly added to the com forts of old soldiers, some of whom, being married, could only support their families by restricting their personal expenditure to an extent hardly compatible with health The evening meal of coffee or tea and bread, which had been adopted by a few corps in 1837, is now general and with, as might be expected, the best results. Suicide in the cavalry is more than double that in the infantry, being annually as 5.8 in every 10,000 is to 2.2. This seems strange, as the cavalry is a more popular service and better paid, and the men of a higher class, and, one would think, the duties more interesting. The report gives the conjecture, that this may arise from so many of them being men of broken fortunes, who enlist when rendered destitute by extravagance. In the Foot Guards suicide is very rare, but the mortality from disease is very great. The deaths among them annually per 1000 are at the rate of 20.4; in the infantry of the line, 17.9; cavalry, 13.6 ; and in the civil population of large towns, 11.9. In the household cavalry the mortality is s'till less : owing to their living better lives, and having larger pay and more comfort, and less exposure and better ac- commodation, their average per 1000 is only 11.1 ; but his result is also materially owing to a weeding process, oy which those who exhibit traces of constitutional dis- ease, or who are injuring their health and bringing dis- credit on the corps by dissipation, are from time to time discharged - 216 of these mauvais sujets having been weeded out during the ten years to which the report re- fers " Such a weeding," the reporters very truly observe, " cannot fail to have a very beneficial effect both ou ^heir moral and physicial condition, and, if practicable, DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 183 would be of vast benefit also in other branches of the service." The difficulty originates in this, that in the line the rate of pay is less than the average wages of the laboring classes, while in the Horse Guards it is greater. Under the head of fevers, we find this extraordinary proof of the fatality of typhus in the troops of the United Kingdom : - in the cavalry, of those attacked, 1 in 3^ dies; in the Foot Guards, 1 in 3|; in the infan- try, 1 in 4 - which is quite as high as the mortality of the remittent or yellow fever in the West Indies. Nothing can be more satisfactory than the report on corporal punishments. " This description of punishment has now become so rare, that in the Foot Guards only one instance has oc- curred in every 1000 men annually; in the Regiments of the Line the proportion was five times as great. The large number of recruits in the latter, particularly after their return from foreign service, may be assigned as one cause for this difference, as also their being dispersed over the country, and in many instances in quarters where no facilities exist for imprisonment. The estab- lishment of military prisons, to which offenders may be sent from all parts of the country, has of late provided a remedy for this, which will be likely to render the contrast less striking in future years. The admissions in the Dragoon Guards and Dragoons, are 3 per 1000 annually, being a mean between the Foot Guards and Infantry of the Line. "We have no means of comparing the proportion dur- ing the period included in this report with that of the previous seven years, except for the Cavalry, in which will be found a decrease in the admissions from 8 to 3 oer 1000 of the mean strength annually; so rare, in- 184 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. deed, is this description of punishment in the present day, that it may almost be considered extinct, except as regards a few incorrigibles, who are unfortunately to be found in the ranks of every regiment, and who are probably equally numerous in civil life. The following Table exhibits the gradual decrease in this description of punishment among the several classes of troops ii this country for each year since 1837 : - 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1814 1845 1846 « Number punished. Dragoon Guards and 1 Dragoons, .... J Foot Guards, .... Infantry of the Line, . 14 14 29 17 24 16 7 28 23 U 188 4 3 7 3 2 4 5 5 6 1 40 68 92 86 46 56 59 76 107 151 27 768 Ratio per 1000 punished. Dragoon Guards and > Dragoons, . ... ) Foot Guards, .... 24$ 2.7 5.5 3.2 4.5 3.2 1.3 4.5 3.9 2.0 3.4 .9 1.0 2.2 .9 .6 1.2 1.0 1.0 1.2 .2 1.0 Infantry of the Line, . 5.7 6.9 5.9 4.9 4.6 4.3 3.8 4.3 6.9 1.4 4.8 " This reduction in corporal punishment extends not merely to the troops at home, but to the whole Army, as will be seen by the following Summary, prepared from the returns forwarded annually to the Adjutant* General's Department from every Regiment in the Ser vice: - Years. Effective Strength in each Year. Sentenced to Corporal Punishment. Ratio per 1000 Sentenced to Corporal Punishment. 1838 96,907 988 10.2 1839 103,152 935 9.1 1840 112,653 931 8.3 1841 116,369 866 7.4 1842 120,313 881 7.3 1843 123,452 700 5.6 1844 125,105 695 5.5 1845 125,252 696 5.5 1846 126,501 519 4.1 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 185 "Thus, instead of 10 men in every 1000 throughout the army having undergone corporal punishment, as was the case in 1838, the proportion in 1846 was only 4 per 1000. And not only has there been this great reduction in the frequency, but a corresponding altera- tion has taken place in the severity also. Even so late as 1832, the number of lashes which might be awarded by a General Court-Martial was unlimited, and in 1825, it is on record that one man was sentenced to 1900, of which he received 1200. From 1832 to 1837, the maxi- mum number of lashes inflicted by the sentence of such Courts became gradually reduced as follows: - 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 800 500 600 500 400 200 "After 1836 no higher number could be awarded, even by a General Court-Martial, than 200 lashes; while a District Court-Martial was limited to 150, and a Regimental one to 100. Since 1847 the maximum of his description of punishment has been limited to 50 .ashes; but the effect of that restriction on the admis- sions into hospital will fall to be considered rather in a subsequent report than on the present occasion. " When this amelioration commenced, grave appre- hensions were entertained that it would give rise to such relaxation of discipline as to cause a considerable in- crease in the description of offences for which corporal punishment had usually been awarded, and that trans- portation and capital punishment would become more frequent; but never were apprehensions less warranted by the result, as will be seen by the following abstract of the Table prepared from the Adjutant-General's Re- am, No. xn. of Appendix : - 186 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. "In 1838, out of 96,907 men, there were 9944 Courts-Martial; 441 general, and 4813 district; sen- tenced to death, 14; transportation, 221; - while in 1846, out of 126,591, there were 9212 Courts-Martial, whereof there were 200 general and 3959 district; sen- tenced to death, 1; transportation 114." All this has occurred without any relaxation of dis- cipline, the army never having been in a more efficient state than at present. This paper was written in 1853. Since that time much has been done in carrying out genuine army re- form and hygiene. The Crimean War, with its glory and its havoc, laid bare and made intolerable many abuses and wants. Above all, it fixed the eyes of their country on the miseries, the wrongs, and the virtues of the common soldier. Whatever may be said by history of our skill in the art of war, as displayed during that campaign, one thing was tried and not found wanting in that terrible time - the stoutness, the endurance, the " bottom," of our race, - what old Dr. Caius calls " the olde manly hardnes, stoute courage, and peinfnines of Englande." 1 We need not say how much more the nation loved and cared for these noble fellows, when it saw that to these, the cardinal virtues of a soldier, were added, in so many instances, the purest devotion, patience, intelli- gence, and a true moral greatness. It is the best test, as it is the main glory and chief end of a true civiliza- tion, its caring for the great body of the people. This it is which distinguishes our time from all others, - and the common soldier is now sharing in this movement, which is twice blessed. 1 From his "Booke or Counseil against the disease called th b'weate, made by Jhon Caius, Doctour in Phisicke, 1552." DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 187 But all great and true generals, from King David, Hannibal, Cassar, Cromwell, the great Frederic, etc., down to our own Sir Colin, have had their men's com- forts, interests, and lives at heart. The late Lord Dun- fermline- magni parentis filius haud degener- when speaking, with deep feeling and anger, to the writer about the sufferings of the men, and the frightful blun- ders in the Crimea, told the following story of his father, the great and good Sir Ralph Abercromby. After his glorious victory, the dying general was being carried on a litter to the boat of the " Foudroyant," in which he died. He was in great pain from his wound, and could get no place to rest. Sir John Macdonald (afterwards adjutant-general) put something under his head. Sir Ralph smiled and said, " That is a comfort; that is the very thing. What is it, John ? " " It is only a soldier's blanket, Sir Ralph." " Only a soldier's blanket, Sir ! " said the old man, fixing his eye severely on him. " Whose blanket is it ?" " One of the men's." " I wish to know the name of the man whose this blanket is; " - and everything paused till he was satisfied. " It is Duncan Roy's of the 42d, Sir Ralph." " Then see that Duncan Roy gets his blanket this very night; " and, wearied and content, the soldier's friend was moved to his death- bed. " Yes, Doctor," said Lord Dunfermline, in his strong, earnest way, " the whole question is in that blanket - in Duncan getting his blanket that very night." I cannot conclude these remarks more fitly, than by quoting the following evidence, given before the Com- missioners on the sanitary state of the Army, by Dr Balfour, the worthy pupil of Dr Marshall, and now medical officer of the Royal Asylum, Chelsea; any man 188 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. may see from it what good sense, good feeling, and san- itary science, may accomplish and prevent. u On the retirement of Dr. Marshall, I was associated with Colonel Tulloch in the preparation of the subse- quent reports. In the course of that duty I was much struck with the great amount of mortality generally, and the large proportion of it which appeared to be caused by preventible disease. I subsequently had the oppor- tunity of verifying my opinion on this point, by watch- ing the results which followed the adoption of various sanitary measures which we recommended in our report, and which were carried out to a greater or less extent. The results obtained from these changes fully confirmed my previous opinions, and led me to continue to make the subject my special study. " Is the present diet of the soldier well calculated to produce this effect ? - I think not; it would scarcely be possible to devise anything worse calculated for the pur- pose, than the diet of the soldier was when I first joined the service. He had then two meals a day, breakfast and dinner; and the period between dinner and break- fast the following day was nineteen hours. His dinner consisted of perpetual boiled beef and broth. Subse- quently the introduction of the evening meal, which had been pressed upon the attention of the military authori- ties by the medical officers for many years, effected a very great improvement. In other respects, his diet, as laid down by regulation, continues the same as at that period. It is monotonous to a degree. I have fre- (uently seen, in a barrack-room, soldiers, and especially he older ones, leave the broth untouched. "Would it be possible to improve the soldiers' diet 1 »y infusing into it greater variety ? - I know practically DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 189 it is quite possible to do so. When I was appointed to the Royal Military Asylum, I found the system of feed- ing the boys pretty much the same as that in the army, but not quite so monotonous, as they had baked mutton on Sundays, suet pudding three days in the week, and boiled beef on the other three days ; the meat was al- ways boiled, but they did not get broth, the liquor being thrown away. They had abundance of food, their din- ner consisting, on meat days, of eleven ounces of meat, without bone, which is more than is given to the soldier; but they did not eat it with relish, and quantities of food were taken away to the hog-tub. The boys were pale and feeble, and evidently in a very low state of health. Mr. Benjamin Phillips, a very high authority on scrof- ulous disease, told me, that when he examined the school, while engaged in preparing his work on scrofula for publication, he found the boys lower in point of physique than almost any school he had examined, even including those of the workhouses. After a careful ex- amination of the dietaries of almost all the principal schools established foi' children in England and Scotland, T prepared a scale of diet, which was sanctioned by the Commissioners in December 1848, and, with a few slight modifications, is now in use at the asylum. The chief points I kept in view were, to give a sufficient amount of food in varied and palatable forms, and without long intervals of fasting. The following are the old and the present scales of dietaries: - 190 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. "ROYAL MILITARY ASYLUM, CHELSEA. "diet table oe the boys of the asylum in 1848. Days of Week. Breakfast at 8 A. M. Dinner at 1 P. M. Supper at 6 P. M. Sunday . Tuesday . and Thursday Monday . 1 Wednesday ( and | Friday . j Saturday . Cocoa J oz. Sugar X oz. Milk J gill Bread 5 oz. Ditto . . • Beef . . 11 oz. Potatoes . 8 " Bread . . 5 " Table-beer J pt. Suet . . 2 oz. Flour . . 8 " Potatoes . 8 " Bread . . 5 " Table-beer | pt. Rt. Mutton 11 oz. Potatoes . 8 " Bread . . 5 " Beer . . | pt. Bread 5 oz. Milk i pt- Do. •Do. Children under eight years of age have 8 oz. of meat instead of 11 oz., and 4 oz. of bread instead of 5 oz " Did the improvement in the dietary greatly increase its cost ? - On the contrary, it saved nearly £ 300 a year in the feeding of the establishment. By introducing a greater variety, the boys took the whole of their food with relish, and I was able to get them into good condi- tion by distributing the same amount of meat over seven days that they previously had in four. "Were the results satisfactory? - The results were far beyond my expectation. Comparing the sickness and mortality in the establishment for the ten years previous ,o my appointment, and for the eight years and a half that have passed since these alterations were introduced 1 find that the sickness has been reduced by about one' third, and the annual mortality has fallen from 9.7 per 1000 of the strength on the average of ten years to 4.9 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. 191 "diet table of the boys of THE ASYLUM IN JULY 1857. Days of Week. Breakfast at 8 A. M. Dinner at 1 p. M. At half- pastSp.M. Supper at 8 P. M. Sunday Cocoa Sugar Milk Bread J oz. 44 S gill, oz. Irish (beef • tew P°tatoeS I onions Pud- ( flour . ding ( suet . Bread . . . 6 oz. 8 " i " 2 " 2| " Bread 25 oz. Bread 5 oz. Milk 2 pt. Monday • • • Boiled Beef Broth .... Greens . . . Bread . . . 6 oz. 4 Pt- 6 oz. 2J " 44 44 Tuesday • • ■ Roast mutton . Yorkshire ( flour pudding | suet Bread . . . 6 oz. 4 " 4" 44 44 Wednesday • T . , ( beef . stew P°tatoes ( onions Bread . . . 6 oz. 6 " 4 " 44 44 Thursday • • • Roast mutton . Rice t rice pud- < milk . ding ( sugar . Bread.... 8 oz. 2 oz. 2 Pt- * oz. 2| oz. 44 44 Friday • ■ Stewed beef Rice .... Treacle . . . Bread . . . 6 oz. 3 " 4 " 44 44 Saturday • ' Boiled beef . . Potatoes . . Broth . . . . Bread .... 6 oz. 6 " 2 Pt- 25 oz. 44 M Children under eight to have 4 oz. of meat instead of 6 oz. per 1000 on the average of eight years and a half. This s not entirely attributable to the change of diet, though that was a most important means. At the same time '.here were other improvements introduced, such as in 192 DR. MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE. creased space in the dormitories, improved ventilation, and abundant means of cold bathing - all of which are most important elements in preserving health. " I may mention another point with regard to health, that on the average of the ten years the proportion of boys reported unfit for military service by the surgeon was 12.4 per 1000 annually, principally on account of scrof- ulous cicatrices on the neck that would have prevented them wearing the military stock, and during the eight years and a half it has been reduced to 4.55 per 1000. It is now very little more than one-third of what it used to be." NOTE-P. 169. Extract from a work entitled " Plans for the Defence of Great Britain and Ireland, by Lieutenant-Colonel Dirom, D. Q. M. G. in North Britain, 1797." " In the island of Jamaica, iu the West Indies, where the troops are generally unhealthy in the garrisons along the coast, and were particu- larly so in the years 1750 and 1751, - a calamity doubly alarming, as the island was threatened with an attack by the combined forces of France and Spain, -the late eminent Sir Alexandei- Campbell deter- mined to try a new experiment for the accommodation of the troops. He chose an elevated situation on the mountains behind Kingston, called Stony Hill, where there was good water, a free circulation of air, and a temperature of climate in general ten degrees cooler than in the low country along the coast. The wood, which was cleared from the hill, and the soil, which was clay, were the chief materials used in constructing the barracks. The 19th and 38th Regiments were sent there on their arrival from America, and ground was allotted them for gardens. They enjoyed a degree of robust health very unusual in that climate. When not upon duty or under arms, they were employed in their gardens, or in amusements, the whole day long. Their wives and children enjoyed equal happiness ; and in the course of two years, this military colony, for so it appeared, had not at any time a greater, if even s" great, a proportion of men sick as they would have had in Europe ; and there is reason to believe that during that time they han nearly as many children born in the regiment as they had lost men by death." The author was at this time adjutant-g-eneral in Jamaica. ART AND SCIENCE. Tlepl yivtcriv Ti^vT] - irepl rb Sv ^Tti<TT'f)p7]. - AbiST. An. POST ii. xix. 4. ©ewprjTiKfjs pXv (anor^/Mj j) reKos aA^Seja • rpaKTJK^s 8' %ypov.-~ Abist. Per speculativam scimus ut sciamtu; per practicam scimus ut operemur. - Avbbbobs. ART AND SCIENCE. ■E give these thoughts with this caution to our readers as well as to ourselves, that they do not run them out of breath. There is always a temptation to push such contrasts too far. Tn fact, they are more provocatives to personal independent thought than anything else ; if they are more, they are mischievous. Moreover, it must always be remembered that Art, even of the lowest and most inarticulate kind, is always tending towards a scientific form - to the dis- covery and assertion of itself; and Science, if it deserves the name, is never absolutely barren, but goes down into some form of human action - becomes an art. The two run into each other. Art is often the strong blind man, on whose shoulders the lame and seeing man is crossing the river, as in Bewick's tail-piece. No arts- man is literally without conscious and systematized, se- lected knowledge, which is science ; and no scientific man can remain absolutely inoperative; but of two men one may be predominantly the one, and another the other. The word Science, in what follows, is used mainly in the sense of information, as equivalent to a body of ascertained truths - as having to do with doc- trines. The word Art is used in the sense of practical knowledge and applied power. The reader will find some excellent remarks on this subject, in Thomson's Laws of Thought, Introduction, and in Mill's Logic book vi. chap. xi. 196 ART AND SCIENCE. IN MEDICINE, ART Looks to symptoms and occa- sions. Is therapeutic and prognostic. Has a method. Is ante mortem. Looks to function more than structure. Runs for the stomach-pump. Submits to be ignorant of much- Acts. SCIENCE Looks to essence and cause. Is diagnostic. Has a system. Is post mortem. Looks v'ce versa. Studies the phenomena of poison- ing. Submits to be ignorant of nothing. Speaks. Science and Art are the offspring of light and truth, of intelligence and will; they are the parents of philos- ophy - that its father, this its mother. Art comes up out of darkness, like a flower, -is there before you are aware, its roots unseen, not to be meddled with safely; it has grown from a seed, itself once alive, perishing in giving birth to its child. It draws its nourishment from all its neighborhood, taking this, and rejecting that, by virtue of its elective instinct knowing what is good for it; it lives upon the debris of former life. It is often a thing without a name, a substance- without an articulate form, a power felt rather than seen. It has always life, energy - automatic energy. It goes upon its own feet, and can go anywhere across a country, and hunts more by scent than sight. Science goes upon wheels, and must have a road or a rail. Art's leaves and stem may be harsh and uncomely; its flower - when its does flower - is beautiful, few things in this world more so. Science comes from the market; it is sold, can be meas- ured and weighed, can be handled and gauged. It is full of light; but is lucid rather than luminous ; it is, at ART AND SCIENCE. 197 its best, food, not blood, much less muscle - the fuel, not the fire. It is taken out of a nursery, and is planted as men plant larches. It is not propagated by seed ; rather by bud, often by cutting. Many stick in leafy branches of such trees, and wonder, like children, why they don't grow; they look well at first, "but having no root they wither away." You may cover a hill-side with such plantations. You must court the sowing of uhe winds, the dropping of the acorns, the dung of birds, the rain, the infinite chances and helps of time, before you can get a glen feathered with oak-coppice or birks. You will soon sell your larches; they are always in de- mand ; they make good sleepers. You will not get a walking-stick out of them, a crutch for your old age, or a rib for a 74. You must take them from a wind-sown, wind-welded and heartened. tree. Science is like cast- iron ; soon made, brittle, and without elasticity, formal, useless when broken. Art is like malleable iron ; tough, can cut, can be used up; is harder and has a spring. Your well-informed, merely scientific, men are all alike. Set one agoing at any point, he brings up as he revolves the same figures, the same thoughts, or rather ghosts of thoughts, as any ten thousand others. Look at him on one side, and, like a larch, you see his whole ; every side is alike. Look at the poorest hazel, holding itself by its grappling talons on some gray rock, and you never saw one like it; you will never see one like it again ; it lias more sides than one; it has had a discipline, and pas a will of its own ; it is self-taught, self-sufficient. Wisdom is the vital union of Art and Science; an .ndividual result of the two: it is more excellent than either; it is the body animated by the soul; the will, knowing what to do, and how to do it; the members 198 ART AND SCIENCE. capable of fulfilling its bidding; the heart nourishing and warming the whole; the brain stimulating and quickening the entire organism. SCIENCE AND ART, A CONTRASTED PARALLEL ART Knows little of its birth. Knows more of its progeny. Invents. Uses the imperative. Is founded on experience. Teaches us to do. Is motive and dynamical. Is eductive and conductive. Involves knowledge. Buys it, making of it what it likes, and needs, and no more. Has rules. Is synthetical more than analyt- ical. Is regulative and administrative, and shows the how, cares less about the why. Eats; makes muscles, and brains, and bones, and teeth, and fin- gers of it, without very well knowing how. Is strong in organic life, and dwells in the non-ego. Is unconscious. Is a hand that handles tools ; is executive. Does something, and could do it again. Is gold. Apprehends. Is endogenous, and grows from within. Is often liferented ; dies w'.th its possessor. SCIENCE Knows its birth ; registers it, and its after history. Has often no progeny at all. Discovers. Uses the indicative. Is antecedent to experience. Teaches us to know. Is statical and has no feet. Is inductive and deductive. Evolves it. Makes it up, and sells it. Has laws. Is the reverse. Is legislative and judicial ; says what; says little as to how, but much as to why. Makes food, cooks it, serves it up. Is strong in animal life, and dwells in the ego. Is conscious. Is a sword, or a knife, or a pen, or, in a word, an instrument. Says something, and can say it again. Is coin. Comprehends. Is exogenous, and grows from without. Is transmissible. ART AND SCIENCE. ART Forges the mind. Makes knowledge a means. Is a master, and keeps apprentices. Holds by the will. Is effect. Is great in to oti.1 Is science embodied - material- ized. Is the outflowing of mind into nature. Is man acting on nature. Gives form, excellency, and beauty, to the rude material on which it operates. Uses one eye. SCIENCE Furnishes it. Makes it an end. Is a teacher, and has scholars. Holds by the understanding. Is cause. Is great in to 8«m. Is art spiritualized. Is the inflowing of nature into mind. Is nature speaking to man. Gives form, excellency, and beauty, to the otherwise unin- formed intelligence in which it resides. Uses the other. WISDOM Uses both, and is stereoscopic, discerning solidity as well as surface, and seeing on both sides ; its vision being the unum quid of two images. My friend, Dr. Adams of Banchory, tells me that Bacon somewhere calls Science and Art a pair of Cy- clops, and that Kant calls them twin Polyphemes. It may be thought that I have shown myself, in this parallel and contrast, too much of a partisan for Art as against Science, and the same may be not unfairly said of much of the rest of this volume: it was in a measure on purpose ; the general tendency being counteractive of the purely scientific and positive, or merely informative current of our day. We need to remind ourselves con- stantly, that this kind of knowledge puffeth up, and that it is something quite else which buildeth up.2 It has 1 'Apx^l V"P to °Tt ' Kat tovto ^cuvoiTO apxovTws, ovSev TTpoaSer/aei toC Mn- Principium est enim scire rem ita esse ; quod si satis sit perspi cuum, cur ita sit non magnopere desiderabitur. - Arist. Eth. A. iv. 2 Advancement of Learning, pp. 8-11. - Pickering's Ed. 200 ART AND SCIENCE. been finely said that Nature is the Art of God, and wo may as truly say that all art - in the widest sense, as practical and productive - is his science. He knows all that goes to the making of everything, for He is him- self, in the strictest sense, the only maker. He knows what made Shakespeare and Newton, Julius Cassar and Plato, what we know them to have been, and they are his by the same right as the sea is, and the strength of the hills, for He made them and his hands formed them, as well as the dry land. This making the circle for ever meet, this bringing Omega eternally round to Alpha, is, I think, more and more revealing itself as a great cen- tral, personal, regulative truth, and is being carried down more than ever into the recesses of physical re- search, where Nature is fast telling her long-kept secrets, all her tribes speaking each in their own tongue the wonderful works of God - the sea is saying, It is not in me, - everything is giving up any title to anything like substance, beyond being the result of the one Su- preme Will. The more chemistry, and electrology, and life are searched into by the keenest and most remorse- less experiment, the more do we find ourselves admit- ting that motive power and force, as manifested to us, is derived, is in its essence immaterial, is direct from Him in whom we live and move, and to whom, in a sense quite peculiar, belongeth power. Gravitation, we all allow, is not provable to be in- herent in matter; it is ab extra; and as it were, the attraction of his offspring to the infinite Parent, their being drawn to Him, -■ the spirit, the vis motiva, return- ng to Him who gave it. The Dynamical Theory, as it is called, tends this way. Search into matter, and try to take it at the quick ere it ART AND SCIENCE. 201 is aware, the nearer you are to it the less material it seems; it as it were recedes and shrinks - like moon- light vanishing as soon as scanned, and seems, as far as we can yet say, and as old Boscovich said, little else than a congeries of forces. Matter under the lens is first seen as made up of atoms swimming in nothing; then further on, these atoms become themselves trans- lucent, and, as if scared, break up and disappear. So that, for anything we are getting to know, this may be the only essence of matter, that it is capable of being acted upon so as to re-act; and that here, as well as in all that is more usually called spiritual and dynamical, God is all in all, the beginning, as he certainly is the ending; and that matter is what it is, simply by his willing it, and that his willing it to be, constitutes its essence.1 1 The doctrine of the unity of Nature, however difficult of physical proof by experiment, - and we might a priori expect it to be very difficult, for in such a case we must go up against the stream, instead of, as in analytics, going with it, it is a secret of Nature, and she re- fuses stoutly to give it up, you can readily split the sunbeam into its spectrum, its chemical and electric rays ; you cannot so readily gather them up into one, - but metaphysically, it has always seemed to me more than probable. If God is one, as we believe, and if he made all worlds out of nothing by his word, then surely, the nearest thing to the essence of all Nature, when she came from God, the materies mate- rice, must partake of his unity, or in words used elsewhere (Preface to Dr. Samuel Brown's Lectures and Essays), and somewhat altered " If we believe that matter and all created existence is the immediate result of the will of the Supreme, who of old inhabited his own eter nity and dwelt alone ; that he said 'Fiat!' et Jit,-that Nature is for ever uttering to the great I am, this one speech - ' Thou art ! ' is not the conclusion irresistible, that matter thus willed, resulting, as it does, in an external world, and, indeed, in all things visible and in- visible, must partake of the absolute unity of its Author, and must, in <ny essence which it may be said to possess, be itself necessarily one being by the same infinite Will made what we find it to be, multiforn and yet one : - 202 ART AND SCIENCE. The more the microscope searches out the molecular structure of matter, the thinner does its object become, till we feel as if the veil were not so much being with- drawn, as being worn away by the keen scrutiny, or rent in twain, until at last we come to the true Shechinah, and may discern through it, if our shoes are off, the words " I am," burning, but not consumed. There is a Science of Art, and there is an Art of Sci- ence - the Art of Discovery, as by a wonderful instinct, enlarging human knowledge. Some of the highest ex- ercises of the human spirit have been here. All primary discoverers are artists in the sciences they work in. Newton's guess that the diamond was inflammable, and many instances which must occur to the reader, are of the true artsman kind; he did it by a sort of venatic sense - knowing somewhat, and venturing more - com- ing events forecasting their shadows, but shadows which the wise alone can interpret. A man who has been up all night, while the world was asleep, and has watched the day-spring, the light shooting and circulating in the upper heavens, knows that the sun is coming, that " the bright procession " is " on its way." It shines afar to him, because he has watched it from his Fesole, and presaged the dawn. The world in general has not been an early riser; it is more given to sit late; it frequents the valleys more than the mountain-tops. Thus it is, that many discoveries, which to us below seem mysteri- ous, as if they had a touch of witchcraft about them, are * One God, -one law, - one element.' " In reference to this doctrine, Faraday, and indeed all advanced chemists and physicists, indicate that they are, as children used to say in their play, "getting warm," and nearing this great consummation, which will be the true philosophy of material science, its education from the multiple and complex, into the simple and one-fold. ART AND SCIENCE. 203 the plain, certain discoveries of sagacious reason higher up. The scientific prophet has done all this, as Ruskin says, by " the instinctive grasp which the healthy imag- ination 1 has of possible truth; " but he got the grasp and the instinct, and his means, from long, rigorous prac- tice with actual truth. We ought to reverence these men, as we stand afar off on the plain, and see them going up "the mount,'' and drawing nearer into the darkness where God dwells: they will return with a message for us. This foretelling, or power of scientific anticipation, is, as we have said, the highest act of scientific man, and is an interpenetration of 'Ettio-t^/zt/ and Tex^' Such a view as I have given is in harmony with rev- elation, and unites with it in proclaiming the moral personality, not less than the omnipotence, of God, who 1 The part which imagination plays in all primary discoveries might be here enlarged on, were there room. Here, as everywhere else, the difficulty is to keep the mean, and avoid too much wing, or too little. A geologist or chemist without imagination is a bird with- out wings ; if he wants the body of common sense, and the brain of reason, he is like a butterfly ; he may be a "child of the sun," and his emblazoned wings be "rich as an evening sky," but he is the sport of every wind of doctrine, he flutters to and fro purposeless, is brilliant and evanescent as the flowers he lives on. Rather should he be like the seraphim, "who had six wings; with twain he covered his feet, with twain he covered his face, and with twain be did fly; " rever- ence, modesty, and caution-a habit of walking humbly - are as much part of a great philosopher as insight and daring. But I believe there has been no true discoverer, from Galileo and Kepler, to Davy Owen, and our own Goodsir-the Nimrods of "possible truth " - without wings ; they have ever had as their stoutest, stanchest hound, a powerful and healthy imagination to And and "point" the game. None of these men remained within the positive known: they must hypothesize, as Warburton calls it; they must, by a necessity of their nature, reach from the known out into the unknown. The great thing is to start from a truth ; to have a punctum stuns from which to move. 204 ART AND SCIENCE. thus, in a sense quite literal, " guides all the creatures with his eye, and refreshes them with his influence, mak- ing them feel the force of his Almightiness." - (Jeremy Taylor.)1 Every one must remember the sublimely simple shutting up of the Principia, as by " a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies." The humility of its author has a grandeur in it greater than any pride; it is as if that lonely, intrepid thinker, who had climbed the heavens by that ladder he speaks of in such modest and homely phrase (patient observation, in which, if in anything, he thought he excelled other men, - the never missing a step), after soaring ''above the wheeling poles," had come suddenly to " heaven's door," and at it looked in, and had prostrated himself before " the thunderous throne." 2 There is here the same strength, simplicity, and stern beauty and surprise, as of lightning and thunder, the same peremptory assertion and reiteration of the subject, like " harpers harping upon their harps," and the same main burden and refrain, as in the amazing chorus which closes Handel's "Messiah." We give it for its own grandeur, and for its inculcation of the personality of God, so much needed now, and without which human responsibility, and moral obligation, and all we call duty, must oe little else than a dream. " Hie omnia regit non ut anima mundi, sed ut univer- Borum dominus. Et propter dominium suum, dominus deus navroKpdrwp dici solet. Nam deus est vox relativa st ad servos refertur: et deitas est dominatio dei, non 1 0ebj irepiexei rg BovAvjcrei to Trap, too iravros uiairep rg ov<ri<t »VT<os Kai afia. - ReSP. AD OkTHOD. 2 Milton, Vacation Exercise, anno cetatis 19. ART AND SCIENCE. 205 in corpus proprium, uti sentiunt quibus deus est anima mundi, sed in servos. Deus summus est ens ae ter num, infinitum, absolute perfectum: sed ens utcunque perfec- tum sine dominio non est dominus deus. Dicimus enim deus mens, deus vester, deus Israelis, deus deorum, et dominus dominorum: sed non dicimus aeternus meus, aeternus vester, aeternus Israelis, aeternus deorum; non dicimus infinitus meus, vel perfectus meus. Hee appel- lationes relationem non habent ad servos. Vox deus passim significat dominum : sed omnis dominus non est deus. Dominatio entis spiritualis deum constituit, vera verum, summa summum, ficta fictum. Et ex domina- tione vera sequitur deum verum esse vivum, intelligen- tem et potentem; ex reliquis perfectionibus summum esse, vel summe perfectum. 2E tern us est et infinitus, omnipotens et omnisciens, id est, durat ab aeterno in aeternum, et adest ab infinito in infinitum : omnia regit; et omnia cognoscit quae fiunt aut fieri possunt. Hon est ceternitas et infinitas, sed aeternus et infinitus ; non est duratio et spatium, sed durat et adest. Durat semper, et adest ubique, et existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium constituit. . .. " Hunc (Deum) cognoscimus solummodo per proprie- tates ejus et attributa, et per sapientissimas et optimas rerum structuras et causas finales, et admiramur ob per- fectiones; veneramur autem et colimus ob dominium. Colimus enim ut servi, et deus sine dominio, providen- tia, et causis finalibus nihil aliud est quam fatum et natura. A caeca necessitate metaphy sica, quae utique eadem est semper et ubique, nulla oritur rerum variatio. Tota rerum conditarum pro locis ac temporibus diver- sitas, ab ideis et voluntate entis necessario existentis solummodo oriri potuit." - Principia, Ed. 3tla' pp. 528, 529: London, 1726. 206 ART AND SCIENCE. "Nous accordons A la raison le pouvoir de nous de- mon trer 1'existence du Createur, de nous instruire de ses attributs infinis et de ses rapports avec 1'ensemble des etres; mais par le sentiment nous entrons en quelque sorte en commerce plus intime avec lui, et son action sur nous est plus immediate et plus presente. Nous professons un egal eloignement et pour le mysticisme - qui, sacrifiant la raison au sentiment et 1'homme a Dieu, se perd dans les splendeurs de 1'infini - et pour le pan- theisme, qui refuse a Dieu les perfections memes de 1'homme, en admettant sous ce nom on ne sait quel etre abstrait, prive de conscience et de liberty. Grace A cette conscience de nous-memes et de notre libre arbitre, sur laquelle se fondent a la fois et notre methode et notre philosophic tout entiere, ce dieu abstrait et vague dont nous venons de parler, le dieu du pantheisme devient a jamais impossible, et nous voyons a sa place la Provi- dence, le Dieu libre et saint que le genre humain adore, le legislateur du monde moral, la source en meme temps que 1'objet de cet amour insatiable du beau et du bien qui se mele au fond de nos ames a des passions d'un autre ordre." - Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques, par une Societe des Professeurs et Savans. Preface, pp. viii. ix. OUR GIDEON GRAYS " Agricolam laudat Sub galli cantum consultor ubi ostia pulsat." "/ would rather go back to Africa than practise again at Pea- Net." -Mungo Paek. OUR GIDEON GRAYS.1 T might perhaps have been better, if our hard headed, hard-hitting, clever, and not over-man- suete friend " Fuge Medicos " had never al lowed those " wild and stormy writings " of his to come into print, and it might perhaps also have been as well, had we told him so at once; but as we are inclined to be optimists when a thing is past, we think more good than evil has come out of his assault and its repulse. " F. M." (we cannot be always giving at full length his uncouth Hoffmannism) has, in fact, in his second letter, which is much the better, answered his first, and turned his back considerably upon himself, by abating some of his most offensive charges; and our country doctors in their replies have shown that they have sense as well as spirit, and can write like gentlemen, while they of the town have cordially and to good purpose spoken up for their hard-working country brethren. We are not now going to adjudicate upon the strictly professional points raised by " F. M.whether, for instance, bleeding is ever anything but mischievous; 1 The following short paper from the Scotsman was occasioned by a correspondence in that newspaper, in which doctors in general, and country doctors in particular, were attacked and defended. It is re- printed here as a record of the amazing facts brought out by Dr. Ali- son's Association. In the attack by "Fuge Medicos," consisting of two long letters, there was much ability with not much fairness, and lot a little misapplied energy of language, and sharpness of invective. 210 OUR GIDEON GRAYS. whether the constitution, or type of disease, changes or not; whether Dr. Samuel Dickson of "the Fallacies" is an impudent quack or the Newton of medicine; whether Dr. Wilkinson is an amiable and bewildered Swedenborgian, with much imagination, little logic, and less knowledge, and a wonderful power of beautiful writing, or the herald of a new gospel of health. We may have our own opinions on these subjects, but their discussion lies out of our beat; they are strictly profes- sional in their essence, and ought to remain so in their treatment. We are by no means inclined to deny that there are ignorant and dangerous practitioners in the country, as well as in the city. What we have to say against " F. M." and in favor of the class he has attacked is, that no man should bring such charges against any large body of men, without offering such an amount and kind of proof of their truth, as, it is not too much to say, it is impossible for any mere amateur to produce, even though that amateur were as full of will and en- ergy as " F. M.; " and unless he can do so, he stands convicted of something very like what he himself calls " reckless, maleficent stupidity." It is true, " F. M." speaks of " ignorant country doctors ; " but his general charges against the profession have little meaning, and his Latin motto still less, if ignorance be not predicated of country doctors in general. One, or even half a dozen worthless, mischievous country doctors, is too small an induction of particulars to warrant " F. M." in inferring the same qualities of some 500 or more unknown men But we are not content with proving the negative: we speak not without long, intimate, and extensive knowl- edge of the men who have the charge of the lives of our country population, when we assert, that not only are OUR GIDEON GRAYS. 211 they as a class fully equal to other rural professional men in intelligence, humanity, and skill, and in all that constitutes what we call worth, but that, take them all in all, they are the best educated, the most useful, the most enlightened, as they certainly are the worst paid and hardest-worked, country doctors in Christendom. Gideon Gray, in Scott's story of the " Surgeon's Daugh- ter," is a faithful type of this sturdy, warm-hearted, use- ful class of men, " under whose rough coat and blunt exterior," as he truly says, " you find professional skill and enthusiasm, intelligence, humanity, courage, and science." Moreover, they have many primary mental qualities in which their more favored brethren of the city are nec- essarily behind them - self-reliance, presence of mind, simplicity and readiness of resource, and a certain homely sagacity. These virtues of the mind are, from the nature of things, more likely to be fully brought out, where a man must be self-contained and everything to himself; he cannot be calling in another to consult with him in every anxious case, or indulge himself in the luxury of that safety which has waggishly been ex- pounded as attaching more to the multitude of counsel- lors than to the subject of their counsel. Were this a fitting place, we could relate many instances of this sa- gacity, decision, and tact, as shown by men never known beyond their own countryside, which, if displayed in more public life, would have made their possessors take their place among our public great men. Such men as old Reid of Peebles, Meldrum of Kin- cardine, Darling of Dunse, Johnston of Stirling, Clark- son (the original of Gideon Gray) and Anderson of Selkirk, Robert Stevenson of Gilmerton, Kirkwood of 212 OUR GIDEON GRAYS. Auchterarder, and many as good - these were not likely to be the representatives of a class who are guilty of " assaults upon life," " who are let loose upon some un- happy rural district, to send vigorous men and women to their graves," who " in youth have been reckless and cruel, given to hanging sparrows and cats, and fit for no humane profession," etc., etc. Now, is there either good sense, good feeling, or good breeding, in using these unmeasured terms against an entire class of men ? As- suming- as from the subtlety and hairsplitting charac- ter of his arguments, and the sharpness and safety of his epithets, we are entitled to do - that "F. M. " belongs to another of the learned professions, we ask, " What would he say if a "Fuge Juridicos" were to rise up who considered that the true reading in Scripture should be, " The devil was a lawyer from the beginning," as- serting that all country lawyers in Scotland were curses to the community, that it would be well if the Lord Ad- vocate " would try half a dozen every year " for devour- ing widows' houses, and other local villanies ; and, more- over, what would he think of the brains and the modesty of an M. D. making an assault upon the legal profession on purely professional questions, and settling, ab extra, and off-hand and for ever, matters which the wisest heads ab intra have left still in doubt? The cases are strictly parallel; and it is one of the worst signs of our times, this public intermeddling of everybody, from the Times down to " F. M." with every science, profession, and trade. Sydney Smith might now say of the public, wha^ he said of the Master of Trinity, " Science is his forte, omniscience is his foible." Every profession, and every man in it, knows something more and better than aiy non-professional man can, and it is the part of a OUR GIDEON GRAYS. 213 wise man to stick to his trade. He is more likely to ex- cel in it, and to honor and wonder at the skill of others. For it is a beautiful law of our nature that we must wonder at everything which we see well done, and yet do not know how it is done, or at any rate know we could not do it. Look at any art, at boot-closing, at a saddler at his work, at basket-making, at our women with their nimble and exact fingers - somebody is con- stantly doing something which everybody cannot do, and therefore everybody admires. We are afraid " F. M." does not know many things he could not do. We repeat that our Gideon Grays are, as a class, worthy and intelligent, skilful and safe, doing much more good than evil.1 They deserve well of, and live in the hearts of, the people, and work day and night for less than anybody but themselves and their wives are likely ever to know, for they are most of them unknown to the Income-tax collectors. They are like the rest of us, we hope, soberer, better read, more enlightened, than they were fifty years ago; they study and trust Nature more, and conquer her by submission ; they bleed and blister less, and are more up to the doctrine that preven- tion is the best of all cures. They have participated in the general acknowledgment among the community, thanks to the two Combes and others, and to the spirit of the age, of those divine laws of Health which He who made us implanted in us, and the study and obedi- ence of which is a fulfilling of His word. We can only hope that our clever and pancratic friend, " F. M.," if on his autumn holidays in Teviotdale or Lochaber he has his shoulder or his lower jaw dislocated, or has a fit »f colic or a hernia, or any of those ills which even hi> 1 Note, p. 218. 214 OUR GIDEON GRAYS. robust self is heir to, may have sense left him to send for Gideon Gray, and to trust him, and, making a slight alteration on his Hoffmannism, may be led to cry lustily out, in worse Latin and with better sense - " Fuge pro Medico " - Run for the Doctor ! As already said, all of us who have been much in the country know the hard life of its doctors - how much they do, and for how little they do it; but we dare say our readers are not prepared for the following account of their unremunerated labor among paupers: - In 1846, a voluntary association of medical men was formed in Edinburgh, with the public-hearted Dr. Alison as chairman. Its object was to express their sympathy with their brethren in the remote country districts of Scotland, in regard to their unremunerated attendance on paupers, and to collect accurate information on this subject. The results of their benevolent exertions may be found in the Appendix to the First Report of the Board of Supervision. It is probably very little known beyond those officially concerned ; we therefore give some of its astounding and lamentable revelations. The queries referred to the state and claims of the medical practitioners in the rural districts of Scotland, in relation to their attendance upon the permanent or occasional pa- rochial poor. Out of 325 returns, 94 had received some remuneration for attendance and outlay. In one of these instances, the remuneration consisted of three shil- lings for twelve years' attendance on seventy constant, and thirteen occasional paupers ; a fine question in dec- imals- what would each visit come to? But worse remains. One man attended 400 paupers for eight years and never received one farthing for his skill, his time, or his drugs. Another has the same story to tell of OUR GIDEON GRAYS. 215 350, some of them thirty miles off; he moderately caK culates his direct loss, from these calls on his time and his purse, at £70 a year. Out of 253 who report, 208 state that, besides attending for nothing, they had to give on occasions food, wine, and clothes, and had to pay tolls, etc. 136 of the returns contain a more or less definite estimate, in money value, of their unrequitet labors ; the sum-total given in by them amounts to thirty- four thousand four hundred and fifty-seven pounds in ten years ! being at the rate of £238 for each ! They seem to have calculated the amount of medical attendance, outlay, and drugs, for each pauper annually, at the very moderate average of four shillings. Is there any other country on the face of the earth where such a state of matters can be found ? Such ac- tive charity, such an amount of public good, is not likely to have been achieved by men whose lives were little else than the development of a juvenile mania for hang- ing sparrows and cats. We believe we are below the mark when we say, that over head, the country doctors of Scotland do one third of their work for nothing, and this in cases where the receiver of their attendance would scorn to leave his shoes or his church seats un- paid. We are glad to see that " F. M." reads Sir William Hamilton. We doubt not he does more than read him, and we trust that he will imitate him in some things besides his energy, his learning, and his hardihood of thought. As to his and other wise men's pleasantries about doctors and their drugs, we all know what they mean, and what they are worth; they are the bitter- sweet joking human nature must nave at those with whom it has close dealings-its priests, its lawyers, its 216 OUR GIDEON GRAYS. doctors, its wives and husbands; the very existence of such expressions proves the opposite; it is one of the luxuries of disrespect. But in " F. M.'s " hands these ancient and harmless jokes are used as deadly solemni- ties upon which arguments are founded. To part pleasantly with him, nevertheless, we give him three good old jokes : - The Visigoths abandoned an unsuccessful surgeon to the family of his deceased patient, " ut quod de eo facere voluerint, habeant potesta tem." Montaigne, who is great upon doctors, used to beseech his friends, that if he felt ill they would let him get a little stronger before sending for the doctor! Louis the Fourteenth, who, of course, was a slave to his physi- cians, asked his friend Moliere what he did with his doctor. " Oh, Sire," said he, " when I am ill I send for him. He comes, we have a chat, and enjoy ourselves. He prescribes. I don't take it - and I am cured ! " We end with four quotations, which our strong-headed friend " F. M.," we are sure, will cordially relish: - "In Juvene Theologo conscientiae detrimentum, In Juvene Legists, bursae decrementum, In Juvene Medico caemeterii incrementum." "To imagine Nature incapable to cure diseases, is blasphemy; because that would be imputing imperfec- tion to the Deity, who has made a great provision for the preservation of animal life." - Sydenham. " When I consider the degree of patience and atten- tion that is required to follow Nature in her slow man- ner of proceeding, I am no longer surprised that men of lively parts should be always repeating, ' Contraria ad- hibenda' But Hippocrates says : - ' Contraria pau- latim adhibere oportet, et interquiescere. Periculosius venseo incidere in medicum, qui nesciat quiescere. quam OUR GIDEON GRAYS. 217 qui nesciat contraria adhibere, nam qui nescit quiescere, nescit occasiones contraria adhibendi; quare nescit con- traria adhibere. Qui nescit contraria adhibere, tamen, si prudens est, scit quiescere, atque si prodesse non potest, tamen non obest. Prcestantissimus vero est medicus eru- ditus pariter ac prudens, qui novit festinare lente ; pro ipsius morbi urgentia, auxiliis instare, atque in occasione uti maxime opportunis, alioque quiescere.' " - Grant on Fevers, page 311. " Philosophi qui vitae rationem doceant, vitiis eripiant - aerumnas, metus, angustias, anxietates, tristitias impo- tentias expugnant tranquillitati, hilaritati avrapKeia vin- dicent." - Stahl. I don't know who " Quis " was, but the Hudibrastics are vigorous: - THE COUNTRY SURGEON. Luckless is he, whom hard fates urge on To practise as a country surgeon - To ride regardless of all weather, Through frost and snow, and hail together - To smile and bow when sick and tired, Consider'd as a servant hired. At every quarter of the compass, A surly patient makes a rumpus, Because he is not seen the first (For each man thinks his case the worst}. And oft at two points diametric Called to a business obstetric. There lies a man with broken limb, A lady here with nervous whim, Who, at the acme of her fever, Calls him a savage if he leave her. For days and nights in some lone cottage Condemned to live on crusts and pottage, To kick his heels and spin his brains, Waiting, forsooth, for labor's pains; And that job over, happy he, 218 OUR GIDEON GRAYS. If he squeeze out a guinea fee. Now comes the night, with toil opprest, He seeks his bed in hope of rest; Vain hope, his slumbers are no more, Loud sounds the knocker at the door, A farmer's wife at ten miles' distance, Shouting, calls out for his assistance; Fretting and fuming in the dark, He in the tinder strikes a spark, And, as he yawning heaves his breeches, Envies his neighbor blest with riches.- Quis, Edin. Ann. Register, 1817. NOTE. -P. 213. I have to thank his son, Dr. Henry Anderson, who now reigns in his stead, for the following notes of an ordinary day's work of his father, whose sister was Mungo Park's wife. Selkirk is the "Middle- mas " of Sir Walter. " Dr. Anderson practised in Selkirk for forty-five years, and never refused to go to any case, however poor, or however deep in his debt, and however far off. One wife in Selkirk said to her neighbors, as he passed up the street, "There goes my honest doctor, that brought a' my ten bairns into the world, and ne'er got a rap for ane o' them." "His methodical habits, and perfect arrangement of his'time, ena- bled him to overtake his very wide practice, and to forget no one. He rose generally at six every morning, often sooner, and saw his severe cases in the town early, thus enabling him to start for his long jour- neys ; and he generally took a stage to breakfast of fifteen or twenty miles. " One morning he left home at six o'clock, and after being three miles up the Yarrow, met a poor barefoot woman, who had walked from St. Mary's Loch to have two teeth extracted. Out of his pocket with his "key" (she, of course, shouting "Murder! murder! mercy!") ; down sat the good woman; the teeth were out at once, and the doctor rode on his journey, to breakfast at Eldinhope, fourteen miles up, calling on all his patients in Yarrow as he rode along. After breakfast, by Dryhope, and along St. Mary's Loch, to the famed Tib- by's, whose son was badly, up to the head of the Loch of the Lows sad over the high hills into Ettrick, and riding up the Tima to Dal OUR GIDEON GRAYS. 219 gliesh, and back down the Ettrick, landed at " Gideon's o' the Singlie " to dinner ; and just when making a tumbler of toddy, a boy was brought into the kitchen, with a finger torn off in a threshing-mill. The doctor left after another tumbler, and still making calls about Et- trickbridge, etc., reached home about eight, after riding fifty miles; not to rest, however, for various messages await his return; all are visited, get medicines from him, for there were no laboratories in his days, then home to prepare all the various prescriptions for those he had seen during the long day. He had just finished this when off he was called to a midwifery case, far up Ale Water. " To show how pointed to time he was, one day he had to go to Buccleugh, eighteen miles up the Ettrick, and having to ride down the moors by Ashkirk, and then to go on to St. Boswell's to see old Rae- burn, he wished a change of horse at Riddell - fixed one o'clock, and one of his sons met him at a point of the road at the very hour, though he had ridden forty miles through hills hardly passable. " I have seen him return from the head of Yarrow half frozen, and not an hour in bed till he had to rise and ride back the same road, and all without a murmur. "It was all on horseback in his day, as there was only one gig in the county ; and his district extended west up the valleys of Ettrick and Yarrow about twenty miles ; south in Ale Water seven to ten miles ; the same distance east; and north about fourteen miles by Tweedside, and banks of the Gala and Caddon. His early rising ena- bled him also to get through his other work, for he made up all his books at that time, had accounts ready, wrote all his business letters, of which he had not a few. "In coming home late in the night from his long journeys, he often slept on horseback for miles together. In fine, he was the hardest- worked man in the shire ; always cheerful, and always ready to join in any cheerful and harmless amusement, as well as every good work; but he killed himself by it, bringing on premature decay." He was many years Provost of the Burgh, took his full share of .business, was the personal adviser of his patients, and had more cura- torships than any one else in the county. What a pattern of active beneficence, bringing up three sons to his profession, giving his family a first-rate education, and never getting anything for the half of his everyday's work! We can fancy we see the handsome, swarthy, ruddy old man coming jogging (his normal pace) on his well-known mare down the Yarrow by Black Andro (a wooded hill), and past Foulshiels (Mungo Park's birthplace), after being all night up the glen with some " crying wife," and the cottagers at Glower-ower-'im blessing him as 220 OUR GIDEON GRAYS. he passed sound asleep, or possibly wakening him out of his dreams, to come up and "lance " the bairn's eye-tooth. Think of a man like this - a valuable, an invaluable public servant, the king of health in his own region - having to start in a winter's night "on-ding o' snaw" for the head of Ettrick, to preside over a primiparous herd's wife, at the back of Boodsbeck, who was as normal and independent as her cows, or her husband's two score of cheviots ; to have to put his faithful and well-bred mare (for he knew the value of blood) into the byre, the door of which was secured by an old har- row, or possibly in the course of the obstetric transaction by a snow- drift ; to have to sit idle amid the discomforts of a shepherd's hut for hours, no books, except perhaps a ten-year-old Belfast Almanac or the Fourfold State (an admirable book), or a volume of ballads, all of which he knew by heart, -when all that was needed was, " Mrs. Jaup," or indeed any neighbor wife, or her mother. True, our doctor made the best of it, heard all the clavers of the country, took an interest in all their interests, and was as much at home by the side of the ingle, with its bit of "licht" or cannel coal, as he would be next day at Bowhill with the Duchess. But what a waste of time, of health 1 what a waste of an admirable man ! and, then, with impatient young men, what an inlet to mischievous interference, to fatal curtailing of attend ance 1 DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. " Phy sick, of its own nature, has no more uncertainty or conjectur- alness than these other noble professions of War, Law, Politicks, Navigation, in all which the event can be no more predicted or ascer- tained than in Physick, and all that the Artist is accomptable for is the rational and prudent conduct that nothing be overdone or undone." - Epilogue to the Five Papers lately passed betwixt the two Physicians, Dr. 0. and Dr. E., containing some remarks pleasant and profitable, concerning the usefulness of Vomiting and Purging in Fevers, by Andrew Brown, M. D. DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. ■ HUNDRED and ninety years ago, Dr. An- drew Brown, the laird of Dolphinton, was a well-known and, indeed, famous man in Ed- inburgh, and not unknown in London and the general medical world. Who now has ever heard of him ? Sic transit. To us in Edinburgh he is chiefly memorable as having been the ancestor of Dr. Richard Mackenzie, who perished so nobly and lamentably in the Crimea; and whose is one of the many graves which draw our hearts to that bleak field of glory and havoc. We who were his fellows are not likely to see again embodied so much manly beauty, so much devotion to duty, so much zeal, honor, and affection. But to the profession in Scotland his great-grand- father ought to be better known than he is, for he was the first to introduce here the doctrines of Sydenham, and to recommend the use of antimonial emetics in the first stage of fever. This he did in a little book called " A Vindicatory Schedule concerning the new cure of Fevers, containing a disquisition, theoretical and practi- cal, of the new and most effectual method of cureing continual fevers, first invented and delivered by the sa- gacious Dr. Thomas Sydenham." - Edin. 1691. This book, and its author's energetic advocacy of its principles by his other writings and by his practice, gave rise to a fierce controversy; and in the library of the 224 DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. Edinburgh College of Physicians, there is a stout, shabby little volume of pamphlets, on both sides - " Replies," and " Short Answers," and " Refutations," and " Sur- veys," and " Looking-glasses," " Defences," li Letters," " Epilogues," etc., lively and furious once, but now rest- ing together as quietly and as dead as their authors are in the Old Greyfriars church-yard, having long ceased from troubling. There is much curious, rude, vigorous, hard-headed, bad-Englished stuff in them, with their wretched paper and print, and general ugliness ; much, also, to make us thankful that we are in our own now, not their then. Such tearing away with strenuous logic and good learning, at mere clouds and shadows, with occasional lucid intervals of sense, observation, and wit, tending too frequently to wut. Brown was a Whig, and a friend of Andrew Fletcher and King William; and in his little book on " The Character of the True Publick Spirit," besides much honest good sense and advanced politics, there is a clever and edifying parallel drawn between the diseases of the body politic and those of the body natural, and also an amusing classification of doctors;1 but for all this, and much more excellent matter, I have no space here. Dr. Brown thus describes his going up to London to visit Sydenham, and see his practice: - " But in the year 1687, perusing the first edition of his Schedula Monitoria, where he delivers, as confirmed by manifold experience, not only a new, but a quite con- trarie method to the common, of curing Continual Fe- vers : I did long hesitate, thinking that either he or all other Physicians were grossly deceived about the cure of Fevers; if not, as their patients used to be, they 1 Note, page 232. DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. 225 were m an high delirum ; and lest the preconceived opinion that I had of the man's ingenuity should so far impose upon my credulity as to draw me into an error likeways with him, and make me to experiment that method, when I knew not but I might run the hazard to sacrifice some to my temerity, nothing could settle my tossed thoughts below the sight and knowledge of the thing itself. " Presently, therefore, hastening to London, and hav- ing met with the man, and exposed the occasion of my coming, I found all these tokens concerning him and his practice, that use to beget unwarry persons and prudent people making serious inquiry, trust, and knowledge. Then, after some months spent in this society, returning home as much overjoyed as I had gotten a treasure, I presently set myself to that practice: which has proved so successful to me, that since that time, of the many fevers that I have treated, none were uncured, except my Lord Creichton, whose case is related here ; and another woman, whose dangerous circumstances made her condition hopeless." There is a well-known story of Sydenham, which goes by the name of 11 The Lettsom Anecdote." Dr. Latham says it was communicated by Dr. Lettsom to the Gentleman's Magazine of August 1801, and was copied by him from the fly-leaf of a copy of the Metho- dus curandi febris, which had been in the possession of Dr. Sherson's family for fifty years. He then quotes the story. I was much surprised and pleased to find the original in Dr. Brown's Vindicatory Schedule. It dif- fers in some respects from the second-hand one, and no one after reading it can have any doubts that Sydenham bore arms for the Commonwealth. 226 DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. Dolphin ton (as he was called by his townsmen) writes as follows: - " Neither can it go well away with good men, to think, that this great man, so oft by strange and special Provi- dences pluckt out of the very jaws of death, has been preserved for an imposture, so dismale to mankind; Tho' I cannot stay to reckon all the dangers among th calamities of the late civil warrs (where he was an actor) that passed with great difficulty over his head, as his being left in the field among the dead, and many other dangers he met with: yet there is one that, repre- senting rather a miracle than a common providence, cannot be passed over, which, as I had from his own mouth, is thus, at the same time of these civil warrs, where he discharged the office of a captain, he being in his lodging at London, and going to bed at night, with his cloaths loosed, a mad drunk fellow, a souldier, like- wise in the same lodging, entering the room, with one hand gripping him by the breast of his shirt, with the other discharged a loaden pistol in his bosome, yet, O strange I without any hurt to him, most wonderfully in- deed, by such a narrow sheild as the edge of the soul- dier's hand, was his breast defended; for the admirable providence of God placed and fixed the tottering hand that gripped the shirt into that place and posture, that the edge thereof and all the bones of the metacarpe that make up the breadth of the hand, were situate in a right line betwixt the mouth of the pistol and his breast, and so the bullet discharged neither declining to the one side nor to the other, but keeping its way thorrow all these bones, in crushing them lost its force, and fell at his feet. 0 1 wonderful situation of the hand, and more wonderful course of the bullet I by any industry or art DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. 227 never again imitable I And moreover within a few days the souldier, taken with a fever arising from so danger- ous and complicat a wound, died; surely Providence does not bring furth so stupendous miracles, but for some great and equivalent end." We may take the Doctor's facts without homologat- ing his conclusions. There is nothing here indicating on what side Sydenham served, but all the probabilities from family connection, from his own incidental expres- sions and other circumstances, and his having to flee from Oxford, the headquarters of the Royalists, etc., go to make it more than likely that he was what his labo- rious, ineffectual, and latest biographer calls, in his un- wieldly phrase, a " Parliamentarian." This passage is followed by a remarkable statement by Dr. Brown, as to the persecution of Sydenham by his brethren. This is peculiarly valuable as coming from one personally acquainted with the great physician, hav- ing heard these things " from his own mouth," and being published two years after his death. Dr. Latham can- not now have any doubt as to the envy and uncharitable- ness of the profession, and the endeavor of his " collegi- ate brethren " to banish him out of " that illustrious society " for " medicinal heresie." I give the entire passage, as I have never before seen it noticed. " And further can it be thought that this great man, who in all the course of his life gave so full evidence of an ingenuous, generous, and perspicatious spirit, would or could die an imposter and murderer of mankind (which imputation to deserve, he frequently professed, jvould be more heavy to him than any punishment could be), for he it was, despising the blandishments of the World, popular applause, riches, and honor, yea his own 228 DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. health wasted with intense and assiduous meditations and thoughtfulness, that liberally sacrificed them all for the publick good: In so far, that after he had long weighed and expended the common and received meth ods of curing most diseases, and therefore had forsaken and relinquished them as vain and improper, and after his intimate search into the bowels of nature he had dis- covered others more aposite and powerful; He thereby only gained the sad and unjust recompence of calumny and ignominy; and that from the emulation of some of his collegiate brethren, and others, whose indignation at length did culminat to that hight, that they endeavored to banish him, as guilty of medicinal heresie, out of that illustrious society; and by the whisperings of others he was baulked the imployment in the Royal Family, where before that he was called among the first physicians." He then names those who had publicly given in their adhesion to the new doctrines - Dr. Goodal, Dr. Brady, Dr. Paman, Dr. Cole, Dr. Ettmuller of Leipsic, Dr. Doleus, physician to the Landgrave of Hesse, Dr. Spon of Lyons, Dr. Michelthwait of London, Dr. Morton, and Dr. Harris; all these before 1691. Amid the dreary unreadable rubbish in this old bun- dle, there is a most characteristic onslaught by the famous Dr. George Cheyne upon Dr. Oliphant, Dolphin- ton's friend and defender; it is his pugilistic, honest, reckless style, and is valuable for the testimony he - (at this time) a free-thinker in religion, and a mathemat? ical and mechanical physician (he is defending Dr. Pit- cairn) - gives to the strictly Divine origin of animal species. " All animals, of what kind soever, were origi- nally and actually created at once by the hand of Al- afghty God, it being impossible to account for their DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. 229 production by any laws of mechanism: and that every individual animal has, in minimis, actually incliided in its loins all those who shall descend from it, and every one of these again have all their offspring lodged in their loins, and so on ad infinitum ; and that all these infinite numbers of animalcules may be lodged in the bigness of a pin's head." Our own Owen would relish this intrepid and robust old speculator. But the jewel of this old book is a letter from a physician at London, appended to Dr. Oliphant's answer to the pretended re- futation of his defence. I am sure my readers will agree with the Doctor, that it is "neither impertinent nor tedi- ous," and that it must have been written " by one whose wit and good humor are equal to his learning and inge- nuity." There was one man in London, a young Scotch phy- sician, who could have written this, and we may say, Aut Arbuthnot, aut quis 2 All the chances are in favor of its being that famous wit and admirable man, of whom Pope says, " Swift said ' he could do everything but walk ; ' " and Pope himself thinks he was " as good a doctor as any man for one that is ill, and a better doc- tor for one that is well." He had shortly before this gone up to London from Aberdeen, and had published in 1697, his examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge. " Dear Sir, - I thank you for the present of your small Treatise about Vomiting in Fevers, but at the same time I approve of your reasons, you must give me leave to condemn your conduct: I know you begin to Itorm at this ; but have a little patience. There was a hysician of this town, perhaps the most famous in his 230 DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. time, being called to his patient, complaining (it may be) of an oppression at his stomach; he would very safely and cautiously order him a decoction of carduus, sometimes hot water; I don't know but he would allow now and then fat mutton broth too. The patient was vomited, and the doctor could justifie himself that he had not omitted that necessary evacuation ; this was his constant practice. Being chid by his collegues, who well knew he neglected antimony, not out of ignorance or fear, he would roguishly tell them, ' Come, come, gentlemen, that might cure my patient, but it would kill the distemper, and I should have less money in my pocket. A pretty business indeed, a rich citizen over- gorges himself, which by management may be improved into a good substantial fever, worth at least twenty guin- eas ; and you would have me nip the plant in the bud, have a guinea for my pains, and lose the reputation of a safe practitioner to boot.' The gentleman had reason, all trades must live. Alas! our people here are grown too quick-sighted, they will have antimonial vomits, and a physician dares not omit them, tho' it is many a good fee out of his pocket. Join, I say, with these wise gen- tlemen; they wish well to the Faculty; procure an order of the Colledge, and banish antimony the city of Edinburgh, and the liberties thereof. 'Tis a barbarous thing in these hard times to strangle an infant distem- per; they ought no more to be murdered than young cattle in Lent. Let it be as great a crime to kill a fever with an antimonial vomit, as to fish in spawning time. The Dutch physicians are like the rest of their nation wise ; they banish that heathenish Jesuitical drug, that would quickly reduce their practice to a narrow compass in the hopefulest distemper of the country DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. 231 These rogues that dream of nothing but specificks and panaceas, I would have them all hang'd, not so much for the folly of the attempt, as the malice of their inten- tion ; rascals, to starve so many worthy gentlemen, that perhaps know no otherwise to get their livelihood. Will the glasiers ever puzzle themselves to make glass malle- able, would the knitters ever so much as have dreamed of a stocking-loom, or the young writers petition'd to have informations printed; all those are wise in their generation, and must the physicians be the only fools ? "We all know here there is no danger in antimonial vomits, but this is inter nos ; you must not tell your pa- tient so; let him believe, as I said before, that anti- monial vomits are dangerous, deleterial, break the fibres of the stomach, etc., and that you cannot safely give hem. So shall you be stiled a cautious, safe physician, one that won't spoil the curll of a man's hair to pull him out of the river. We have some dangerous dogs here, that in a quinsy, when a man is ready to be chock'd, will blood him forty ounces at once: is not this ex- treamly hazardous ? They cut off limbs; cut for the stone ; is this safe ? I tell you, the reputation of a wary, safe physician is worth all the parts of his char- acter besides. Now I hope you will allow I have reason for what I said. " I have seen the Melius Inquirendum, and am too well acquainted with the stile and spelling, not to know that it is Dr. Eyzat's ; but here I must be with you again : how come you to write against one that says two drams of emetick wine is a sufficient doze for a man ? Suffer not such things to come abroad ; they will imag- ine you are not got so far as the circulation of the blood n Scotland; write seriously against such people. Fy 232 DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. upon't, I will never allow them to be above the dispen eation of ballads and doggrel, etc. - I am, Sir, yours, etc " London, August 23, 1699." Nothing can be finer than the edge of this, nothing pleasanter than its pleasantry ; that about murdering young cattle in Lent, and the " curll," is Charles Lamb all over; we know no one nowadays who could write thus, except the author of Esmond. NOTE.-P. 224. CLASSIFICATION OF DOCTORS 1. Those who drive the trade of bon companionrie and good-fellow- Bhip. 2. The high-flown bigots in religion or State. 3. Hangers-on of great families, "as having been domesticks!" 4. Those of "a gentile meen." Here is Dr. Beddoes' more elaborate latrologia, or Linnsean method of physicians, like Baron Born's, of the Monks. 1. The philanthropic doctor, having two varieties, a and /?, the shy and the renegado. 2. The bullying D., with Radcliffe at their head. 3. The Bacchanalian D. 4. The solemn D. 5. The club-hunting D. 6. The Burr D., centaurea caldtrapa. 7. The wheedling D., with the variety of the Adonis wheedling D. 8. The case-coining D. 9. The good-sort-of-man D., with variety, and the gossiping good-sort-of-man D., who "fetches and carries scandal." 10. The sectarian D.; vari- ety a, the inspired sectarian D. Beddoes concludes this Decade of Doctors, with notandum est in toto hoc genere naturam mirabiles edere lusvs. This is applicable to all the species, there being mules and hybrids, and occasionally monsters magnificent and dreadful, like Paracelsus. Hartley Coleridge, in his pleasant Life of Fothergill, after alluding to this latrology, has the following on the exoteric qualifications of a loctor:- " Of these exoteric qualifications, some are outward and visible; as a good gentlemanly person, not alarmingly handsome (for the Adonis Doctor, though he has a fair opening to a wealthy marriage, seldom greatly prospers in the way of business), with an address to suit-. •hat is to say, a genteel self-possession and subdued politeness, not oj DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM. 233 the very last polish - a slow, low, and regular tone of voice (here Dr. Fothergill's Quaker habits must have been an excellent preparative), and such an even flow of spirits as neither to be dejected by the sight of pain and the weight of responsibility, nor to offend the anxious and the suffering by an unsympathetic hilarity. The dress should be neat. and rather above than below par in costliness. " In fine, the young physician should carry a something of his pro- fession in his outward man, but yet so that nobody should be able to say what it was." FREE COMPETITION IN MEDICINE. " That doctors are sometimes fools as well as other people, is not, in the present times, one of those profound secrets which is known only to the learned ; it very seldom happens that a man trusts his health to an. other, merely because that other is an M. D. The person so trusted has almost always either some knowledge, or some craft, which would vrocure him nearly the same trust, though he was not decorated with any such title ! Adieu ! my dear doctor; I am afraid I shall get my lug (ear) in my lufe (hand), as we say, for what I have written." - Adam Smith to Db. Cullen, September 20, 1774. " Lawyers, soldiers, tax-gatherers, policemen, are appendages of a state, and some account should be taken of them by the civil power. The clergy are officers of the church, and if the church is a divine in- stitution, they should have her license. Doctors are the ministers of physical humanity at large, and should, for a thousand good reasons, be left under the jurisdiction of the leviathanic man whom they serve, yet under this condition, that they shall be answerable to the civil power for bodily injuries culpably inflicted upon any of its subjects." - Cov- entby Dick. FREE COMPETITION IN MEDICINE. BHAVE long thought that it was nonsense am worse, the avowed and universal exception o the craft of healing from the action of Adan Smith's law of free competition, introducing legislativ< enactment and license into the public relations of medi cine, thus constituting a virtual monopoly. I may ba permitted to express this in an extract from a Review of Professor Syme and Dr. Burt's Letters to Lord Pal- merston, on Medical Reform.1 " And now for a closing word for ourselves. Mr Syme's scheme is, as we have fully stated, the best, the simplest, and the least objectionable, if it be wise and necessary for the State to do anything in the matter. There is much in this if ; and after consideration of this difficult and little-understood subject, we are inclined to hold, that Adam Smith's law of free competition is ab- solute, and applies to the doctors of the community as well as to its shoemakers. In a letter to Dr. Cullen, published for the first time by Dr. John Thomson, in his life of that great physician, written before the pub- lication of The Wealth of Nations, he, with excellent humor, argument, and sense, asserts that human nature may be allowed safely, and with advantage, to choose its own doctor, as it does its own wife or tailor. We ecommend this sagacious letter to the serious attention 1 Edinburgh Medical Journal December, 1857. 238 FREE COMPETITION IN MEDICINE. of all concerned. We give some specimens ; its date is 1774: 'When a man has learned his lesson well, it surely can be of little importance where, or from whom he has learnt it. . . . In the Medical College of Edin- burgh, in particular, the salaries of the professors are insignificant, and their monopoly of degrees is broken in upon by all other universities, foreign and domestic. I require no other explication of its present acknowl- edged superiority over every other society of the same kind in Europe. ... A degree can pretend to give se- curity for nothing but the science of the graduate, and even for that it can give but very slender security. For his good sense and discretion, qualities not discoverable by an academical examination, it can give no security at all. . . . Had the Universities of Oxford and Cam- bridge been able to maintain themselves in the exclusive privilege of graduating all the doctors who could prac- tise in England, the price of feeling a pulse might have by this time risen from two and three guineas ' (would that ' Time would run back and fetch that age of gold ! ') ' the price which it has now happily arrived at, to double or triple that sum. . . . The great success of quackery in England has been altogether owing to the real quack- ery of the regular physicians. Our regular physicians in Scotland have little quackery, and no quack, accord- ingly, has ever made his fortune among us.' "Dr. Thomson did not find in Dr. Cullen's papers any direct replies to the arguments of his friend; but in a Latin discourse pronounced two years afterwards, at the graduation, he took occasion to state in what respects the principles of free competition, though applicable to mechanical trades, do, in his opinion, not extend to the exercise of the profession of medicine. His argument FREE COMPETITION IN MEDICINE. 239 is conducted temperately, and by no means confidently. He remarks, with sagacity and candor, ' that there are some who doubt whether it is for the interest of society, or in any way proper, to make laws or regulations for preventing unskilled or uneducated persons from engag- ing in the practice of medicine; and it is very obvious, that neither in this nor in most other countries, are effec- tual measures adopted for this purpose.' His argument is the common and we think unsound one, that mankind can judge of its carpenter, but not of its doctor; and that in the one case, life is at stake, and not in the other, a fallacy easily exposed - a floor may fall in and kill dozens, from bad joinery, as well as a man die from mala praxis. We believe that the same common sense regulates, or at least may regulate, the choice of your family doctor, as it does the choice of your architect, engineer, or teacher. " If a man choose his architect or engineer from his own personal knowledge of their respective arts and sci- ences, he must either choose himself, and forget his stair, or make very sure of choosing the wrong man; in this, as in so many things, we depend on testimony and general evidence of capacity and worth. " In a word, our petition to Parliament is, Make a clean sweep; remove every legislative enactment re- garding the practice of medicine; leave it as free, as unprotected, as unlicensed, as baking or knife-grinding; let our Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, Faculties, and Worshipful Companies, make what terms they like for those who choose to enter them; let the Horse Guards, let the Customs, let the Poor Law Boards, let the Cunard Company, demand and exact any qualifica- tion they choose for the medical men they employ and 240 FREE COMPETITION IN MEDICINE. pay, just as Lord Breadalbane may, if he like, require red hair and Swedenborgism, in his Lordship's surgeon to his slate quarries at Easdale. Give the principle its full swing, and, by so doing, be assured we would lose some of our worst Quacks; but we would not lose our Alisons, our Symes, our Christisons, Begbies, and Kil- gours, or our Brodies, Lathams, Brights, Watsons, and Clarks; and we would, we are persuaded, have more of the rough-and-readies, as Dr. Burt calls them. Gideon Gray would have an easier mind, and more to feed him- self and his horse on, and his life would be more largely insured for his wife and children. And if from the corporate bodies, who are trying to live after they are dead, the ancient cry of compensation rises up wild and shrill, give the Belisarii their pence, and let them be contemptible and content." But let there be no interference, under the name of qualification or license, with free trade in medical knowl- edge and skill. There is in the body politic, as in the body natural, a self-regulating power to which we ought to take heed, and trust its instincts, and not our own contrivances. This holds in religion, in public morals, in education; and we will never prosper as we might till we take the advice Henry Taylor relates that an old lady of rank gave to her anxious daughter-in-law, when asked by her what she would advise as to the education of children: " I would advise, my dear, a little whole* some neglect." EDWARD FORBES, " Nature never did betray the heart that loved her; 't is her privilege. Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy : for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings." Wobdswobth. EDWARD FORBES.1 ■E have too long delayed noticing the memoi. of this delightful man - the gifted teacher, the consummate naturalist. Indeed, it is so long now since we read it, and so long since all the world has done so, that we cannot and need not go into the details of his life and history, or into any minute criticism of the treatment of their theme by his two bi- ographers, Dr. George Wilson and Mr. Geikie. It is an interesting and a likeable book, loose in its texture in the first half, from the natural tendency, on the part of its genial author, to expatiate and effloresce; and deficient necessarily in personality in the second, which, however, is most ably and thoroughly done from its writer's point of view, -just, painstaking, and full of excellent science. Mr. Geikie's genius is mainly geolog- ical, and it is well that it is so; but he writes with clearness and force ; and judgment in its own place is always better than genius out of it. There are exquisite bits, perfect flowers for fragrance and beauty in Dr. Wil- son's sketch. The account of Edinburgh College life, and all about that great and primary man, that master in natural history, Professor Jameson,- a man of rare purity, and force of life and purpose, and most genuinely good, - is quick with our lost friend's fine play of fancy, and his affectionate humor; but it labors, as we all tc 1 From The Scotsman. 244 EDWARD FORBES. our sorrow know, under the loss of his revision. The first chapter, on the Isle of Man and its tailless cats, is out of all proportion, and with its information and fm is more suited to the Odds and Ends of a Manx his- torian of the Knickerbocker breed, than to the work of a steady biographer. The next chapter, on Edward Forbes's infant and boyish years, is finely done, devel- oping with a tender and firm touch the natural bent of his mind, and showing how truly " the child is father of the man." Edward Forbes was one of four men who studied to- gether at Edinburgh, all bound together closely, but each curiously different from the rest. Samuel Brown, George Wilson, and John Goodsir were the others. The last-in many respects the greatest, certainly the completest and most satisfying - still lives, one of the main glories of our medical school, a man who will leave a name not unworthy to be placed alongside of John Hunter's. He has no speciality, but is a true dis- terner and discoverer of nature, a teacher of what he himself knows. It is impossible to overrate his influence in our medical school in grounding the students in a genuine anatomy, and in basing speculation of the widest, the most daring, and transcendental kind upon down- right matter of fact. Edward Forbes was a child of Nature, and he lived in her presence and observance. She was his Alma Mater to the end. He enjoyed science; this was the chief end to him of life; its bloom, and its fruit, and its own ex- ceeding great reward. George Wilson made science enjoyable to others ; he illustrated, adorned, and commended it; standing, as it were, with his face to the world, he told what of the EDWARD FORBES. 245 mystery and truth of science it could or cared to know - and its facetice too, for he was an inveterate wag, - having more wit than humor, and less imagination than fancy. Samuel Brown was his typical reverse. He stood with his back to the public, intent at the high altar of his service, bent on questioning, on divination, and on making nature reveal her secret. He worked up the stream; his was that science of sciences which is philos- ophy proper. He desired to bring knowledge to a point, to draw all multiformity into the focus of unity. Goodsir advances it as a whole, and makes it our in- heritance, while he enriches it with something from the stores of his other brethren. In an eloquent and tender eloge upon Dr. Samuel Brown, in the North British Review for February 1857, there is quoted from his private journal, with which he whiled away his long hours of languor, solitude, and pain, the following portrait of his former colleague and companion, written on hearing of his sudden death. Surely if there is much matter like this in that journal, rhe world would like to have more of it some day. " Edward Forbes is dead and buried before me; - died this day week, - was buried on Thursday. ' He be- haved at the close with his old composure, considerate- ness, and sweetness of nature,' writes Dr. John. This is a great public loss, - a pungent public grief too ; but to us, his friends, it is ' past the blasphemy of grief.' Surely it is ' wondrous in our eyes.' Not forty yet; his work sketched out largely, rather than done: his proper career, as the Edinburgh Professor of Natural History, just opened, and that with unusual brilliancy ol circumstance, - Edinburgh, young and old, proud tf 246 EDWARD FORBES receive him as her new great man, - the Naturalists of Scotland rising up to call the Manxman blessed - ' The pity of it, oh the pity of it 1 ' "We began our public career almost together. He in his twenty-fifth, I in my twenty-third year, delivered at Edinburgh a joint course of lectures on the Philoso- phy of the Sciences, - he the graphic or static, I the principal or dynamic hemisphere of the round. Tall for his strength, slightly round-shouldered, slightly in-bent legs, but elegant, with a fine round head and long face, a broad, beautifully arched forehead, long dim-brown hair like a woman's, a slight moustache, no beard, long- limbed, long-fingered, lean, - such was one of the most interesting figures ever before an Edinburgh audience. His voice was not good, his manner not flowing, - not even easy. He was not eloquent, but he said the right sort of thing in a right sort of way ; and there was such an air of mastery about him, of genius, of geniality, of unspeakable good nature, that he won all hearts, ami subdued all minds, and kept all imaginations prisoners for life. Nobody that has not heard him can conceive the charm. " In natural history his labors are acknowledged by his peers; and it is not for a chemist to say a word. Vet I fancy he has made no memorable discovery, - ini- tiated no critical movement. It is by the width of his views he has told, and by his personal influence. In short, he is a first-rate naturalist, near-sighted and far- sighted, and eminently disposed and able to reduce the chaos of observation to order, and to discern the one soul of nature in all her manifold body of members; but he has not shown himself inventive, like Linnaeus or Cuvier, or even Buffon. His true greatness was cu EDWARD FORBES. 247 mulative; and if he had lived as long, he might have rivalled Humboldt. As it is, he was not a philosopher, nor a great discoverer; but he was a consummate and philosophical naturalist, wider than any man alive in his kind. Add to that noble distinction, that he was much of an artist, not a little of a man of letters, something f a scholar, a humorist, the very most amiable of men, perfect gentleman, and a beautiful pard-like creature, nd you have our Hyperion, - gone down, alas I ere it was yet noon! After all, what a combination of charms ! what a constellation of gifts I what a man I Edward Forbes was a sweet, wise, broad, and sunny great kind of man, else I do not know a nobleman when I see him. " As for religion, I can only say he never talked in- fidelities, even in our rash youth. He always abided by the church, though he rarely frequented its tabernacles. He was a kind of half-intellectual, half-aesthetical be- liever. Theology somehow did not lie in his way; and he was (as I conceive) sincere, rather than earnest, in religion. There lay his great defect; since all are but fragments after all that can be said even of a Shake- speare. He wanted intensity of character, depth of soul, spirituality; and it is curious in a man so large. " And in connection with this lay one of the secrets of Forbes's boundless popularity. He was a conformist,- ran against no man or thing. He joined no new cause, he assailed no old one; nay, he even assailed no new »ne. All were welcome to him, therefore, and he to all. Even in Natural History he brought no agitating or perplexing news, - perplexing men with the fear of change. He sailed nobly with the wind and tide of or dinary progress, not needing to carry a single gun, but the foremost of this peaceful fleet. This was all very 248 EDWARD FORBES. delightful and wise; yet let a word be said for the men of war, John Kepler and the rest; and also let a dis- tinction betwixt the two orders of men be remembered. To forget such distinctions is to confound the morality of criticism. He of Nazareth, not to be profane, brought ' not peace, but a sword,' - the Divine image of ' the greater sort of greatness.' " This is to the life, delicate and keen, like a Holbein or Van Eyck. The description of his person is curiously accurate, - the fine round head, the long face, the long, dim-brown hair like a woman's, etc. To conclude, there is material in this volume for a short and compact life of Forbes. You feel you know him and hear him; see him singing, or rather crooning, his odd genial songs ; playing with his subject, with everything, making his pen laugh out of those droll tail- pieces and overflowings of fun ; clever, but vague, fee- ble in outline, but full of the man. We have had a melancholy pleasure in giving ourselves up to this book, and thinking how much the world has gained in him, and lost. The differences between natural history and analyt- ical science are sufficiently distinct where they are far- thest from each other; but, as is the case in all partitions of knowledge, they get less marked where they approach at the " marches." Therefore it is hardly fair to say that Edward Forbes was merely a master in natural history, not also in science proper, the truth rather be- .ng that he was more of the first than of the second. The difference of the two knowledges is very much the difference between listening to what nature sponta- neously says to you, - that philosophy, which, as Bacon has it, "repeats the words of the universe itself with EDWARD FORBES. 249 the utmost fidelity, and is written, as it were, by dic- tation of the universe," and between putting questions to her, often very cross-questions; putting her, in fact, to the torture, and getting at her hidden things. The one is more of the nature of experience, of that which is a methodized record of appearances ; the other more of experiment of that which you, upon some hypoth- esis, expect to find, and has more to do with intimate composition and action. Still this parallelism must not be run out of breath; both of them have chiefly to do with the truth of fact, more than with the truth of thought about fact, or about itself, which is philosophy, oi with the truth of imagination, which is ideal art, fab- ricated by the shaping spirit from fact, and serving for delectation. The world is doing such a large business in the first two of these departments, - natural history and pure science, - that we are somewhat in danger of forgetting altogether the third, which is of them all the greatest, and of misplacing and misinterpreting the fourth. Science is ultimately most useful when it goes down into practice - becomes technical, and is utilized; or blossoms into beauty, or ascends into philosophy and religion, and rests in that which is in the highest sense good, spiritual, and divine, leaving the world wiser and happier, as well as more powerful and knowing, than it found it. We end by quoting from this memoir the following noble passage, by that master of science and of style, our own Playfair, in his account of Dr. Hutton. It is lingularly appropriate. " The loss sustained by the death of this great natu- ralist was aggravated to those who knew him by the con 250 EDWARD FORBES. sideration of how much of his knowledge had perished with himself, and notwithstanding all that he had writ ten, how much of the light collected by a life of expe rience and observation was now completely extinguished. It is, indeed, melancholy to reflect, that with all who make proficiency in the sciences, founded on nice and delicate observations, something of this sort must inva- riably happen. The experienced eye, the power of perceiving minute differences and fine analogies which discriminate or unite the objects of science, and the readiness of comparing new phenomena with others already treasured up in the mind, - these are accom- plishments which no rules can teach, and no precepts can put us in possession of. This is a portion of knowl- edge which every man must acquire for himself; nobody can leave as an inheritance to his successor. It seems, indeed, as if Nature had, in this instance, admitted an exception to the will by which she has ordained the perpetual accumulation of knowledge among civilized men, and had destined a considerable portion of science 3ontinually to grow up, and perish with individuals." DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY. Scene. - A hut in the wilds of Braemar; a big gamekeeper fast sinking from a gunshot wound in the lower part of the thigh. Dk. Adams, loquitur. - " Get a handkerchief, and the spurtie " {the porridge stick'), "and now for a pad for our tourniquet. This will do," putting his little Elzevir Horace down upon the femoral. Gamekeeper's life saved, and, by good guidance, the leg too. DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY. E little thought when, a few weeks ago, we in- troduced some suggestions from Dr. Adams as to the propriety of instituting in our uni- versities a chair of medical history, by calling him the most learned of Scottish physicians, that we should soon have to change " is " into was. When we last saw him, though he looked older than his years, and weather-worn, he was full of vigor and of heart, and seemed to have in him many days of victo- rious study. To see so much energy and understanding cut sheer through in its full current, not dwindling away by nat- ural waste, is little less startling than it would be to see his own silver and impetuous Dee, one moment rolling in ample volume, and the next vanished. For, common though it be, there is nothing more strange, nothing, in a certain true sense, more against nature, than the sud- den extinguishment of so much intellect, knowledge, and force. Dr. Adams was not a mere scholar, not merely pa- tient, ingenious, and perspicacious in the study of lan- guage. His was likewise a robust, hardy, eager nature, hungering after knowledge of every sort, and, in the structure of his mind and its bent, more like the Scali- gers and Bentleys of old than the mighty but mere word-mongers among the Germans. He was made of 254 DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY. the same tough and fervid material as were George Bu chanan and Florence Wilson, Andrew Melville, and the huge, turbulent,1 and intrepid Dempster, men who were great scholars, and a great deal more; shrewd, and full of public spirit; men of affairs as well as of letters. It is this intermixture of shrewdness and fervor with hard-headedness and patient endurance of mental toil, so peculiarly Scotch in its quality and in its flavor, which makes a man like the country surgeon of Banchory- Ternan worthy of more than a passing notice. Francis Adams was born in the parish of Lumphanan, on Deeside. His father was a gardener, and his elder brother is still a farmer in that parish. Ina memorandum of his literary life now before us, he says: - "As far as I can think, my classical bent was owing to a friendship which I formed, when about fifteen years old, with a young man a few years older than my- self, who had enjoyed the benefits of an excellent edu- cation at Montrose, which gave him a superiority over myself that roused me to emulation. " In my early years I had been shamefully mistaught. I began by devoting seventeen hours a day to the study of Virgil and Horace, and it will be readily believed that such intense application soon made up for any early deficiencies. " I read each of these six or seven times in succession. 1 Here is this formidable worthy's portrait, by Matth®us Peregrinus, s quoted by Dr. Irving in his Literary Scotchmen of the Last Four Centuries:-"Moribus ferox fuit, apertus omnino, et simulandi nes- ems, sive enim arnore, sive odio aliquem prosequeretur utrumque pa- 'am; consuetudine jucundissimus, amicis obsequentissimus, ita inimicis maxime infensus, accept®que injuri® tenax, earn aperte agnoscens et tepetens." DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY. 255 Having mastered the difficulties of Latin literature, I naturally turned my attention to Greek, as being the prototype of the other. " It was the late Dr. Kerr, of Aberdeen, who drew my attention to the Greek literature of medicine, and at his death I purchased a pretty fair collection of the Greek medical authors which he had made. However, I have also read almost every Greek work which has come down to us from antiquity, with the exception of the ecclesiastical writers ; all the poets, historians, phi- losophers, orators, writers of science, novelists, and so forth. My ambition always was to combine extensive knowledge of my profession with extensive erudition." This was no ordinary boy of fifteen who could, ex propria motu, work seventeen hours a day to make up to his friend. He settled early in life in the beautiful and secluded village of Banchory-Ternan, to use his own words, "with its glassy river and magnificent hills rising in front and behind like another Tempe, with its Peneus flowing between Ossa and Olympus." Here he spent his days in the arduous and useful profession of a coun- try surgeon, out in all weathers and at all hours, having the lives, the births, and the deaths of a wild outlying region on his hands. This work he did so thoroughly that no one could, with a shadow of justice, say that his learning lessened his readiness and his ability for the active duties of his calling, in the full round of its re- quirements. He was an attentive, resolute, wise practi- tioner, just such a man as we would like to fall into the hands of, were we needing his help. He was always up to the newest knowledge of the time, but never a slave to any system, or addicted to swear by any master. The 256 DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY. whole cast of his mind was thoroughly free and self- sustained. If he had any idols, they were among the mighty and the dead; but even they were his compan- ions and familiar daimons^ rather than his gods. The following is a list of Dr. Adams's principal publications, and if we consider that, during all this time, he was fighting for a livelihood, educating his family, and in- volved in his multifarious and urgent duties, they fur- nish one of the most signal instances of the pursuit and mastery of knowledge under difficulties to be found even among our Scottish worthies : - 1. Translation of Hero and Leander, from the Greek of Musmus, with other Poems, English and Latin. Aber- deen, 1826. 2. Hermes Philologus, or the Connection of the Greek and Latin. London, 1826. This made him many liter- ary friends, among others, Edmund H. Barker, author of Dr. Parr's Life, and Dr. Anthon of New York. 3. Various Papers of Greek Prosody, etc., in the Classical Journal. 4. On the Administration of Hellebore among the Ancients. 5. On the Nervous System of Galen and other An- cient Authors, 1829, in which the originality of Sir Charles Bell's doctrines was attacked. 6. On the Toxicological Doctrines of the Ancients. 7. On the Treatment of Malignant Ulcers of the Face. 8. Notices of Greek, Latin, and Arabic Medical Authors. For Barker's Edition of Lempriere. 9. Paulus 2Egineta. Translation of the first volume, 1834. This was a losing concern as to money; but it Olaced him, per saltum, in the first rank of learned and 'udicious physicians; it was an amazing tour de force DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY. 257 for an Aberdeen surgeon, and will ever remain a memo- rial of his indomitable mental pluck and strong sense. The Sydenham Society gave its character as follows : -• " Replete with learning, and comprising the most com- plete view which has ever been given of the knowledge professed by the Greeks, Romans, and Arabians, it will form a lasting monument of the industry and eruditioi of its author, and an honor to his country." 10. Several Reviews in Forbes's British and Foreign Review, 1842-66. 11. Case of Dislocation of the Knee-Joint, with Dis- section. 12. English and Greek Dictionary (Dunbar's), almost entirely done by him. The appendix, containing scien- tific explanation of the Greek names of minerals, plants, and animals, is out of sight the most valuable existing in any language. 13. Paulus JEgineta, translated from the Greek. 3 vols., 1845-6-7. Sydenham Society. 14. A Series of Papers on Uterine Haemorrhage. 15. Case of a Woman bitten by an Adder. 16. A Series of Papers on the Construction of the Placenta. 17. On the Treatment of Burns. 18. Hippocrates, translated from the Original. 2 vols., 1849. Sydenham Society. 19. Theophilus de Fabrica. Assisted by Dr. Green- hill. Oxon. 1842. 20. Arundines Devae: a Collection of Original Po- ems. Since that time there have been frequent communica- tions by him to the journals on medical subjects, and a 258 DR. *ADAMS OF BANCHORY. pleasant paper on the study of ornithology, read before the British Association at Aberdeen. Nothing can better illustrate his keen appetite for knowledge of all sorts than this curious and touching record of his own observations on the birds of Banchory, and his son's on those of Cashmere. You see what a quick and loving eye the father had kept, during his busy and learned life, upon the natural objects he met with in his rides, and the training he had given his son in such studies at home, which enabled him to turn his Indian observations to good account. This modest but remarkable paper contains not only the ornithological notes, but an admirable pleading for this department of natural history as a branch of liberal education, and a valuable gymnastic for the senses and the mind, and ends with an eloquent, and we think well-founded pro- test, against the scientific ultraism of the day, the useful information, and cramming mania. We wish we had space to give some of his words of admonition and warning. The following are Dr. Adams's remarks, in the memorandum already referred to, on his two great works : - " I began the translation of JEgineta in the end of Nov. 1827, and finished it on 28th April 1829. I never, at any period of my life, underwent so much drudgery ; and during three months I sat up late and rose early, and snatched every minute I could from the duties of my profession. At that time my practice, though not lucrative, was extensive, especially in the obstetric line; I managed, however, to work at my translation ten hours a day. I finished the translation of Hippocrates tn about four months. The certainty of attaining a fair remuneration for the trouble it cost me, and that it DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY. 259 tvoiild not be a light hid under a bushel, made this by far the most delightful task I ever engaged in. The re- ception of it was everything I could desire. It cost me some professional sacrifices, but this was amply made up by the delight and mental improvement it conferred on me." Such is a hasty and imperfect sketch of the character and works of the remarkable man, who well deserved the title of doctissimus medicorum Britannorum. Some years ago, when travelling through that noble and beautiful region, we went across from the inn at Banchory to introduce ourselves to the translator of the divine old man of Cos. We found him at breakfast, ready for his ride up the Feugh, and amusing himself with pencilling down a translation of an ode of Horace into Greek verse 1 He was a thorough Aberdonian, hard-headed and warm-hearted, canny and yet independent, a man of thought and action, not less than a man of vocables and learning; in politics an old and thorough Liberal; generous in his praise of others, and not unamusingly fond of their praise of himself. By the sheer force of his intellect, by the extent and exactness of his erudi- tion, he became the cherished friend of such men as Sir John Forbes, Dean Milman, Sir W. Hamilton, and many of the famous Continental scholars ; and he leaves in bis own profession no equal in the combination of honest, deep, and broad learning, with practical sagacity and enlightened experience. EXCURSUS ETHICUS, Verius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur, et verius est quam cogitatur. - Augustine. In these two things, viz., an equal indifferency for all truth - I mean the receiving it in the love of it as truth, but not loving it for any other reason before we know it to be true ; and in the examination of our principles, and not receiving any for such, nor building on them, until we are fully convinced, as rational creatures, of their solidity, truth, and certainty - consists that freedom of the understanding which is necessary to a rational creature, and without which it is not truly an understanding. - John Locke. EXCURSUS ETHICUS. ■E have named the excellent works at the close of this paper more with a view of recommend- ing them to the study of such of our readers as may be so inclined, than of reviewing them in the tech- nical sense, still less of going over exactly the same ground which they have already so well occupied and enriched. Our object in selecting their names out of many others is, that they are good and varied, both as to time, and view, and character, - and also that we may be saved referring to them more particularly. Our observations shall be of a very miscellaneous and occasional kind - perhaps too much so for the taste or judgment of our readers; but we think that a rambling excursion is a good and wholesome thing now and then. System is good, but it is apt to enslave and confine its maker. Method in art is what system is in science; and we physicians know, to our sad and weighty experience, that we are more occupied with doing some one thing, than in knowing many other things. System is to an art what an external skeleton is to a crab, something it, as well as the crab, must escape from if it mean to grow bigger : more of a shield and covering than a sup- port and instrument of power. Our skeletons are inside our bodies ; and so generally ought our systems to be inside, not outside, our minds. Were we, for our own and our readers' satisfaction 264 EXCURSUS ETHIC US. and entertainment, or for some higher and better end, about to go through a course of reading on the founda- tion of general morals, in order to deduce from them a code of professional ethics; to set ourselves to discover the root, and ascend up from it to the timber, the leaves, the fruit, and the flowers, we would not confine ourselves to a stinted browsing in the ample and ancient field : we would, in right of our construction, be omnivorous, trusting to a stout mastication, a strong digestion, an ec- lectic and vigorous chylopoietic staff of appropriators and scavengers, to our making something of everything. We would not despise good old Plutarch's morals, or anybody else's, because we know chemistry and many other things better than he did; nor would we be ashamed to confess that our' best morality, and our deepest philosophy of the nature and origin of human duty, of moral good and evil, was summed up in the golden rules of childhood, " Love thy neighbor as thy- self ; " " Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them; " " Every man is thy neighbor ; " " Love is the fulfilling of the law ; " " Ye owe no man anything but to love one another." This is the true birthplace of the word ought, that which we owe to some one, and of duty, that which is due by us; and likewise of moral, that which should be cus- tomary, and ethical, in the same sense ; - the only cus- tom which it will always be a privilege, as well as a duty, to pay - the only debt which must always be run- ning up. It is worth remembering that names too often become the ghosts of things, and ghosts with a devil or a fool, instead of the original tenant inside. The word manners means literally nothing else, and ought never to be any EXCURSUS ETafcUS. 265 thing else than the expression, the embodiment, the pleasant flower, of an inward mos, or moral state. We may all remember that the Contes Moraux, of Mar- montel, which were, many of them, anything but moral, were translated so, instead of Tales illustrative of Man- ners. To go on with our excursus eiraticus. Were we going to take ourselves and our company into the past, and visit the habitats of the great moral- ists, and see the country, and make up our minds as to what in it was what, and how much to us it was worth, we would not keep to one line; we would expatiate a little, and make it a ramble, not a journey, much less an express train with no stoppages. We would, moreover, take our own time, choose our own roads and our own vehicles; we would stay where and as long as we found entertainment, good lodging, and good fare, and did not lose our time or ourselves: and we would come home, we hope, not informed merely, but in better health and spirits, more contented, more active, more enlightened, more ready for our daily work. We would begin at the beginning, and start early. In search of what is man's normal sense of duty, and how he is to do it, we would take our company to that garden planted eastward in Eden, where were all manner of fruits, pleasant to the eye and good for food ; that garden which every one believes in - we don't mean geographically or geolog- ically, but really - as a fact in the history of the race, and relics of which - its sounds, its fragrance, and beauty - he meets still everywhere, within him and around him, " like the remembrance of things to come," - we would there find the law, the primal condition un- der which the species were placed by its Maker; how 266 EXCURSUS ETHICUS. the infinite and the finite, God and his children, giving and receiving faith and works, met together and kept in tune: how and by whom man was made upright, in mind as well as body ; and what was that first of the many inventions he found out, when he took of the tree of the knowledge of good as well as of evil, and did eat. Then we would move on to a wild mountain in Ara- oia, standing at this day as it did on that, and joining the multitude of that peculiar people, whom we still see in the midst of us in our busy world, unchanged, the breed still unmixed, and out of the bickering flame, the darkness, and the splendor, and, " as it were the very body of heaven in its clearness," the sight so exceed- ingly terrible, we might hear those ten commandments which all of us have by heart, - not all in our hearts. Lest we should fail with fear, we would go on into the sunlight of Canaan, and forward many centuries, and in the " Sermon on the Mount," sitting down among the multitudes, hear our code of laws revised and re-issued by their Giver, and find its summary easily carried away, - love to God, love to man, loving our neighbor as our- selves. Then might we go back and visit the Shepherd King, and carry off his 104th, 105th, and 119th Psalms, and being there we would take a lesson in morals from his son's life, - that wisest and foolishest of men, - and carry off with us his pithy " Proverbs." Next we would intercept Paul's letter to his friends at Rome, and make an extract of its 1st chapter, and its 12ih and 13th, and end by copying it all; and having called on James the Less and the Just, we would get his entire epistle by heart, and shut up this, our visit to the Holy Land, with the sound of the last verse of the EXCURSUS ETHICUS. 267 jecond last chapter of the Apocalypse ringing in our ears. We would then find Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and all those noble old fellows, busy at their work, show- ing us how little and how much man, with the finest or- ganization, and the best discipline, can do for himself in the way of lifting himself from the ground, and erecting himself above himself, by his sheer strength; and we would not fail to admire the courage, and the deep moral intensity and desire, the amazing beauty and energy of expression, the amplitude and depth of their ideas, as if minds were once giant as well as bodies. But we would not tarry with them, we would wish rather to take them with us, and get Socrates to study the Sermon on the Mount, and Plato the Pauline Epistles, where he would meet his fellow, and more than his match, in subtlety and in sense, in solid living thought, in clear and pas- sionate utterance, in everything that makes thought felt, and feeling understood, and both motive and effectual. Then would we hurry over the dreary interval of the middle passage of the dark ages, where Aristotle's blind children of the mist might be seen spinning ropes, not out of themselves, like the more intelligent and practical spider, but out of the weary sand - ropes, signifying nothing; and we might see how, having parted with their senses, they had lost themselves, and were vox et prceterea nihil. But we must shorten our trip. We would cool our- selves, and visit old Hobbes of Malmesbury in his arctic cave, and see him sitting like a polar bear, muttering protests against the universe, nursing his wrath as the only thing with which to warm and cheer that sullen heart, and proclaiming that self-love is every kind of 268 EXCURSUS ETHICUS. love, and all that in man is good. We would wonder at that palace of ice, symmetrical, beautiful, strong - but below zero. We would come away before we were be- numbed, admiring much his intrepid air, his keen and clean teeth, his clear eye, his matchless vigor of grip, his redeeming love for his cubs, his dreary mistake of absolute cold for heat, - frozen mercury burning as well as molten gold. Leaving him, after trying to get him to give up his cold fishy diet, his long winters of splen- did darkness, and come and live with us like a Christian, we would go to an English country-house, to Lady Masham's, at the Oates, the abode of comfort, cheerful- ness, and thoughtful virtue; and we would there find John Locke, "communing with the man within the breast," and listening reverently, but like a man; and we would carry off from her ladyship's table her father's (Cudworth) huge magazine of learning, strong intellect, and lofty morality - his treatise " Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality." Then we might call for Locke's pupil, Lord Shaftesbury, the great man and the courtier, but the philosopher, too, having glimpses of better things, and coming very close to what we are in search of - a special moral faculty ; and we would find our friend Dr. Henry More in his laboratory, dreaming in his odd Platonic way, of a " boniform faculty." Next, we would set sail across the Atlantic, and reach in the evening the mild skies of the " vex't Bermoothes," and there find the beautiful-souled Berkeley dreaming of ideal universities in the far west - of a new world, peopled with myriads as happy, as intelligent, as virtu- ous as himself; dreaming, too, of his pancratic "Tar Water," and in " Siris " ascending from his innocent nostrum, by a Jacob's ladder of easy grade, to Plato's EXCURSUS ETHICUS. 269 heavjn. And being in the neighborhood, we might as well visit New England, and among its hedgerows and elms, and quiet old villages, forget we are in New Hampshire - not in old-and see in his study a coun- try clergyman, with a thoughtful, contented look, and an eye rich with a grave enthusiasm - Jonathan Ed- wards - " whose power of subtle argument, perhaps un- matched, certainly unsurpassed among men, was joined with a personal character which raised his piety to fervor." We might watch him with his back to the wall of his room, his right heel turning diligently in a hole of its own making in the floor, and the whole man absorbed in thought;1 and we would bring off what he thought of the " Nature of True Virtue, and God's chief end in the Creation; " and we would find that, by a mental process as steady as that of the heel - by his intrepid excogitation, his downright simplicity of pur- pose, and the keen temper of his instrument, he had, to borrow an exquisite illustration, pierced through the subsoil - the gravel, the clay, and rocks - down to the fresh depths of our common nature, and brought up, as from an Artesian well, his rich reward and ours, in the full flow of the waters of virtue - not raised, per saltum, by pump or high pressure, but flowing, pleno-rivo, by a force from within. On our return, we might fall in with an ardent, but sensible Irishman,2 teaching moral philosophy at Glas- gow, and hitting, by a sort of felicity, on what had been before so often missed, and satisfying mankind, at least, 1 Some years ago, an intelligent New England physician told us that •his was the great metaphysician's nabit and attitude of study, and that he had often seen the hole, whici the molar heel made during rears of meditation. 2 Hutcheson. 270 EXCURSUS ETHICUS. with the name of a moral sense - as distinct as out sens j of bitter and sweet, soft and hard, light and dark- ness. Then might we take a turn in his garden with Bishop Butler, and hear his wise and weighty, his simple and measured words: " Nations, like men, go at times deranged." " Everything is what it is, and not another thing." " Goodness is a fixed, steady, unmovable prin- ciple of action." " Reason, with self-love and conscience, are the chief or superior principles in the nature of man ; and they, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way." " Duty and interest are per fectly coincident, for the most part, in this world; and in every instance, if we take in the future and the whole." We would carry off all his sermons, and indeed everything he had written, and distribute his sermons on The Love of God, on Self-Deceit, The Love of our Neigh- bor, and The Ignorance of Man, all along our road, to small and great. We would look in on the author of the History of the Ethical Sciences, on his return, perhaps tired and dis- pirited, from a speech on the principles of natural and immutable law, in " the House," when all had been asleep but himself and the reporters ; and we would listen for hours to his unfolding the meanings which others, and which he himself, attached to that small word - ought; and hear him call it " this most impor- tant of words : " and we would come away charmed with the mild wisdom of his thoughts, and the sweet richness of his words. We would merely leave our cards at Jeremy Ben- tham's, that despiser of humbug in others, and uncon- scious example of it in himself, and we would bring off his Deontological Faculty. Neither would we care to EXCURSUS ETHICUS. 271 stay long with that hard-headed, uncomfortable old man of Koenigsberg, - losing himself, from excess of strict- ness, in the midst of his metaphysics; and we would with pity and wonder hear him announce that dreadful " categorical imperative " of his, which has been said, with equal wit and truth, to be, " at its best, but a dark lantern, till it borrows a utilitarian farthing candle -• a flaming sword that turns every way but drives no whither " - proclaiming a paradise lost, but in no wise pointing the way to a paradise to be regained. And before settling at home, we would look in and pay our respects in our own town, to a beneficent, be- nevolent, enlightened, and upright man,1 with whom we could agree to differ in some things, and rejoice to agree in many; and we would bring away from him all that he could tell us of that " conscientiousness " - the bodily organ of the inward sense of personal right and wrong, upon the just direction of which - no one knows better than he does - depend the true safety, and dignity, and happiness of man. But after all our travel, we would be little the better or the wiser, if we ourselves did not inwardly digest and appropriate, as "upon soul and conscience," all our knowledge. We would much better not have left home. For it is true, that not the light from heaven, not the riches from the earth, not the secrets of nature, not the minds of men, or of ourselves, can do us anything but evil, if our senses, our inward and outward senses, are not kept constantly exercised, so as to discern for our- selves what is good and evil in us and for us. We must carry the lights of our own consciousness and conscience uto all our researches, or we will, in all likelihood, ose our pains. 1 George Combe. 272 EXCURSUS ETHICUS. As we have been, however, on our travels, qua medici, as well as general tourists, we shall give the names of some our best medical moralists : - The Oath and Law of Hippocrates, and above all, his personal character, and the whole spirit of his writings and practice - Stahl - Sydenham's warning and advice to those who pur- pose giving themselves to the work of medicine - the four things he would have them to weigh well, - the two admirable academic sermons of Gaubius, De Regi- mine Mentis quod Medicorum est -Gregory on the Du- ties of a Physician - Dr. Denman's Life, by his son, the Lord Chief - Justice, and Dr. Gooch's - not Dr. Hope's, for reasons we might, but do not, give - Dr. Baillie's character, personal and professional - Dr. Ab- ercrombie's, and the books we have put at the end of this paper. Dr. Percival's Ethics is a classical book, in its best sense; sensible, sound, temperate, clear thoughts, con- veyed in natural, clear, persuasive language. Its title is somewhat of a blunder, at first it was Medical Jurispru- dence - and Ethics means at once more and less than what it is made by him to represent. The Duties of a Physician would have been less pedantic, and more cor- rect and homely. There is a good deal of the stiffness of the old school about the doctor; he speaks in knee- breeches and buckles, with a powdered wig, and an in- terminable silk waistcoat, a gold-headed cane at his side, and his cocked hat under his arm. To us, however, this s a great charm of the book, and of such books. There may be stiffness and some Johnsonian swell about them , some words bigger than the thoughts, like a boy in his Other's coat; some sentences in which the meaning ends EXCURSUS ETHICUS. 273 sooner than its voice, and the rummel resounds after having parted company with the gumption ; but with all this, there is a temperance, and soundness, and dignity of view - a good breeding and good feeling, a reticence and composure, which, in this somewhat vaporing, tur- bulent, unmannerly age of ours, is a refreshing pleas- ure, though too often one of memory. We are truly glad to see, from a modest note by Dr. Greenhill, the editor, that he is engaged on a work on medical morals. He will do it well and wisely, we have no doubt. The profession is deeply indebted to him for his edition of Sydenham - the best monument the So- ciety called by his name could raise to that great man ; and also for his Life of Hippocrates, in Smith's Diction- ary, besides other contributions to medical philosophy and biography. We have placed Fuller's Holy and Profane State on our list, specially on account of its chapters on " The Good Physician," " The Life of Paracelsus," the " True Gentleman," and the " Degenerous," - and likewise that we might tempt our readers to enjoy the whole of this delightful little book, and as much else of its author as they can get hold of. They will thank us for this, if they do not already know him, - and they will excuse us, if they do. Dr. Fuller is a man who, like Dr. South and Sydney Smith, is so intensely witty, that we forget, or do not notice, that he is not less eminently wise; and that his wit is the laughing blossom of wisdom. Here ire some of his sententiolce vibrantes: " The Good Phy- s.cian hansels not his new experiments on the bodies of his patients, letting loose mad recipes into the sick man's body, to try how they and nature will fight it out, while he stands by and enjoys the battle, - except in desperate 274 EXCURSUS ETHICUS. cases, when death must be expelled by death. Lest his apothecary should oversee, he oversees his apothecary*. He trusteth not the single witness of the water, if bet- ter testimony may be had. For reasons drawn from the urine alone are as brittle as the urinal. He brings not news, with a false spy, that the coast is clear, till death surprises the sick man. I know physicians love to make the best of their patient's estate: first, say they, it is improper that adjutores vitae should be nuncii mortis ; secondly, none with their goodwill will tell bad news; thirdly, their fee may be the worse for it; fourthly, it is confessing their art beaten ; fifthly, it will poison their patient's heart with grief. So far well; but they may so order it, that the party may be informed wisely, and not outed of this world before he is provided for another." We give the last sentence of his Life of Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast, ab Hohenheim), that renowned and ill-understood med- ley of evil and good, darkness and light, quackery and skill: - "In a word, he boasted of more than he could do; did more cures seemingly than really, more cures really than lawfully ; of more parts than learning, of more fame than parts; a better physician than a man, a better chirurgeon than physician." Here are the chief points of the " degenerous gentle- man ; " they are like mottoes to the chapters on the physi- ology of the noble rake in all ages: - " He goes to school to learn in jest, and play in earnest. His brother's serv- ing-men, which he counts no mean preferment, admit him into their society; coming to the university, his study is to study nothing; at the inns of court, pretend- ing to learn law, he learns to be lawless, and grows ac- quainted with the ' roaring boys.' Through the media EXCURSUS ETHICUS 275 tion of a scrivener, he is introduced to some great usurer," etc., etc. Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, though full of true morality, - of subtle and profound thought, and most pathetic touches, - as well as of his own peculiar, grave, antique humor, and quaint expression - as odd often as the root of an orchis, and, in its expression, as richly emblazoned with colors, as whimsically gibbous as its flower - has less to do with our immediate subject than his Christian Morals, which are well worth the perusing. Here is a sample : - " Live up to the dignity of thy nature; pursue virtue virtuously: desert not thy title to a Divine particle - have a glimpse of incompre- hensibles, and thoughts of things that thoughts but ten- derly touch. Lodge immaterials in thy head, ascend until invisibles fill thy spirit with spirituals, with the mysteries of faith, the magnalities of religion, and thy life with the honor of God." This is good wholesome advice at any time, and not the least so now, when sensible things are cross-question- ing us more keenly and urgently than ever, when mat- ter is disclosing fresh wonders every day, and telling her secrets in crowds ; and, when we are too apt to be absorbed in her, to forget that there is something else than this earth - that there is more than meets the eye and the ear - that seeing is not believing, and that it is pleasant, refreshing, and wholesome, after the hurry and heat and din of the day, its flaring lights and its eager work, to cool the eye and the mind, and rest them on the silent and clear darkness of night - " sowed with stars thick as a field." Let us keep everything worth xeeping, and add, not substitute; do not let us lose our- wlves in seeking for our basic radical, or our primary 276 EXCURSUS ETHICUS. cell; let us remember that the analytic spirit of the age may kill as well as instruct, may do harm as well as good; that while it quickens the pulse, strengthens the eye and the arm, and adds cunning to the fingers, it may, if car- ried to excess, confuse the vision, stupefy and madden the brain ; and, instead of directing, derange and destroy We have no book in our language to compare with Simon's Deontologie Medicale, for largeness of view and earnestness and power of treatment; it is admirable in substance and in form, and goes through the whole duty of the physician with great intelligence, liveliness, and tact. It has what all first-rate French writers have -■ the charm of definite ideas and definite expression, the " maniere incisive " which we so much want. Had we room, we would gladly have quoted his remarks on style - its nature and its value to the physician ; he himself exemplifies what he teaches. On this subject, we would direct attention likewise to the able and clever article in the British and Foreign Review.1 We cannot help quoting Buffon's words ; they illustrate themselves. They are from his Remarques sur le Style: - "Les ouvrages bien ecrits sont les seuls 1 On a very different, but by no means inconsiderable subject, we quote this cordial and wise passage from the same article. Speaking of the odium medicum, "The true remedy for professional jealousies is fre- quent intercommunication, - a good dinner at the Royal vrovM. heal the professional feuds of a large town. The man of science, who thinks he practises his profession for the sheer love of it, may smile at the sen- sualness of the means, and it may not be the remedy he requires ; but most practitioners are men of the metier, and like a dinner of the craft as well as others. We wish there were a medical guild in every large town, with an ample dinner fund - good fellowship would increase and abound, and with it unity of purpose, honor, public and persona, esteem." EXCURSUS ETHICUS. 277 qui passeront a la posterity, la quantite des connais- sances, la singularity des faits, la nouveautd meme des decouvertes, ne sont pas de surs garants de 1'immortalite ; si les ouvrages qui les contiennent ne roulent que sur de petits objets, s'ils sont Merits sans gout, noblesse, et sans genie, ils periront parce que les connaissances, les faits, les decouvertes s'enlevent aisement, se transportent, gagnent meme a etre mises en oeuvre par des mains plus habiles. Les choses sont hors de I'homme, le style e'est I'homme meme." Apples of gold are best set in pictures of silver - great thoughts and natural thoughts should be great- ly and naturally said: they are indeed neither, if not. Lord Jeffrey said to a young friend of great genius, but addicted to long and odd words, and to coining a word now and then, " My friend, when you have a common thing to say, say it in a common way, and when you have an uncommon thing, it will find its own way of saying itself." Let no one despise style. If thought is the gold, style is the stamp^which makes it current, and says under what king it was issued. There is much in what Buffon says - Style is the man himself. Try to put Horace or Tacitus, Milton, Addison, or Goldsmith, Charles Lamb or Thackeray, into other words, and you mar, and likely kill the thought - they cease to be themselves. But how am I to get a good style ? Not by imitat- ing or mimicking any one. Not by trying to think or to write like any one, but to think and write with him. It is with style as with manners and good-breeding. Keep good company, and do your best, and you will write and speak and act like a gentleman, because you think and feel and live with gentlemen. If you would write like .ke ancient masters, read them and relish them - be 278 EXCURSUS ETHICUS. their son, not their ape. Our medical writers nowadays, with a few signal exceptions, write ill. They are slov- enly, diffuse, often obscure, and curiously involved. The reasons are: first, the enormous amount of merely pro- fessional knowledge a man is expected to master before he writes on any subject, and the absorbing nature of the new methods; secondly, and as a consequence, the ignorance of general literature, and the much less asso- ciation by men of medicine with men of letters, now than in olden times. Arbuthnot was not the worse phy- sician, and all the better writer, from his being the com- panion of those famous wits whose good genius and doctor he was; and his Treatises on Airs and Aliments are all the better of being the work of a man who took his share in Martinus Scriblerus, and wrote the History of John Bull. Currie,1 Aikin, Gregory, Heberden, Cullen, Ferriar, Gooch, are all the more powerful, and all the more per- manent as medical authority, from their having learned, by practice and by example, to write forcibly, clearly, compactly, and with dignity and grace. The turbid, careless style, constipated, or the reverse, by which much of our medical literature is characterized, is a disgrace to our age, and to the intelligence, good taste, and good breeding of our profession, and mars in- 1 Do our young readers know Currie's Life by his son ? if not let them get it. They will see one of the noblest, purest intellects our profession has ever had, ardently humane, grave, and energetic, tinged with a secret, pensive melancholy, and they will find much of the best knowledge and advice for their conduct in life. His letters to his son when a student at Edinburgh College may be read alongside of Col- lingwood's from his ship to his daughters, and his Jasper Wilson's Letter to Mr. Pitt is one sustained burst of eloquent and earnest patriotism f sound political philosophy, and strong sense; it was flung off at teat, and was his only appearance in public affairs. EXCURSUS ETHICUS. 279 conceivably the good that lies concealed and bungled within it. No man has a right to speak without some measure of preparation, orderliness, and selectness. As Butler says, " Confusion and perplexity of writing is indeed without excuse, because any one, if he pleases, may know whether he understands and sees through what he is about: and it is unpardonable for a man to lay his thoughts before others, when he is conscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how the matter before him stands. It is coming abroad in dis- order, which he ought to be ashamed to find himself in at home." Whately, in reply to a youth who asked him how to write clearly, answered, " Think clearly." This is the secret. We might, had space permitted, have gone more par- ticularly into the higher moralities of physicians, and into some of the more miscellaneous conditions which interpenetrate morals, manners, and etiquette ; for eti- quette, with all its littlenesses and niceties, is founded upon a central idea of right and wrong; and on the rightness or wrongness of that idea depends the true significance and worth of the merest punctilio. We might likewise have said some few things on the public and professional religion of a doctor, and its rela- tion to his personal; and something, also, of that religi- osity which, besides its ancient endemic force, as old as our race, is at present dangerously epidemic-a pseudo- activity, which is not only not good, but virulently bad, being at once as like and as opposite to the true as hemlock is to parsley. We are anxious to persuade our young friends, who, having "passed ' and settled down, are waiting for practice, - not merely to busy themselves for the next 280 EXCURSUS ETHICUS. seven or eight barren years in their own immediate cir- cle - we are sure they will not suspect us of wishing them to keep from what is their highest duty and great- est pleasure,-but to persuade them, when they have some leisure and long evenings, and few " cases," to read the works of such men as Berkeley, Butler, Paley, Bax- ter, Tucker, Barrow, Locke, Principal Campbell, Reid, Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh, Whately, Alexander Knox, etc.; to keep up their classical knowledge, and go over Horace's Art of Poetry, Cicero's Epistles and Philosoph- ical Treatises, Seneca, Epictetus, Marc Antonine, Quin- tilian, and such like - not to mention a more sacred book, which they ought to read all their lives, and use every day, as the perfect rule of duty, the lamp to their feet, the light to their eyes. We may be thought to be making too much of these things. It would be difficult to do so, when we consider what we, as physicians, are supposed to possess - prac- tising, as we do, not merely one of the arts of life, mak- ing an honorable living - and enabling our fellow-men to do the same - but constantly watching at that awful janua vitae et mortis, our main duty being to keep men alive. Let us remember what is involved in the enjoy- ment and in the loss of life - that perilous and inesti- mable something, which we all know how much we our- selves prize, and for which, as we have the word, long ago, of a personage 1 more distinguished for his talents .han his virtues, - uttered in a Presence where even he dared not tell a lie direct, that " all that a man hath he vill give," so let it be our endeavor, as its conservators, to give all that we have, our knowledge, our affections, our energies, our virtue (apenj, vir-tus, the very essence 1 Job ii. 4. EXCURSUS ETHICUS. 281 or pith of a man), in doing our best to make our pa- tients healthy, long-lived, and happy. We conclude with two quotations, the first from the mouth of one 1 of the best men of our profession - one of the greatest of public benefactors - one of the truest and most genial of friends-and of whose merits we would say more, were he not still, to our great comfort, in the midst of us, - for we agree with the ancients in this, as in some other things, that it is not becoming to sacrifice to our heroes till after sunset: - " My religion consists mainly of wonder and gratitude.'' This is the religion of paradise and of childhood. It will not be easy to find a better, even in our enlightened days ; only it must be a rational wonder, a productive gratitude - the gratitude, that of a man who does not rest contented with the emotion, but goes at once into the motive, and that a motive which really moves - and the wonder, that of a man who, in reverencing God, knows him, and in honoring all men, respects himself. The next is the admonition we have already referred to, by Sydenham. Our readers will find, at its close, the oldest and best kind of homoeopathy- a kind which will survive disease and the doctors, and will never, as may be said of the other, cure nothing but itself. " He who gives himself to the study and work of med- icine ought seriously to ponder these four things - Is?, That he must, one day, give an account to the Supreme Judge of the lives of the sick committed to his care. 2dly, That whatsoever of art, or of science, he has bv the Divine goodness attained, is to be directed mainly to the glory of the Almighty, and the safety of mankind, and that it is a dishonor to himself and them, to make 1 Dr. Henrv Marshall, who died soon after this was written. 282 EXCURSUS ETHICD&. these celestial gifts subservient to the vile lusts of avarice and ambition. Moreover, 3dly, that he has undertaken the charge of no mean or ignoble creature, and that in order to his appreciating the true worth of the human race, he should not forget that the only-begotten Son of God became a man, and thus far ennobled, by his own dignity, the nature he assumed. And, lastly, that as he is himself not exempted from the common lot, and is liable and exposed to the same laws of mortality, the same miseries and pains, as are all the rest; so he may en- deavor the more diligently, and with a more tender affection, as being himself a fellow-sufferer (o^oioTra#???), to help them who are sick." For to take a higher, the highest, example, we must "be touched with a feeling of the infirmities" of our patients, else all our skill and knowledge will go but half-way to relieve or cure. BOOKS REFERRED TO. 1. Percival's Medical Ethics ; new edition, with Notes, by Di. Greenhill. - 2. Code of Medical Ethics ; by the American Medical As- sociation.- 3. Richard Baxter's Compassionate Counsel to Students of Physic. - 4. Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, and Christian Morals.-5. Gaubius de Regimine Mentis quod Medicorum est.- 6. Fuller's "Good Physician," and "Life of Paracelsus," in his "Holy and Profane State."-7. Simon, Ddontologie Mddicale, ou des Devoirs et des Droits de Mddecins. - 8. Gisborne, Gregory, and Ware, on the Duties of a Physician.-9. Hufeland on the Relations of the Physician to the Sick, to the Public, and to his Colleagues. - 10. British and Foreign Medical Journal for April 1846, Art. ix.- 11. Aikin's Letters to his Son on the Choice of a Profession and the Conduct of Life. DR. JOHN SCOTT AND HIS SON MR. SYME. SIR ROBERT CHRISTISON, BART. DR. JOHN SCOTT, SOMPANION of Mr. Syme and Dr. Sharpey, and that crew, and friend of Dr. Combe and - --- Sir James Clark, was one of six (all dark haired and eyed) sons of the great store-farmer of Sing- lie in Ettrick, a man of the old Border breed, strenu- ous, peremptory, full of fight, who, had he lived 300 years earlier, might have been a Jock o' the Side, a Dick o' the Cow, or a Kinmont Willie. John studied medicine, went to India, came home, studied again at Paris, and was among the first to learn from Laennec the use of the stethoscope, of which he became a master. He married and settled in Edinburgh, and soon gathered a large practice, as all the south country folk went to him as to a wizard. He had no ambition, was very shy, hated to take fees, read incessantly English, French, and German, could bring out fish in the Gala when no one else could, and had an instinct for finding out disease like that of a pointer for game. His only son, William Henry, - Willie, as we called him, - was a " marvellous boy," withered in all the leaves of his spring. I never knew one more gifted, or one more innocent and good. He had got the mini- mum dose of the virus of original sin, and he gave it no encouragement. I never knew a more sinless lad. He read everything, remembered everything. He told me with perfect simplicity, he "didn't know how to forget.' 286 DR. JOHN SCOTT. I have often laid traps for him as to this, but never caught him. Of a trivial article in Chambers's Journal, or anywhere else, he gave you right off the number and the page. To please his father he went through victo- riously all the medical classes, and took his degree, hav- ing an inborn dislike to the study, while all the time he was steadily pursuing his own great line - gathering his Bactrian, Parthian, and Sassanian coins - drawing wide inferences from them and all else. He died of con- sumption, and had that vivid life and brightness - as his eyes showed - which so often attend that sad mal- ady, in which the body and soul, as if knowing their time here was short - burn as if in oxygen gas - and have "Hope the charmer" with them to the last-■ putting into these twenty years the energy, the enjoy- ment, the mental capital and raptures of a long life. So mature, so large, and so innerly was his knowledge, that after his death, letters of sorrow came from the Conti- nent, and elsewhere, indicating that he was considered twice his real age. I cannot resist giving the following tribute by Mr. George Sim, Curator of Coins to our So- ciety of Antiquaries, and the unforgetting friend of this indeed " marvellous boy," whose sun went down in its " sweet hour of prime : " - " On 4th October 1855, died our much lamented friend, William Henry Scott, M. D., aged twenty-four years, and by his death Scotland lost perhaps her most brilliant scholar. Although he has now been dead longer than he lived, yet his memory is as fondly cherished as if he bad died but yesterday, and the results of his wonderful researches are still attracting our admiration. " It is difficult to imagine how it was possible in so short a life to acquire so varied an amount of knowledge DR. JOHN SCOTT. 287 as Dr. Scott possessed, especially when we consider his delicate constitution and toilsome course of education. " From his earliest years his mind had been directed to historical and philological research, which his wonder- ful memory (for he could not forget) enabled him to embody and utilize with accuracy when opportunity of- fered. " Having been a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of France, and of other learned societies both at home and abroad, he maintained an interesting and instructive correspondence with savants of many countries, and con- tributed to their periodicals in their own languages. He 'had deciphered upwards of thirty languages with no other aid than that derived from books, his purpose be- ing to compare all the alphabets of ancient and modern times, and as far as possible the languages, the remains of numismatic art, and other records, with the general history of the world, as deduced from a widely extended course of inferential reasoning based on known facts; and if Dr. Scott had been spared to carry out the course he had shaped for himself, there can be no doubt (con- sidering the splendid results of the researches with which he had already enriched us) that he would have been able to accomplish wonderful work. " A wide field for students of archaeology had been opened up in India, and in the more western parts of Asia, and the observations of many great scholars (whose names need not be here enumerated) had been appreciated and highly prized, but few of them had any numismatic knowledge, so that the results of their in vestigations were not always satisfactory; yet here it was that the brilliant genius of Dr. Scott shone forth, which, through his knowledge of sc many dead languages 288 DE. JOHN SCOTT. and numismatics, enabled him to take the lead, and to withdraw the veil that enshrouded the prospect we had so long and so ardently desired to explore. " If Dr. Scott's papers and extensive correspondence could have been collected, they would present a series of discoveries, and sound and ingenious observations of the highest importance. His contributions to the Nu- mismatic Chronicle alone (which attracted much notice at the time of their appearance) would form a goodly volume. " A school-fellow and early associate of Dr. Scott (Dr. F. de Chaumont, now of Netley, then in India) thus wrote on hearing of the death of his friend: - 'It is difficult as yet to realize fully the loss we have sus« tained. He was such an excellent man, so good a friend, and so wonderful a scholar. He was indeed one of those early lights whose very intensity precludes their burning long, and whom God has withdrawn to Himself, as a guiding star of whom the world was scarce worthy.' " MR. SYME RH A PS I was too near Mr. Syme to see and measure him accurately, but he remains in my mind as one of the best and ablest and most beneficent of men. He was my master - my apprentice- fee bought him his first carriage, a gig, and I got the first ride in it - and he was my friend. He was I be- lieve the greatest surgeon Scotland overproduced; and I cannot conceive of a greater, hardly of as great, a clinical teacher. To be all this he must have had quali- ties, native and acquired, fitting him for preeminence in almost any sphere of power in thought or action. His life, till he won his victory, when he was half through it, was an almost continual combat with men and things. Sensitive, strong-willed, shy, having a stammer, bent upon reaching reality and the best in everything; he had to struggle with imperfect means, family disaster, and inadequate power of expressing his mind. He was full of genuine virtue and affection (the more the deeper in). With singular keenness and exactness of the outer and inner eye, he touched everything to the quick. He was ever ready for a joke, but as a habit of mind was serious and in earnest. Bent on getting knowledge at first hand, he was therefore somewhat neglectful of other men's knowledge, and especially if at third hand. Full of a child's enjoyment of nature in her flowers and 290 MR. SYME. wilds, he had also all his days a passion for cultivating and enjoying fruits and flowers. He was kindly to oddi- ties of all sorts ; loving the best music, hating all other; little capable of poetry, but when capable it must be the best; not sentimental, rather sensible and sensitive, es- pecially the first, but not without romance. He was the discoverer of the solubility of caoutchouc in coal-tar, and therefore entitled to an immense fortune had he patented it.1 He did not read much hard or heavy reading; it was diversion he sought rather than information. The action of his mind was so intense during his hours of work, that, like a race-horse, doing his day's work in not many minutes, though putting his capital of life into that supreme act, he needed and relished perfect diastole - relaxation ; and as Mr. Comrie of Penicuik said of himself, " his constitution could stand a great deal of ease," though ready at any moment for any emergency and for the full play of his utmost. I was the first to see him when struck down by hemi- plegia. It was in Shandwick Place, where he had his chambers - sleeping and enjoying his evenings in his beautiful Millbank, with its flowers, its matchless orchids, and heaths, and azaleas, its bananas, and grapes, and peaches ; with Blackford Hill - where Marmion saw the Scottish host mustering for Flodden - in front, and the Pentlands, with Cairketton Hill, their advanced guard, cutting the sky, its ruddy, porphyry scaur, hold- ing the slanting shadows in its bosom. He was, as be- fore said, in his room at Shandwick Place, sitting in his chair, having been set up by his faithful Blackbell. His 1 He sent a letter to the Annals of Philosophy of March 1818 an- nouncing this discovery. It appeared in August, and soon after Mr Macintosh took out the patent which made his name famous. MR. SYME. 291 face was distorted. He said - " John, this is the con- clusion," and so in much it was, to his, and our, and the world's sad cost. He submitted to his fate with manly fortitude, but he felt it to its uttermost. Struck down in his prime, full of rich power, abler than ever to do good to men; his soul surviving his brain, and looking on at its steady ruin during many sad months. He became softer, gentler, - more easily moved, even to tears, - but the judging power, the perspicacity, the piercing to the core, remained untouched. Hencefor- ward, of course, life was maimed. How he bore up against this, resigning his delights of teaching, of doing good to men, of seeing and cherishing his students, of living in the front of the world; how he accepted all this, those only nearest him can know. I have never seen anything more pathetic than when near his death he lay speechless, but full of feeling and mind, and made known in some inscrutable way to his old gardener and friend that he wished to see a certain orchid, which he knew should then be in flower. The big, clumsy, know- ing Paterson, glum and victorious (he was forever get- ting prizes at the Horticultural), brought it - the Stan- hopea tigrina - in, without a word, - it was the very one. Radiant in beauty, white, with a brown freckle, like Imogen's mole, and like it, " right proud of that most delicate lodging; " he gazed at it, and, bursting into a passion of tears, motioned it away as insufferable. He had that quality of primary minds of attaching permanently those he had relations to. His students never ceased to love him and return to him from all regions of the world. He was in this a solar man, and had his planets pacing faithfully round him. He was somewhat slow in adopting new things, ex- 292 MR. SYME. cept his own. He desired to prove all things, and then he held fast that which was good. This was the case with chloroform and the antiseptic doctrine, which the world owes - and what a debt! - to his great son-in- law, Joseph Lister; but new-fangledness per se he dis- liked. He had beautiful hands, small and strong; and their work on skeletons of serpents in the College of Surgeons is still unmatched. He was all his life a Liberal in politics. His style was the perfection of clearness and force, - his master having been William Cobbett. As a man, who himself knows how to use language, said of him " he never wastes a drop of blood or of ink." Of what he was to me, - his patience, his affection, his trust, his wisdom, - and still more, what he might have been to me had I made the most of him, it is not for me now to speak. He remains in my mind as one of the strongest, clearest, capablest, most valuable understand- ings;- one of the warmest, truest hearts, I have had the privilege and the responsibility of knowing. Heu! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, quam tui memi- nisse ! He had his faults, who hasn't ? -but they were superficial, and therefore seen by all men. In his quar- rels, - and he was a man of war from his youth up till late manhood, - he was almost always right in the mat- er, sometimes wrong in the manner, and the world we know often makes more of manner than of matter. But the deeper you cut into him the richer, the sweeter, the stronger the substance. He was irritable it, and impatient of stupidity, and long-windedness and pretence; and at falsehood, quackery, and trickery of all sorts, he went like a terrier at a rat. I once went with him and Mrs. Syme to Lochore, his MR. SYME. 293 father's lost estate, and where he lived as a boy, and had never again been for more than forty years, and which he had some thought of purchasing back. We drove up from Burntisland, and at Lochgelly he was full of memories of the saintly Seceder minister, Mr. Greig, and pointed out at Auchtertool the fatal meadow ow lying in the sun, where Stuart of Dunearn shot Sir Alexander Boswell. As we came near Lochore he be- came very silent and eager-eyed. It was in decay, all things rude and waste. We went into the old garden. He went off alone, and wondering at his stay I sought him and found him leaning on an old sundial. He was sobbing and in tears 1 " No, no, John, never again, never, this is not my Lochore." Here is the kind of good he did. A well-known public man, of strong will and perfect courage, told me that he had been suffering from a local affection, which made life unbearable. The day before he saw Mr. Syme he had determined to end his misery and his life, and he was a man to keep his word.1 Mr. Syme saw him, per- formed an operation of his own invention, and my friend ived for many years in full health and activity. What a thing to have done! Here is a humorous bit. There is a dreadful and ludicrous disease of the nose, which some of my readers may have had the misfortune to see. It is an enormous, shapeless enlargement, which horrible thing is forever in its possessor's eye, and, as I have seen, projects below he mouth, and wags. A most excellent country clergy- man, beloved by his people, had such a nose; he was 1 I knew a man who did end his misery for not so strong a cause; he had bad eczema; he committed suicide, and left on his table his •aid, with ''tired scratching" on it. 294 MR. SYME more distressed for others than for himself, and he ap- plied to Mr. Syme, who said he would give him back his old nose, and that he had a chance few men had, of choosing its style. Would he like the Grecian or the Roman or the Cogitative ? " The Cogitative," said the stout and gravely humorous Calvinist, and to work we went. Mr. Syme was one of the first to show how this horrid growth should be dealt with, so he carefully pared off all the wattle, Bardolphian stuff; and our friend went back to his faithful colliers - his quarrymen and his sailors and their wives, with a nose as good in color and in shape as any of theirs; indeed they were not quite pleased at the new nose, for they said other people would covet and "call" him. Good ministers of the gospel, especially country ones, he delighted in, and knew them at once from their op- posites, as one knows parsley from hemlock. He once went out to near Biggar to perform a serious operation on a hind's wife. When he arrived at the cottage he found " the minister " was there, my dear sunny-hearted Uncle Smith. The gudeman said to Mr. Syme - " Oo wud like a bit prayer first." " By all means," said Mr. Syme. It was short and strong, and asked the help and blessing of the Eternal on the surgeon and on the pa- tient. " And we were both the better of it," said the surgeon, and this, not from a transcendental and debat- able point of view, but from the simple effect on the minds of both. Everything on his own subject that he wrote is good His Principles of Surgery are really first things, and his style, as I have said, was the perfection of terse clear- ness. As his shyness wore off, and he felt his power MR. SYME. 295 and his mind became enriched, so his language blos- somed out, and, as it were, enjoyed itself, but it was always like his knife, - to the point. He was always well " put on," but never dressy. His students will well remember his checked neckerchief of bright Earlston gingham, ungetable now, the tie of which I labored in vain for years to achieve. He was the most rapid dresser I ever knew. He and his cousin and great rival Liston went out to Dumfries to experiment with galvanism upon the body of a murderer after being hung, and he said he could never forget the look of the wretched man who had hopes of being brought to life, as he strode along the passage to his doom, having breakfasted copiously, and smacking his lips as he went. The experiment failed; he did n't return. The worst thing about him was his handwriting; it was worse than Lord Jeffrey's, or Dean Stanley's, or old Edward Ellice's, and his friend Lord Dunfermline's, and was only excelled, in badness, by the strong-hearted and strong-brained old Whig, Thomas Kennedy of Dun- ure, one of that small and intrepid band which emanci- pated Scotland, when, in the words of his friend Lord Cockburn, " We were concentrated by being crushed." I should not speak, for I write a hand which my father said had every fine quality except the being legible ; but surely a moral obligation lies upon every man to write as distinctly as he speaks and can. Thackery was a model in this; his writing is as clear and as clean as his style ; and so was Scott's, though his hand ran rather too fast to have time to dot his i's or stroke his fs. Mr. Syme was what might be called a little man, but, like Fox Maule, could never be felt as one. A homely 296 MR. SYME. face, better above than below, a very full beautifully modelled forehead, especially that line springing from the outer eyebrow. I never saw - in a man - liner, more expressive eyes - dark gray. I have seen Jef- frey's, Cockburn's, and Rutherfurd's, and Gladstone's, Sir Wm. Hamilton's, and my father's eyes, but none of them had so much meaning as his - such crystalline pureness; in old Wither's words, they were eyes that " unto me did seem more comfortable than the day.' His mouth, where temper lies, was not so good as his eyes, where knowledge and affection dwell and speak. He was very well made, as more little men and dogs are than big; his feet were as tidy as his hands, and for a short race his legs could beat his friend Christison's, who might have won Atalanta without the apples. His voice was not good, except when moved and confidential; he hesitated and hardly did justice to his words - though in all this he greatly improved. I have heard him when he began in Minto House (the scene of one of the most signal triumphs any man could rejoice in), he would, :rom impatience at his mind outrunning its servant the mouth, leave a sentence it had boggled at, in disdain, standing as it were on one leg - but we all knew what the other was. In speaking he reversed Ovid's words, his material transcended his workmanship. There is a good, but not the best, likeness of him in marble by Brodie; it wants his look of breeding. Rich- mond took him in one of those, to use a much-abused word, charming drawings, in which every one looks de- lightful and thoroughbred and like the man, but some- times not quite the man, and which are all like each other. It is of it that Mr. Syme told that when the artist al- 'owed him to see the drawing when finished, he said, " I MR. SYME. 297 is like, but then it is good-looking ! " " Ah, yes, we do it lovingly." I wish some of our artists would at least not do the reverse of this. The photograph taken at St. Andrews by Adamson gives the fullest idea of his nature - its strength and gentleness in repose. It has, too, his might-be formida- ble look, - a look we all knew, and did not desire to see repeated. In his little room in the Surgical Hospital - once the High School - where Sir Walter, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Horner, and Brougham were bred - his house-surgeons and clerks and dressers - now all over the world, work- ing out his principles and practice - will well remember how delightful he was, standing with his back to the fire, making wise jokes -jacula prudentis - now abating a procacious youth, now heartening a shy homely one, himself haud ignarus, - giving his old stories of Greg- ory and Dr. Barclay. How the latter - who had been a " stickit minister," was a capital teacher of anatomy and good sense - used to say to his students, - " Gen- tlemen 1 Vesaalius and his fellows were the reapers in the great field of anatomy - John Hunter and his breth- ren were the gleaners - and we - gentlemen ! - are the stubble geese ! " Little thought he of the harvest that ray at the roots of the stubble - and all the revelations of the microscope, the cell theory - and much else! Then there was the story of Dr. Greville, the botanist, telling him, Dr. Barclay, that he had been out at Mid- dleton Moor, searching all day in vain for Buxbaumia Aphylla. " Bux what ? and what's remarkable about it ? " " It's a very rare moss and very difficult to find." " Weel, I lost a sixpence when I had few o' them, fifty years ago, on Middleton Moor, and searched for it 298 MR. SYME. maist of a day - gang oot and try - it 'll be as difficult to find as your Buxbaumia ; " and then we had John Abernethy, whom he thought the greatest surgical mind since John Hunter and Percival Pott; and his joke with the lady of quality, who came to him and said, 111'm quite well, Mr. Abernethy." " So I see, Madam." " But, Mr. Abernethy, whenever I do that " (making a vehement and preposterous flourish of her hand over her head), " I have a terrible pain." "Then, Madam, why the devil do you do that ? " It was in this little room Mr. Syme was in his glory and let his whole nature out - and these daily treats were interspersed with remarks on the current patients - making the dressers tell their sev- eral stories- and always as thoughtful as keen, filling their eager minds as they stood in a semicircle before him, intentique ora tenebant - with truths the value of which they found in after years. And there were Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Lambert, the nurses, who reigned over the male and female wards - who will ever forget their kind and shrewd faces, and old-fashioned sense and tongues ? The following words by Mr. Lister give his estimate of his master and father-in-law's worth: - " Mr. Syme may be said to have been as a surgeon ' in all supreme, complete in every part.' In clear per- ception and luminous exposition of surgical principles, both pathological and practical, he stood unrivalled; yet he was equally conspicuous for the correctness of his diagnosis, his originality and ingenuity in device, and his admirable excellence in execution. His success was due not merely to his great intellectual gifts and manual dexterity, but full as much to his genial, sympathizing MR. SYME. 299 tove alike for patient and student, his transparent truth- fulness, and his exalted sense of honor. These noble qualities made him keen in the pursuit of his science, sin- gle-minded and earnest in the discharge of surgical duty, and influential for good in an immeasurable degree with those who came within the range of his personal teaching." SIR ROBERT CHRISTISON. ■ NE of our oldest and most distinguished citi- zens - a man of European reputation - was laid in his grave yesterday,1 followed by a mul- titude of mourners. Sir Robert Christison was our ultimus Romanorum, - for he had in him much of the best of the old Ro- man, - the last of the great race; his companions at starting - the Gregorys, Alison, and Syme, etc. - all gone before him. He was, as to will and ability, a pri- mary man; not that he was what is commonly called a man of genius, rather he was a man of a quite unusual quantity and quality of talent, - that is, power of ap- plying his faculties to given objects. Mr. Syme had talent and genius too, but Christison had what might be called a genius for exact and strenuous work, for general energizing of body and mind. He had a knack of get- ting things at first hand ; his knowledge was immediate, more than mediate. He was emphatically an Edinburgh man, - all his life long going in and out before us, seen and read of all men. No man ever thought there was in him what was not there, though many might not find all that was there, for his heart was not worn on his sleeve; and in some of the deeper parts of his nature he, perhaps, did himself injustice, from his recoil from the 1 February 1, 1882. SIR ROBERT CHRISTISON. 301 opposite excess. We are all proud of the noble old man (old only in years), with his erect head, his rapid steir, his air of command. Of his inner character, as already said, he made no show, but it might be divined by the discerning mind, for he was too proud and too sincere to conceal anything. Till the last four weeks, though his health had been somewhat failing for two years, his mental faculties re' mained entire and alert. His voice and mind were as powerful as ever when he spoke at the meeting with Lord Rosebery and the Lord Advocate on the Scottish Universities. He retained to the last his love of Nature and his pursuit of her glories and beauties, happy in proving that his old friend Ben Nevis was not only king of the Bens, but that he had the noblest glen and the grandest precipice of them all. May we, his citizens, be the better of thinking of that honorable, full, and well-spent life, - manly, gentlemanly, upright, true to old friends and faiths. Non cum corpora extinguuntur magnce animce, placide quiescas ! No man who once saw Sir Robert Christison could ever mistake him for any one else. His nature was ho- mogeneous, and curiously consistent. As a physician, though he might not have all the suavity and expressive kindliness of the elder and younger Begbies, nor the - shall we call it ? - mesmeric power of the huge-brained and anomalous Simpson; nor that instant fixture of re- liance which Syme's eyes, more even than his words, gave and kept; nor the penetrating look, as of a war- lock, of Dr. John Scott, he had much of the best that they had not in such q lantity- he had the momentum of a strong, clear, well-knowledged mind, determined on 302 SIR ROBERT CHRISTISON. doing its best for his patient's good, and that best wek worth its name, and, once confided in, he was so for ever. To have such a command of all known drugs, he was singularly simple in his medicines and general treat- ment. As a lecturer he was, for the subjects he treated, we may say perfect, full of immediate knowledge as distinguished from mediate, orderly in its arrangement, lucid in its exposition rather, perhaps, than luminous, for it did not need that - strong and impressive in its application. His life-long friend Mr. Syme was some- times more luminous than lucid, though always full of power over the thought of others, quickening it, and making what he said unforgetable. That great, amor- phous genius, John Goodsir, was often largely luminous and sometimes sparingly lucid. In his experiments Christison was exquisite and never failed, unlike his excellent and gifted predecessor, Dr. Andrew Duncan, Junr., whom some of us elders may remember setting agoing a process at the beginning of the hour, telling us (unluckily) what we would see, and then casting, all through the lecture, furtive, and at last desperate and almost beseeching glances at the obdurate bottle, till at the close he, with a sad smile, said, " Gen- tlemen, the failure of this experiment proves more than its success ! " The bent of Christison's mind was scientific and posi- tive rather than philosophic, speculative, or presaging. He was more occupied with what is, than with why it is, or what it may become, and in this region he did his proper work excellently, with a clear decision and thor- oughness. He had the natural qualities of a great soldier, and was full of martial ardor and sense. He has some- SIR ROBERT CHRISTISON. 303 times been called distant and cold. He had great natural dignity, and was not of an effusive turn, being warmer inside than out, which is better than the reverse; but that he had tender and deep feelings, as well as strong energy and will, the following circumstances may well show. It refers to what, if said in his lifetime, would have brought a flush of displeasure on that noble face. His wife, a woman of great beauty, and better, was in her last long illness. She was going to the country for a month, and her husband heard her give orders that a piece of worsted work which she had finished should be grounded and made up as an ottoman, and ready in the drawing-room on her return. A few days before that, he asked if it was completed; it had been totally for- gotten. He said nothing ; but getting possession of the piece, he sat up for two or three nights and grounded it with his own hand, had it made up, and set his wife down on it, as she wished. Is not that beautiful? - a true, manly tenderness, worth much and worth remem- bering : " Out of the strong came forth sweetness." His love of Nature, from her flowers to her precipices and mountains, and his pursuit of her into her wildest fast- nesses, " haunted him like a passion," increasing with his years. His Highland residences during the latter part of his life gave him great delight, and fed his in- trepid, keen, searching spirit. He never saw a big mountain but he heard it, as it were, saying to him, " Come on - and up ; " and on and up he went, scaling the tragic Cobbler and many else. He had a genius for nice handiwork, and took pains with everything he did. The beauty and minuteness of his penmanship we all Snow; he might, as Thackery said of himself, have 304 SIR ROBERT CHRISTISON. turned an honest penny by writing the Lord's Prayer on the size of a sixpence. But we must end, though half has not been said. We, his old friends, can never forget him, or hope ever to see his like again. MISS STIRLING GRAHAM OF DUNTRUNE. I played with the bairnies at bowls and at ba\ And left them a' greeting when I cam' aw a' / Ayl withers and bairnies, and lassies and a', Were a' sobbin' loudly when I cam' awa*. MISS STIRLING GRAHAM OF DUNTRUNE. HIS gifted, excellent, and most delightful old lady, the perfect type of a Scottish gentle- woman, died yesterday afternoon, 23d August 1877, at her beautiful seat Duntrune, in Forfarshire, above Broughty Ferry, overlooking the Tay, with the woods of Ballumbie on one side, and those of Linlathen, her dear friend Mr. Erskine's estate, on the other, and with St. Andrews and the noble tower of St. Rule standing out clear on the sky line to the south. Miss Graham was in her ninety-sixth year, having been born in 1782. Her father, Patrick Stirling of Pittendreich, in the county of Forfar, and a much esteemed merchant in Dundee, married the heiress of Duntrune, and Miss Graham, the eldest of two daughters, a brother having predeceased her, inherited the property. The other daughter was the wife of Colonel Lacon, and to her daughters' unfailing love Miss Graham owed much of the best happiness of her life. Her birthplace was an old house in a narrow back lane, leading off the main thoroughfare of Dundee, which is still, we believe, pointed out to strangers as the place where the au- thoress of the Mystifications1 first saw the light. Her life may almost be said to have been one long summer day, not without its clouds, but on the whole happy, delightful, and beneficent in no ordinary degree. Few 1 See the pacer on Mystifications in the first series of Spare Hours. 308 MISS STIRLING GRAHAM. have left the world so regarded with immediate, un- mixed, and deserved affection, and fewer still have re- tained to the last, as she did, the pure, fresh, unblunted attachments of childhood to their friends. Dying at ninety-five, she was as gay and truthful and artless as a girl, with all the serious and " thoughtful breath " that becomes a " traveller between life and death." Always full of benevolence and public spirit, one of the earliest manifestations of this was some time ago amusingly told by an old Forfarshire farmer, whom a friend of ours happened to fall in with in the neighbor- hood of Dundee. When Dr. Jenner's great discovery was first announced it immediately attracted Miss Gra- ham's interest and enthusiasm, and long before the Fac- ulty became alive to its importance she used to ride about on her little white pony vaccinating with a needle every child whose birth she heard of in her neighbor- hood. We have been told that in this way she protected from a terrible scourge of the smallpox not less than about 300 infants. Our farmer friend had been one of her early patients. So carefully was it done that it used to be said that none of those operated on by Miss Graham ever took smallpox. In public affairs it was the same thing - always on the side of the right and the true. She was a life-long Liberal - liberal in all the senses of the word. Though intimate with Sir Walter Scott, who has recorded his ad- miration of her in one of his diaries, she consorted mainly with the men of the Edinburgh Review. Jeffrey, Syd- ney Smith, Gillies, Cockburn, Rutherfurd, Murray, and all that great race whom we had and have not, we.'e among her friends. It was to her that Sydney Smith made that famous joke, of the day being so hot that " he MISS STIRLING GRAHAM. 309 wished he could put off his flesh and sit in his bones, and let the wind whistle through them." In her own county, where everybody knew her and she knew every- body and who their forebears were, she will be long remembered. The love of the people for her and their pride in her were wonderful. Those who were nearest to her - the inmates of her household, her servants, her dependents, her tenants - cherished for her something like adoration - she was so tender-hearted, and, inter- ested in all their interests, so steadfast a friend. So modest was she, so just in her sense of herself, that every one was at ease with her, and felt that whatever she did and said and felt was as real as the material ob- jects about them. She was always being and doing good in multitudes of unseen ways. To her intimate friends, it is not for us to say what she was and what her loss is. But even to the outside public she is endeared by her marvellous Mystifications, which, as far as we know, are quite unique in literature. We have all heard how, in the pleasantest and most thorough way, she "took in" Jeffrey, Sir Walter, Sir Daniel Sandford, William Clerk, Count Flahault, and everybody ; how with a fine faculty for satire she never pained; with so much sense she was never dull; with so much wit and pleasantry she was never excessive in any way; for her nature was based on love and goodness." Who among us does not remember - though we have hardly the heart now to think of them - the wonderful interview at 92 George Street between Jeffrey and the Lady Pitlyal - the " pykin " of the king's teeth and the royal patent of " weel pykit," the stiff clay land that " grat a' winter and girned a' simmer," which threw Dr Coventry, the agricultural professor, into convulsions of 310 MISS STIRLING GRAHAM. delight? It was a singular gift. Meet Miss Graham in company and you found her quiet, unpretending, sen- sible, shrewd, kindly - perhaps you did not remark anything extraordinary in her. But let her put on the old lady, and immediately it was as if a warlock's spell had passed over her. Not merely her look but her na- ture was changed. Her spirit had passed into the char- acter she represented, and jest, quick retort, whimsical fancy, the wildest humor flowed from her lips with a freedom and truth to nature which would have been impossible in her own personality. The Mystifications were at first privately printed, and it was with some difficulty she was prevailed on to give them to the pub- lic. They soon passed here and in America into perma- nent favorites. Miss Graham also published in 1829 The Bee Book, a translation of M. de Gelieu's work and fifty years afterwards she republished it, to the great benefit of all bee-keepers. She retained to the last all her faculties and affections - her memory, her humor, her interest in life, her tender fidelity to friends, her love, we might almost say her happy-heartedness, passion for nature and all things fair. One little scene of her early life we like to recall. She and her next neighbor, the late Mr. Erskine of Lin- lathen, were always great friends, and some now alive, we believe, can still remember seeing them occasionally riding out together - the two so like in some respects, and so unlike - Il Penseroso and L'Allegro - he dis- coursing doubtless even then, in those young days, of " righteousness," and she listening, but with her eyes wide awake the while, to the outward nature which she loved so well, and with a keen and kindly look to the country folk who passed them on the road. MISS STIRLING GRAHAM. 311 Until the last few years Miss Graham used to spend her winters in Edinburgh, and her modest house in Forth Street (No. 29), with its bright happy evenings, of which she was the heart and life, can never be for- gotten by those who survive them. With her have perished a thousand memories of old Edinburgh and Forfarshire society. Some of these are added as an ap- pendix to the last edition of the Mystifications ; but they want, of course, the life and spirit which, when telling them to her friends, she used to put into many a happy story of these old times. To those who know the Mystifications it is hardly necessary to say that she possessed a true literary fac- ulty. The writing is always clear, simple, unaffected, and in perfect taste. With all her sense of humor there was an underlying seriousness in her character; very touching and tender, for instance, are the dedication of Mystifications to Mrs. Gillies, and the lines with which she concludes. "Few," she says, writing in Decem- ber 1868, " are now alive who shared or assisted in these joyous scenes, and the Mystifier, at an advanced age, waits in humble reliance the certainty of her sum- mons." "Blessed shades of the past, In the future I see ye, so fair! Ties that were nearest, Forms that were dearest, The truest and fondest are there. " They are flowerets of earth, That are blooming in heaven, so fair! And the stately tree, Spreading wide and free, The sheaves that were ripened are there. 312 MISS STIRLING GRAHAM. " The tear-drop that trembled In Pity's meek eye ; and the prayer. Faith of the purest, Hope that was surest, The love all-enduring are there. " And the loved, the beloved, Whose life made existence so fair! The soft seraph voice Bade the lowlv rejoice, b heard in sweet harmony there.** SIR E. LANDSEERS PICTURE "THERE fS LIFE IN THE OLD DOG YET,** ETC., ETC. SIR E. LANDSEER'S PICTURE " THERE 'S LIFE IN THE OLD DOG YET." 1851. ■E have had several of Landseer's best pictures lately, but we are not likely soon to cry, "Hold, enough ! " The natural eye and heart is not easily wearied by Nature and her true interpreters, be they poets, philosophers, or painters; the great point is to get Nature, and then render her aright. It is, by the way, a new element in the fine arts, this setting famous pictures on their travels, and is on the whole a good one. We cheerfully adopt the peripatetic or to-and-fro doc- trine thus far. A brisk circulation is the great thing in the body, natural, social, and commercial, - keep things going, large and quick returns ; and it is one proof of a higher organization, or, to use the cant phrase, "develop- ment " of the body politic, as it is of the individual ani- mal, when there is a heart, and when it sends its life giving stream swiftly round. Caterpillars, and dead, degraded, and somnolent nations have a local half-and- half sort of circulation, they want the one grand central organ; but lest our readers should mistake us, we don't think this organ in our body politic is London, though Wordsworth calls it this "mighty heart," - it is the grand amount of the intelligence, refinement, and good- ness of the whole people. We therefore do not despair 316 sir e. landseer's picture. of having a visit of the Venus de Medici or of the Dy« ing Gladiator, or even the entire Tribune of Florence, with its riches ; and getting tickets from Mr. Hill or Mr. Crichton, that they are on view, and thus seeing in our own " Auld Reekie " what has so long " entranced the world." This.picture of Sir Edwin's is remarkable in several respects: it is very large ; it is twenty years old ; it gives us a curious means of judging of his young and his present style, and seeing how he is the same and yet different; it has the grand English qualification of being worth £5000, or £200 a year at 4 per cent.; and best of all, it is a truly great and honest picture. By hon- est, we mean that the painter does his part in truth and honor, no blinking of difficulties, no filling up out of the lumber-room of other people's odds and ends, called his imagination ; his is the truthful loving study of nature. This picture bears this out in every part, and it is worth remarking that being of so large a size, he had the ready temptation to "generalize" and paint for effect. But he loved nature and honesty and himself too well to do this, and he has had his reward. Look at his last picture at Mr. Hill's, the " Random Shot," that dead mother and her suckling calf, on the cold mountain-top, and you will see the recompense of true work at the be- ginning of life and of art. There he has reached the domain of the " shaping spirit of imagination ; " he has got the flower in summer because he planted the seed in spring, and cherished the plant. We will not describe this picture ; it does that for itself. The entire " scene " strikes us as wonderfully real. That wild place, out of the reach probably for ages of anything but a bird, a moonbeam, or a lightning stroke, is filled at once to our eyes with the interest of SIR E. LANDSEER'S PICTURE. 317 death, life, human sympathy, and the grandeur of na- ture. You hear the gruff honest fellow, with his hand- some face, his iron-gray hair, wet with exertion, and his speaking hand, shouting out (in Gaelic from his mouth, and in the universal language from his eyes), "There 's life in the old Dog yet," and you know by his curved lip, his loud look, his anxious eye, and trumpet hand, how far above him is his audience, and the thorough-bred deerhound, happy and contented even in its suffering, for he has got his gentle head on the breast of his master, who is his god. Let our readers mark the blush of its skin through the hair, as indicating the fierce race, and how its tail is drawn in by pain and terror; but there is no end of admiring. It is humanely and beautifully managed, that the other two are quite dead and at rest; it is a true touch of nature to leave the light springing deerhound alone alive of the three. We need hardly speak of the miraculous antlers. Of course we know, by an act of our understanding, that in Mr. Critchton's room, in the heart of Edinburgh, and within that gilded frame, they must be " painted " horns; but who does not "feel" them to be veritable hartshorn ? The color of the whole is deep and rich, per- haps a little too rich in the figures; but it is finely har- monized. The management of the " reds " is a study to artists. The great subdued mass on the plaid, the smaller on the tartan stockings, the dead dog's open mouth and gums, the stag's tongue, and the small, in- tense, living tongue of the deerhound, the stony, obdu- rate look of the granite blocks, the wild confusion and the verdure, those soothing bits of nature's life-giving -ouch, working her will sweetly in the midst of desola Hon, the receding distance, with its mists and ghostly 318 sir e. Landseer's picture. waterfalls, giving to the ear the idea of continual, vague murmuring, the rack of clouds drifting across,-the rope telling the story, - all this who else could do so well ? It is a great beauty in Landseer, as it is in Ru- bens, that landscape, dogs, men, flowers, everything is " his own," seen with his own eye, rendered by his own hand. It would be well that our young dashing artists, who are for bold-handling execution, would take a les- son from this picture. Landseer must have been young when he painted this, and yet how " conscientious " (we say this seri- ously) the whole performance, how thoroughly honest, and paid in full. Let our young friends take a note of this. The only thing in this picture left to what some of them would call their fancy, is wrong. It is the twist of the double rope; the twist is going the same way in the up and down rope. The etching by Ryall is first-rate ; it looks like an original sketch by the artist himself, so bold and free and subtle his handling, so up to the full idea. We would despair of him making the remaining work equal had we not before us his Columbus, by Wilkie. We can most cordially recommend this engraving. There is a common, and, we may be allowed to call it, a some- what vulgar and " lassieish " objection to Landseer's subjects, that they are painful, as in the case of such representations as those of the " Otter Hunt," where that indomitable wretch, " game " to the last, is held up transfixed and writhing under the adoring and praying tyes, and shaggy muzzles and legs, of up-looking little sturdy ruffians, the terriers and otter hounds, there is too much that is painful; but in such a picture as this of the "Old Dog" we think the prevailing feeling is, and HALLE'S RECITAL. 319 should be, pleasurable, and that humane and hearty sympathy which is one of the best results of painting, or of anything else. Young ladies of a tender turn, and who weep their fine eyes and handkerchiefs ugly and sad with sympa- thetic tears for distressed lovers - in a book (they de very different when they meet them in real life, except they be themselves in the case)- would say on seeing this picture, Oh 1 shocking! What a horrid sight! Blood and tongues ! What a horrid man Landseer must be! Let us analyze the dear creature's horror. It is her own pain chiefly that is horrid, it is not her feeling for the animals. It is the same sort of dislike to the sight that a bad smell causes to the nose; it has little better in it than this. A moderate measure of pain, - a real moral sympathy with the lower animals, and a feeling of uneasiness on account of their sufferings,- a going-out towards them, to love and be good to them, is a useful lesson for us all. Art is not a mere toy to be joked with and laughed at, - it is a deep and too little read passage in the nature and in the mind of man, and with all reverence, it is one of the true manifestations of Him who made, and governs, and blesses us all. HALLE'S RECITAL. January 20,1863. If it be a great pleasure to see others pleased, and a greater to be the pleaser, then must this gifted and ac- complished artist have been very happy during his two hours on Saturday afternoon. Here was he, all by him- self, sitting down at his piano, as if he were at his owe 320 halle's recital. fireside, and having his " At Home " with some fifteen hundred happy people, to each one of whom the hours seemed all too short. We seldom see, or rather feel (for we were all so much engaged that there was little seeing and less look- ing, even the perennial cough was checked, to the near suffocation of some self-sacrificing people whom we heard in by-corners tampering with apoplexy and as- phyxia), so many people having so much of the same enjoyment all at once, and yet each ear making its own of all it heard, telling its own secret story to itself. What it was to see Taglioni make music to the eye, gliding about like a shadow, or bounding like a pard, or merely walking; or to see Ducrow in his " Dumb Man of Manchester," making his every action speak; what it was to hear Grisi sing, or William Murray or his sis- ter act - the same quiet mastery of expression, the same perfection of feeling and making to feel, the same power of making little into much, and much into more; so it is to come under the charm of this pure, consum- mate musician. You think of him at first simply as the cause of what he achieves; you find yourself as little .hinking of him-of the means of what is to you the pleasant end - as he himself plainly is - each, giver and receivers, are taken up with the idea and its expres- sion, he giving it out, they taking it in; or rather it is so perfectly expressed that you reach it as it were im- mediately, and get to its life and soul at once, and straight. Much of this arises from his quiet, simple, sensible face and manner. He knows that he is a means to an end-not an end in himself, as too many of our performers are, - and he gets the best reward in being ultimately himself an end as well, and all the better. halle's recital. 321 Sou think him not the less clever, not the less executive, brilliant, subtle, penetrating, delicate, firm, and up to " impossible passages," -in a word, pot the less expres sive, that he never says to you, " Now, listen, how clever, how delicious, how miraculous I am! " And it is this possession of his theme, and his self-possession in the best sense, that makes one great secret of his play- ing ; it is not less unaffected and to the point (only much more delightful) than the talk of your man of business. Then think of the rest and satisfying play of the mind, of the diversion in its true meaning, of the many jaded minds, and heavy and weary hearts, and it may be vexed ears, of our busy men and women. Music can soothe other than savage beasts ; and next to active exercise - to a ride across the Pentlands or a walk across Corstor- phine Hill, and in some deeper and gentler ways, better even than these, though both are best - is the passing two hours of a Saturday, after the week's toil and worry, its wear and tear, in hearing pure good master- pieces purely expressed. We are all the better of heartily admiring the same thing, the same thought, and the same giver or transmitter of the thought. There- fore it is that we miss the old Saturday subscription con- certs, where the great classics were worthily rendered. Who can forget Mozart's "Jupiter," or the overture to " Der Freischiitz," or the delicious, innocent, Elysian " Surprise " of Haydn - as if it had wandered out of Paradise; or the many-voiced sonatas of Beethoven - leep, mobile, unfathomable, melancholy as the sea; or the quartettes with violins and violoncello, rising each above the other like larks singing at " Heaven's gate," o* like transcendental nightingales in a sweet strife - 322 halle's recital. " That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble [their] delicious notes They answer and provoke each other's song, With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug, And one low piping sound more sweet than all." Why should not we have these pleasures back again I dare say we might if we all asked them loud enough. Beethoven's " Grand Sonata in D" was the first and largest recital; and is it not a great achievement this sitting down without anything but memory, and what a memory ! his fingers, and his genius, his tact and taste, and, for anything we see, telling us his own present Presto and Largo e Mesto, his special at the moment Minuetto Allegro and his last Rondo Allegro - taking us into his confidence, and getting ours for the asking. As is often the case, we speak in profoundest ignorance of the science or the art beyond being the delighted sub- jects of their emotional effects. Beethoven begins with a trouble, a wandering and groping in the dark, a strange emergence of order out of chaos, a wild rich confusion and misrule. Wilful and passionate, often harsh, and as it were thick with gloom ; then comes as if " it stole upon the air," the burden of the theme, the still sad music - Largo e Mesto - so human, so sorrowful, and yet the sorrow overcome, not by gladness but by some- thing better, like the sea after a dark night of tempest 1 ailing asleep in the young light of morning, and " whis- pering how meek and gentle it can be." This likeness to the sea, its immensity, its uncertainty, its wild strong glory and play, its peace, its solitude, its unsearchableness, its prevailing sadness, comes more into our minds with this great and deep master's works HALLE'S RECITAL. 323 than with any other. If we think of Handel, his is " the sea of glass," and the overarching " body of heaven in its clearness," the " harpers harping on their harps," the far-off " sound of many waters," echoing to " the ut- most bounds of the everlasting hills," " the voice of a great multitude and of many thunderings," the " seven- fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies," " the throne and equipage of God's Almightiness." But it seems to us that with the restless, capacious, unsatis- fied and satisfying German, - so full of passion and tenderness, so full of the utterance of " The still, sad music of humanity," the sea, we all know, and love, and fear is the likely symbol. Sebastian Bach's perfect Gavotte and Musette were given to perfection, his purity, his crystalline depth, his inveteracy, his working out absolutely and exquisitely his germinal idea, - nothing could be better. Somehow we did not much care for, and do not much remember Mendelssohn's " Presto Scherzando; " it was too fanci- ful, too soon, shall we say, after the great old Sebastian ? but we confess to not always liking, and sometimes not taking in, the main purpose of his music. Doubtless, we are in a pitiful minority as to this. Compared with the greatest masters, we feel him at times difficult, ca- pricious, and thin. Weber's " Invitation a la Valse " was - as everybody's heart and feet, especially the young ones' feet, beat time to it in their minds - simply de licious from beginning to end. We confess to having been quite beside ourselves, indeed finding ourselves away altogether; and in the full blaze of one of those ball-rooms which we can all dance our fill in, and choose our partners, and get no mischief - and behold ! - 324 HALLE'S RECITAL. "Yestreenwhen to the stented string The dance gaed through the lichted ha'." We saw with our own eyes that splendid young fellow - a prince of course - with his dark hair and eyes, with that well-known glow in them finding her out at once in that shadowy recess, where her mother had left her for a moment, there he is bending down and asking her to tread a measure. Of course, he was Lochinvar, only much handsomer, gentler, altogether an unspeak- abler being than that hasty young reiver who was so hard hunted across Cannobie-lee. She - " Her eyes like stars of twilight fair, Like twilight, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From Maytime and the cheerful dawn," - looks still more down, flushes doubtless, and quietly, in the shadow, - says " No " and means " Yes," - says "Yes" and fully means it, and they are off! All this small whispered love-making and dainty device, this coaxing and being coaxed, is in the (all too short for us, but not for them) prelude to the waltz, the real business of the piece and evening. And then such a waltz for waltzing! Such precision and decision 1 whisking them round, moulding them into twin orbs, hurrying them past and away from everything and everyone but them- selves. Now they all but disappear, and are far away, almost out of sight and hearing, round they come ! here igain ! happier than ever, he firmer, perfecter, abler, she playing with those little feet the nicest second in the world. Well, the waltz ends, and they and you have their fill, and they sit down in the same shadowy nook, happy and out of breath, and begin again the same u murmurs made to bless," only lower, more serious and HALLE'S RECITAL. 325 more silent; and for our parts we must be excused for saying that we have good reason to believe, indeed we must believe our own eyes, that in this interesting case, the business adjourned to an alcove out of the moon- light, the sound of fountains and the dancers faintly heard, and our two young individuals sitting with excel- lent effect, for a well-known scene in Retzsch's " Song of the Bell," to which we beg to refer our readers, old and young, - it being observed that the "parients" of both parties are at a respectful distance, under an old arbo* d'amore, such as we have seen in the Royal Garden at Aranjuez a-blessing of the young people. But soberly, this was one of Mr. Halle's most perfect bits of art, as it is one of the most perfect flowers of the genius of that " marvellous boy " who perished in his bloom ; it is full of the sweetness and the sadness, the richness, the fresh blossoming of youth, like the " Eclogues " of Collins, or the " Endymion " of Keats, the " first crush of the grapes," the " odorous breath " and the swift vanishing of the " sweet hour of prime." Next came the Allegro con molto expressione, and the Allegretto ma non troppo e Cantabile, from Beethoven's Sonata in E minor. This piece, especially the latter half, which was cantabile indeed, is the one which lingers most in our ear and mind ; it took more possession of us, •- was to us " more moving delicate, and full of life," - was the one thing we would more have rather not lost, than any of the others ; its loveliness, its fulness, its happiness, its heavenliness can only be told by itself. It seemed as if it spoke out all its secret, told it to us and to itself for the first time, innocently as a child, or an angel, " still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim; " or like an ^Eolian harp with a soul and a will and pur 326 HALLE'S RECITAL. pose of its own, and a tune which it made the vagrant winds play as it listed, not as they. It had the un- expectedness, the swells as of music from a far country, come and gone, of that witching but unsatisfying in- strument. For, unlike it, this had a story to tell with all its caprice and swift changes, and was not a mere wandering voice, bent upon nothing. But we are too hard on the harps that we used long ago to get from Keswick, and which we pleased ourselves with thinking sang to us the songs of " Glaramara's inmost caves," not to speak of a stave from Scafell and the Pikes, and a weird sough through " the pining umbrage " of " those fraternal Four of Borrowdale." Do you remember Cole- ridge's lines, " composed at Clevedon, Somersetshire ? " when sitting with his " pensive Sara " they heard " the stilly murmur of the distant sea telling of silence; " and then came the music of " That simplest lute Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark I How by the desultory breeze caressed, Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover, It pours such sweet upbraiding as must needs Tempt to repeat the wrong ! And now, its string! Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes Over delicious surges sink and rise - Such a soft floating witchery of sound As twilight elfins make when they at eve Voyage on gentle gales from Fairyland, Where melodies round honey-drooping flowers, Footless and wild, like birds of paradise, Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing I O the one life within us and abroad, Which meets all motion and becomes its soul, A light in sound, a sound-like power in light, Rhythm in all thought and joyance everywhere, Methinks, it should have been impossible Not to love all things in a world so filled ; Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air Is Music slumbering on her instrument." HALLE'S RECITAL. 327 This is beautiful, is it not ? But we prefer Beetho ven's harping to that of TEolus ; there is method in his madness; there is a greatness in his gentleness; it soothes our wild discontents and regrets ; it sings them, like blind giants, to sleep, like Ariel charming Caliban, the uncanny, clumsy, and glum. Field's nocturne in E flat was pretty, but we could see to the bottom, and we suspect the kindly and modest reciter brought more out of it than Field ever put in. Heller's " Dans les Bois " was given con amove, as if Heller was Halle's brother ; it is original without being odd, and we can wish the author few better pleasures than hearing it played by his friend. The pieces from Chopin were finely chosen, full of the subtlety, the quick life, the intense subjectivity of this supersubtle, supersensitive, great and odd genius, whom we would think as difficult and deserving of translation as the unique Jean Paul, who needs a language for him- self. This over, the delighted audience, like children only half full of pleasure, and asking for more, could not let their friend go without another last, and he gave the beautiful, lively, and most picturesque " Spinning Wheel," by Heller, the young maiden singing to herself and her wheel. So ended this enjoyable concert, and so ends our rhapsody. 328 BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING.1 March 12,1863. We owe some amends to this excellent book - to its sensible and genial author - and to the shrewd and sturdy auld-farrant little capital of the Upper Ward, for having been so long in noticing " Biggar and the House of Fleming." Biggar deserved a book to herself, and has now got it, and a good and a big one too, and a publisher of her own -a book written not like an article for a gazetteer, in the dull, plodding style, but as a work proper to it- self, and having at the same time reference to the rest of Scotland and its history mainly as " adjacent," in the sense of the good old Greater and Lesser Cumbray story. To Biggar people, Biggar is the centre of the world; and this book is written by a Biggar man, and mainly for those who are or have been " callants " there, and to whom the memories of the Corse Knowe and of Daft Jenny, Johnny Minto, The West Raw, Bow's Well, and the Cadger s Brig are sacred. But with all this - with the local coloring strong and keen - the book is good general reading, the work of a thinking, judging, well-knowledged, well-languaged man, who could write as well on many a wider subject. It is not a book tc analyze ; but we can assure our readers that, though they never saw Tinto, Coulter, Fell, Cardon, or Bizzy- berry, and never even heard the ancient joke, that 1 Biggar and the House of Fleming ; an account of the Biggar dis- trict, Archaeological, Historical, and Biographical. By William Hunter Biggar : David Lockhart. BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. 329 " London's big, but Biggar's bigger," they will find much diversion, and not a little instruction, in this vol- ume, especially under the chapters " Pre-historic Re- mains," " Biggar a Burgh of Barony," " The Romans in the Upper Ward; " Its Witches, Vagrants, and Crimes ; and, not the least curious, " The Battle of Biggar," in which the question is ably and entertainingly handled - Was Blind Harry right in asserting, in " Ye Actis and Deidis of ye illuster and vailyand Campioun, Shyr William Wallace, knicht of Elrisle," that Sir William and his friend, Sir John Tinto, gave battle to and de- feated Edward I. and Sir Aylmer de Vallance, to east of Biggar, on Guildie's Oxgait and the Stanehead, past which runs the little burn, the Red Syke, which, of course, all Biggar, past, present, and to come, held, holds, and will forever hold, to be proof positive of the battle, as it ran of blood for days after ? But, seriously, this battle of Biggar is worthy of the attention of these mighty expiscators and exploders of myths, Sir George C. Lewis, and our own inevitable Burton. Let them clear up it and the Wigtown martyrs. We shall now give " a wheen swatches " of this goodly volume : - "giein' himsel' a fleg." John Brown the fiddler, full of genius and music, and also too frequently fou in the other sense, playing at the fairs, penny-weddings, and dancing-schools, and leading a wild throughother life, had been up all night fiddling and drinking at Broughton fair. He had seen his " nee- bors " all asleep, or prostrate, and betook himself in the cool, sober light of the morning, to the road. He was seized when near Heavyside, with sudden qualms in tha 330 BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. interior, and thought his end was come. Being a Cal- vinist as well as a fiddler and toper, he had sundry aw- ful reflections on this subject; and to indulge them more fully, he sat down at the roadside, expecting every mo- ment the final summons. After waiting and wondering, John got up with much alacrity, saying, " If I maun dee, I may as well dee gaun as sittin'," and made victo- riously for Biggar. Here is a good bit on the same drouthy genius: - "On another occasion, after indulg- ing in a round of rather hard drinking, he fell into the horrors. He viewed his conduct with anything but com- placency. He considered that a feeling of sorrow and regret was not a sufficient atonement for his delinquen- cies, but that he was fairly entitled to receive some per- sonal chastisement. Laboring under this impression, he went forthwith to the late Mr. James Paterson, com- monly called ' Oggie,' from having lived with his father on the farm of Oggscastle, near Carnwath. Having found him, he said, ' Jeames, I maun hae the len o' a gun frae ye this mornin'; I'm gaun to tak' a bit daun- der doon the length o' Bogha' castle.' ' The len o' a gun, John ! ' said James ; ' that's strynge. What on earth are ye gaun to dae wi' a gun ? Ye dinna mean to shute yersel' ? ' ' No exactly that, Jeames,' said John, ' but of coorse I mean to gie mysel' a deevil o' a fleg.' " BIGGAR AS A MEDICAL SCHOOL. " Biggar, from a remote period, has had a staff of medical men. So early as the fourteenth century, men- tion is made, in a charter, of Simon the physician of Biggar. We know very little regarding the Biggar doctors, however, prior to the beginning of last century BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. 331 At that time Andrew Aikman flourished as a surgeon in Biggar. The earliest notice that we have of him is on the 28th June 1720, when he and James Thypland were brought before the Bailie's Court, and fined ' in the soume of fyve punds Scots to the fiscall,' for having, in the course of casting peats in Biggar Moss, encroached on their neighbor's room. In 1723, he and his family appear to have been greatly annoyed by William Lid- dell, a horse-couper, one of those restless and outrageous individuals who give their neighbors and the powers that be a great amount of trouble. He therefore ar- raigned him before the Bailie's Court, and Luke Val- lange, the presiding magistrate, condemned him, under a penalty of ' fyve hundred merks Scots,' to keep the doctor, and his wife, bairns, family, and others, harm- less and skeathless, in their bodyes, lives, goods, and geir, and not to molest him nor his in any sort, directly or indirectly, in tyme coming. " Doctors William Baillie and William Boe were dis- tinguished physicians at Biggar during a considerable part of last century. Biggar, during the time they flourished, acquired some celebrity as a medical school. It was a common practice at that time for young men who wished to acquire a knowledge of the medical art, to serve an apprenticeship to some eminent practitioner. The fame of these two Biggar worthies drew round them many young men, some of whom distinguished themselves in their profession in after years. We may specially refer to Dr. Robert Jackson, the well-known army medical reformer." 332 BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. ROBERT FORSYTH, ADVOCATE. The following notice of this strong-brained man whose huge frame and head were well known twenty years ago in the Parliament House, where he invariably appeared at 9 A. m., nobody ever being before him, is characteristic of the times and of the class out of which, by his own native force, he so nobly raised himself. " His father was Robert Forsyth, bellman and grave digger, to whom we have already referred; and his mother's name was Marion Pairman. This worthy couple were united in marriage in 1764, and their only child, Robert, was born on the 18th of January 1766. Their condition in life was very humble, and they had to struggle with all the disadvantages and sorrows of extreme poverty; but they resolved to give their son, who early showed an aptitude for learning, a good edu- cation in order to qualify him for the work of the min- istry. He was sent early to the parish school, but being the son of a poor man, he was treated with marked neglect and made small progress. He soon, however, became extremely fond of reading. He borrowed such books as his neighbors could supply, and read them in the winter nights to his parents, to Robert Rennie, shoe- maker, and others, who commended him highly for his industry and ability, and thus encouraged him to renewed exertions. In this way he became acquainted with such works as ' The History of the Devil,' ' Satan's Invisible World Discovered,' the Histories of Knox, Crookshank, and Josephus, Ross's ' View of all Religions,' the poems of Butler, Young, Milton, Ramsay, Pennecuik, and Sit David Lindsay. It is remembered at Biggar, that one BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. 333 evening he was busily engaged in reading aloud the poems of Sir David Lindsay, by the blaze of a piece of Auchenheath coal, after his mother had gone to bed, when that worthy matron said, ' O Robie man, steek the boords o' Davie Lindsay, and gie's a blad o' the chapter buik (the Bible), or I 'll no fa' asleep the nicht.' " As he made slow progress in his classical studies at the parish school of Biggar, he was sent in his twelfth or thirteenth year to the burgh school of Lanark, then taught by Mr. Robert Thomson, a brother-in-law of the author of the ' Seasons.' Here he made more advance- ment in a few months than he had done for years previ- ously. When attending this seminary, he returned to Biggar every Saturday, and remained till Monday. His aged grandmother was wont to ' hirple ' out the Lind- say lands road to meet him on his way home; but young Forsyth sometimes spent a few hours in climbing trees at Carmichael, or looking for birds'-nests at Thankerton, and this sorely tried the patience of the old dame as she sat by the wayside chafing at his delay, and longing for his return. "Forsyth then studied four years at the University of Glasgow, and manfully struggled with all the obstruc- tions arising from the res angusta domi. During one of these years, a severe and protracted storm of frost and snow occurred, and prevented all communication from place to place by means of carts. The Biggar carrier was consequently unable to pay his usual visits to Glas- gow for several weeks. Old Forsyth was thrown into great distress regarding the state in which he knew his son would be placed from want of his ordinary supply of provisions. He therefore procured a quantity of oat- meal, and carried it on his back along the rough tracks 334 BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. on the top of the snow all the way to Glasgow, a dis- tance of thirty-five miles, and just arrived when young Forsyth had been reduced to his last meal." He studied for the Church, but having no interest, though an eloquent preacher, and having then, perhaps, no great belief in what he preached, he gave up the ministry and took to the bar. " At that time the men of the Parliament House were more exclusive than they are at present. They cared little for a new adherent to their ranks unless he came recommended by his connection with some aristocratic family. The idea of a sticket minister, and the son of a grave-digger, obtaining admission into their dignified or- der, was intolerable to the Dundases, the Forbeses, the Wedderburns, the Erskines, and others, who in those days ruled the roast in the Parliament House. One of their number connected with the Biggar district, but never distinguished for obtaining any great amount of practice, was specially opposed to Forsyth, and one day had the audacity to say, ' Who are you, sir, that would thrust yourself into the Faculty ? Are ye not the poor bellman's son of Biggar?' 'I am so,' said Forsyth coolly, but sarcastically, ' and I have a strong suspicion that, had you been a bellman's son you would have been your father's successor.' " MARY YOUSTON AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS. " William Baillie's (the tinker's) wife, Mary Youston, was also a remarkable character. In height she was nearly six feet, her eyes were dark and penetrating, her face was much marked with the smallpox, and her ap- pearance was fierce and commanding. She was even BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. 335 more dreaded than her husband, as she was more auda- cious and unscrupulous. Few persons cared to give her offence, because, if they did, they were sure in the end to suffer some loss or injury. ' It is like Mary Yous- ton's awmous, gien mair for her ill than for her guid.' She was, like her husband, a dexterous thief and pick- pocket, so that it was a common observation regarding her, ' Whip her up Biggar street on a market day, wi' a man at ilka oxter, and she would steal a purse ere they got her to the head o't.' Many stories of her say- ings and exploits were at one time prevalent among the peasantry of the Biggar district. We give a specimen or two. One day Mary arrived at the village of Than- kerton, with several juveniles, who were usually trans- ported from place to place in the panniers of the cud- dies. She commenced hawking her commodities amongst the inhabitants, when some of the children of the village came into the house where she was, and cried, ' Mary, your weans are stealing the eggs out of the hen's nest.' Mary quite exultingly exclaimed, ' The Lord be praised I I am glad to hear that the bairns are beginning to show some signs o' thrift.' " " LANGLEATHERS. " John Thomson, commonly called ' Langleathers,' was a person of great strength, and carried a budget of old iron implements and other articles on his back that few persons could lift. He was decidedly fatuous; and the report was that he had received such a shock on witness- ing the destruction of the city of Lisbon by an earth- quake in 1755, that he never again entirely recovered his reason. He used, in his contemplative moods, often 336 BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. to mutter to himself, ' I saw a city sunk.' He was in- offensive, except when roused by the annoyances and tricks of mischievous boys. He then became exceedingly noisy and outrageous ; and, being a dexterous ' hencher ' of stones, it required great nimbleness on the part of the youthful tormentors to avoid his aim. When we hap- pened to be at Biggar on Sabbath, the boys and he were sure to come into collision, and then a great deal of noise and disturbance was the consequence. He had rather a fondness for these encounters, and was not easily prevailed on to give them up. When any person remonstrated with him, and said that he ought to pay more respect to the Sabbath, 'Weel, weel, then,' said Jock, ' I 'll aff to Crawfordjohn; there's nae Sabbath there.' " Jock Robertson, a clever ne'er-do-weel, who had been at Glasgow College with Campbell the poet, long haunted the Upper Ward, getting his bed, his supper, and his dram at the farm " touns " for his tricks and his fortune- telling, of which he thus gives the rationale: - Good Philosophy. - " Such is the propensity of human na- ture to pry into futurity, that I am very successful as a spaeman; and as I take no money, I am less apt to be committed as a vagrant. I can hide my tongue in such a manner that it cannot be observed ; and though I am dumb, I am not deaf; I hear in one house what is going on in another, and can easily make a tolerable history. I first kneel down on the floor, then draw a magic circle with my chalk; next I write the initials, J. S., which will serve for John Smith, James Sommerville, Joseph Sym, Jacob Simpson, and a thousand more. On seeing the initials, a girl perhaps whispers, ' I'll wager that's our Johnnie that's at the sea.' Having found a clew BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. 337 I draw a ship, and write Mediterranean, or whatever can be elicited from the tattle of the maidens. If, on in- specting the initials, they look grave, or give a hint about death, I draw a coffin ; but if the initials do not suit any absent friend of the parties, I make them a sentence, 'I say,' and follow it up with a new set of letters till I can fabricate a story." About a hundred years ago an old man, Adam Thom- son, who made and sold heather besoms, and " ranges," and " basses," - mats of straw or rushes, " threshes," as they are called in that broad tongue which rejoices in Haup for Hope and Wull for Will - lived in a lonely cottage in the bleak muirland between Biggar and Carn- wath. One night in midsummer when they were all in bed, Thomson, who had gone to the door to answer a loud knocking, was brutally murdered, his wife mal- treated, and the house robbed: - " Great efforts, by offering rewards, and otherwise, were made to discover the perpetrators of this foul out- rage. Several persons were apprehended on suspicion, and all manner of reports were put in circulation ; but no satisfactory discovery was made, and most persons began to consider that further search was hopeless. " Adam Thomson, a son of the deceased, a man of strange notions and eccentric habits, and then school- master of the parish of Walston, after pondering for a long time over the mysterious death of his father, re- solved to make personal efforts to discover the murder- ers. From time to time, so often as his vocation would permit, he left his native locality, and travelled over the greater part of Scotland and England, making minute inquiries after suspicious characters, visiting jails, and mixing with thieves, tinkers, and vagabonds of all sorts. 338 BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. Again and again he returned home baffled and disap- pointed. One evening as he lay in bed ruminating on the painful subject which had taken so firm a hold of his mind, he felt a strong and irresistible impulse once more to renew his search. He rose early next morning, and wended his way to Jedburgh, where, as was his wont, he repaired to the Tolbooth. Here he made the usual inquiries at the prisoners, if any of them knew the perpetrators of his father's murder, and it is understood that he obtained such information as enabled him to take effectual steps to apprehend them and bring them to justice. It was thus ascertained that the murder was committed by two men, John Brown and James Wilson, and two women, Martha Wilson and Janet Greig. At what place Janies Wilson was apprehended we have not ascertained; but John Brown was captured in a house near the Fort of Inversnaid, by a party of soldiers from the garrison, on Sabbath, the 3d January 1773, and conducted first to Stirling and then to Edinburgh. As no person had seen them commit the act, it would have been difficult to obtain a conviction against them; but the two women basely agreed to turn king's evidence. The trial of the two men was fixed to take place on the 28th June; but it was potsponed till the 12th August, on the plea that at least one of the panels could bring evidence to prove an alibi. The individual who at length came forward and made this attempt was a per- son of their own kidney, called William Robertson; but his statements were so inconsistent and contradictory that the Court committed him to prison. The jury unan- imously found the prisoners guilty; and the sentence pronounced upon them was, that they should be executed to the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, on Wednesday, the 15tb BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. 339 September, and their bodies given to Dr. Monro for dis- section. " The execution of Brown and Wilson took place on the day appointed; and Adam Thomson, it is said, ap- peared with them on the scaffold and offered up a solemn prayer, an exercise of which he was very fond, and in which, it is allowed, he greatly excelled. On his return home, he erected a stone at the grave of his father in Carnwath churchyard, with an inscription in Latin. It was long an object of attraction, and was visited by many persons at a distance who had heard the story of the murder, the extraordinary efforts made by young Thomson to discover the perpetrators of it, and the sin- gular epitaph which he had composed. A relative of Thomson, some years ago, removed the stone to the neighboring churchyard of Libberton, and there barbar- ously caused the inscription to be defaced or erased, and another one, regarding his own immediate relations, to be put in its place. So far as can be remembered the inscription ran as follows: - " ' Hie jacet Adamus Thomson, qui xv. ante Cal. Julii 1771, cruentis manibus, Joannis Brown, Jacobi Wilson, et duarum feminarum, apud Nigram Legem, prope Novam 2Edificationem, crudelissime trucidatus erat. Illi, Adamo Thomson, defuncti filio et ludimagis- tro de Walston, detecti erant. Ob quod crimen nefan- dum, Brown et Wilson, capitis damnati, et xvii. Cal. Oct. 1773, suspeusi erant. " ' Hoc monumentum extructum fuit Adamo Thom- son, rectore A cade mise de Walston.' " The late Rev. William Meek of Dunsyre was wont to quote the above inscription as a curious sample of the Latinity of the dominies of the Upper Ward, putting 340 BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. special emphasis on the rendering of Blacklaw, near Newbigging, by ' Nigram Legem, prope Novam JEdifi- cationem,' and the fine conceit of Thomson in styling himself ' ludimagister ' and 'rector' of the Academy of Walston." Adam Thomson tracking his father's murderers like a sleuth-hound, and then offering up a solemn prayer - " an exercise of which he was very fond " - at their gallows, is worthy of Matthew Wald and that fell shoe- maker M'Ewan, whose predestinarian meditations on the sands at Lamlash, none who have read Lockhart's intense novel are likely to forget. And now for a bit of the comic. Robert Forsyth, the father of the advocate, and himself grave-digger, bell- man, and minister's man, was asked by his master, who was knowing in pigs, to take one of a very fine litter to his friend, the then minister of Dolphinton. Rob was told to be sure to inform the receiver of every- thing about its "blood and culture" - not only who its father and mother, but who its forebears generally were. " And ye see, Rab, be shure ye tell this afore ye let it oot, for he 'll never heed a word ye say after that for glowerin' at its perfections." So off Rob trudged with his pock and its high-bred burden. When he came to Candy Burn, a little way out of Biggar, where a dram was then sold, he met Richie Robb, a humorist and wag, who, seeing the bedral, says, " Whaur are ye gaun ? " "Oo, 1 'm gaun to Dowfintoun, wi' joost the wunner- fust pig ever was piggit; it's for the minister." " Ay, man ! Come yer ways in and tak a dram, and let's see the pig." The pig was seen and admired, and then the dram and a crack. Meantime, Richie takes out the pig and puts in a young puppy-dog about the same weight, BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. 341 and Robbie trudges off, arriving in the afternoon at the manse of Dolphinton. The minister was out looking about him, and knew Rob. " What's this in the pock, Robbie, my man ? " " Ay, ye may well speir, Mr Meek. It's joost the maist extraordnar pig ever was. My maister has sent it as a parteekler present to you, wi' his compliments." " Let us see't, Robbie." " Na, na, sir, I maun first put ye up to its generation, sae to speak." He then detailed its antecedents, and let it solemnly escape at the corner. Out came the puppy, winking and lively. " That's a dowg, Robbie ! " says the minister. 11 A dowg! a dowg ! as shure's daith it is a dowg; it was as shure, Mr. Meek - as fac's daith - it was a pig when it gaed in ! " " Weel, Robbie, it's a dowg noo, so you may tak' it back. But come in and hae yer four oors." Robbie took a fearful look at the beast, returned it with much subdued blasphemy, aston- ishment, and cruelty to the pock, and, making a hearty meal, started again, giving a skeptical keek into the pock every now and then on his way when he thought nobody saw him, to see what further change was going on. He arrived once more, disgusted, bewildered, and weary, at Candy Burn, where, of course, Richie was waiting for him. " Ye've been lang, Robbie, and what for are ye carryin' the pock ower yer shouther ? " Rob- bie gave a grunt of disgust, and told his story. " That's awfu', Robbie, perfectly fearsome; ye maun stap in and hae a dram. Oo maun tell Tibbie." Rob flung down his pock with its portentous contents - which gave an unmistakable yowl - and took his dram and told his woes. Of course Richie transposed the pig once more, and on went Rob, heartened by drink a little, but full of alarm as to his master, who met him at the door eager 342 BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. to know what his friend thought of the pig. Robbie flung down his pock with a desperate air, took his stand, and, rubbing his forehead, poured out the prodigious story - " A whaulp, an absolute whaulp, as ye may see, sir, wi' yer ain een." Opening the pock and giving it a vindictive kick, out came the pig of the morning! "As fac 's death, Mr. Watson, it was a whaulp at Dowfinton, and I lookit in noos and thans to see if it was turnin' into onything else ; and it was a whaulp at Candy Burn, and that Richie Robb can aver and sweer." " Nae doot, Robbie, Richie kens a' aboot it," said the more knowing minister. In its own small way, this is as good a joke as any since Boccaccio. What a finished personation Mat- thews or Sir William Allan would have made, and Mac- nee or Peter Fraser would make of it! There was - " Ah for the change 'twixt now and then ! " - an institu- tion in Biggar as peculiar to it as is the Godiva proces- sion to Coventry, - the " Hurley-hacket! " It has ceased forever, because its possibility is no more. Forty years ago, the Gorse Knowe, or Cross Hill, was as essential a feature in Biggar as St. Paul's in London, St. Regulus' Tower at St. Andrews, the Campanile in Venice, or our own Castle here. Biggar is no more Biggar as it was than the Apollo would be himself without his nose. This knowe was in the centre of the town, and middle of the street, and the market cross was on its top; and when there was a hard frost, it was the pleasure of the entire town, young and old, to go mad, and take to hurl- ing themselves down the frozen slopes, " keepin' the pud- din' het " in an astonishing way. As were the Saturna- lia to old, and the Carnival to present Rome, so was this short insanity to the staid town - its consummation be- ing the Hurley-hacket, a sort of express train, headed by BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING. 343 one or two first-raters, "perfect deevils," who could de- scend the steep standing, like Hamlet in " To be or not to be," calm, and with their arms crossed, and their feet close heel-and-toe, shod with iron ; one fellow - he was afterwards hanged - was generally the leader, straight as an arrow shooting the rapids, and yielding, like a con- summate rider, to the perilous ups and down ; behind him came the lads and lasses, scudding on their hunkers ; then their elders on their creepies, turned upside down, and then the ruck. Away it swept, yelling and sway- ing to-and-fro, like a huge dragon, lithe and supple - " swingeing the horror" of its multitudinous tail -down across the street, heedless of everything, running, it may be, right into Mr. Pairman's shop, or down on the other side into William Johnstone's byre, and past the tail of his utmost coo. Then the confusion and scrimmage, and doubling of everybody up at the ending! that was the glory, like emptying an express train into a " free toom." All this is gone, the Corse Knowe is levelled, the Hurley-hacket is unknown, no longer flames down the steep with half the town, and it may be the minister and the dominie secretly at its tail, with a fragment of a tar barrel flourishing and blazing at its head. It was worthy of the pen of him who sang of Auster Fair The old Biggar callants may say, with their native poet Robert Rae - " Syne fancy leads me back to some Tremendous Hurley-hacket row, When 'Roarin' Billie,' langsyne dumb, Gaed thunderin' doon the auld Corse Knowe." London's big, but Biggar's Biggar." - Joke of thi District. SLR HENRY RAEBURN. SIR HENRY RAEBURN.1 BIR HENRY RAEBURN is the greatest of Scottish portrait-painters. Others may have painted one or more as excellent portraits: we have Sir George Harvey's Mrs. Horn - a veritable Mater Scotorum - and his Professor Wilson, and my father, the property of Mrs. Jas. Crum; Duncan's Dr. Chalmers and his magical likeness of himself ; Geddes's Wilkie, so finely engraved in brown by Ward, also his old "Sicily" Brydone reclining on his sofa - an ex- quisite piece-and his own "couthy" old mother; the Provost of Peterhead by Sir John Watson Gordon; "The Man of Feeling" by Colvin Smith; and Dr. Wardlaw by Macnee;2 but none of these have given to the world such a profusion of masterpieces. Indeed, Sir Henry's name may stand with those of the world's great- est men in this department of Art - Titian and Tinto- retto, Vandyck and Rubens, Velasquez and Rembrandt, 1 Prefixed to a volume of "Portraits of Sir Henry Raeburn." Folio. Edin. 1874. 2 I bad just come from this excellent man's burial when the proof of this came in. He was a good painter, a great humorist, an incom- parable raconteur, and a most lovable man - as unaffected as when I saw him fifty and m^re years agj, or as his own Touch Hills ; and whoever saw and heard "The hat," or "The gamekeeper's ghost story," or his tremendous " Sam Bough's railway journey to Port- Glasgow," and indeed any of his perfect stories, can ever forget or tell them ?- it is a lost delight and wonder. - [Jan. 21, 1882.] 348 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. Sir Joshua, Gainsborough, and Hogarth (witness his Captain Coram). There is a breadth and manliness, a strength and felicity of likeness and of character, and a simplicity and honesty of treatment, which are found only in men of primary genius. Of the great masters of portraiture, Velasquez is the one whom Raeburn most resembles. Wilkie, - a first- rate Art critic, - writing from Madrid, where one must go to feel the full power of the great Spaniard, says, "There is much resemblance between him and the works of some of the chiefs of the English school; but of all, Raeburn resembles him most, in whose square touch in heads, hands, and accessories I see the very counterpart in Velasquez." Nothing can be happier than the expression " square touch " as characteristic of the handling of both, and with Raeburn it must have been like-mindedness, not imitation, as there is no reason to think he saw almost any of the works of this great master. Raeburn stands nearly alone among the great portrait- painters, in having never painted anything else. This does not prove that he was without the ideal faculty. No man can excel as a portrait-painter - no man can make the soul look out from a face - who wants it. Richmond pleasantly put it, and truly, to Professor Syme, when he first showed him the drawing of himself, well known by Holl's engraving; the great surgeon, after scrutiniz ing it with his keen and honest eyes, exclaimed, laugl ing, " Yes, it is like; but then - it is good-looking ! " Ah ! you see," said the artist, " we do it lovingly.' The best likeness of a man should be the ideal of him realized. As Coleridge used to say, " A great portrait should be liker than its original;" it should contain SIR HENRY RAEBURN. 349 more of the best, more of the essence of the man than ever was in any one living look. In these two qualities Raeburn always is strong; he never fails in giving a likeness at once vivid, unmistakable, and pleasing. He paints the truth, and he paints it in love. This eminent Scotsman was born in Stockbridge, on the Water of Leith - now a part of Edinburgh -on the 4th of March 1756. His ancestors were of the sturdy Border stock - reiving, pastoral lairds - and probably took their name from Raeburn, a hill-farm in Annandale still held by Sir Walter Scott's kinsfolk.1 Raeburn was left an orphan at six, and was educated in Heriot's Hospital or " Wark," as it was called. He is one of the curiously few of those brought up in this Scottish Christ's Hospital who became distinguished in after life - a contrast to the scholars of the great Lon- don School. At fifteen he was apprenticed to a gold- smith. He early showed his turn for Art. He carica- tured his comrades, and by and by, without any teaching, made beautiful miniatures of his friends. After his time was out, he set himself entiiBly to portrait-painting, giving up miniature, and passing from its delicacies and minuteness at once to his bold " square touch " in oil. He had to teach himself everything, - drawing, the composition of colors, in which doubtless he employed largely Opie's well-known mixture, " With Brains, Sir." About this time the young Herioter became acquainted with the famous cynic, lawyer, and wit, John Clerk, afterwards Lord Eldin, then a young advocate, fond of pictures and of painting, in which he had some of that 1 His grandson tells me that Sir Henry used to say he was a Raeburn of that Ilk - his forebears having haa it before the Scotts, whose it ii now. His crest is a Rae or Roe deer. 350 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. family gift which, in the case of Mrs. Blackburn, has blossomed out into such rare and exquisite work. Allan Cunningham tells a good story of this time. Both were then poor. Young Clerk asked Raeburn to dine at his lodgings. Coming in, he found the landlady laying the cloth and setting down two dishes, one containing three herrings, and tne other three potatoes. " Is this a' ? " said John. " Ay, it's a'! " " A' I did n't I tell ye, wumman, that a gentleman is to dine wi' me, and that ye were to get six herrin' and six potatoes ? " When twenty-two, the following romantic incident, as told by Allan Cunningham, occurred: - "One day a young lady presented herself at his studio, and desired to sit for her portrait; he instantly remembered having seen her in some of his excursions, when, with his sketch-book in his hand, he was noting down tine snatches of scenery ; and as the appearance of anything living and lovely gives an additional charm to a landscape, the painter, like Gainsborough in similar circumstances, had admitted her readily into his drawing." He found that she had, besides beauty, sensibility and wit - he fell in love with his sitter, and made a very fine portrait, now at Charlesfield. The lady, Ann Edgar, daughter of the Laird of Bridgelands, became in a month after this his wife, bringing him a good fortune, good sense, and an affectionate heart. He now resolved to visit London and improve himself in his art. He was introduced to Sir Joshua, and often told how the great painter coun- selled him to go to Rome and worship Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, and study his " terribile via," and how .n parting he said, "Young man, I know nothing of your circumstances - young painters are seldom rich - but if money be necessary for your studies abroad, say SIR HENRY RAEBURN. 351 »o, and you shall not want it." There is little record of his life at Rome. Byres, Barry's antagonist, gave him an advice he ever after followed, and often spoke of; " Never paint any object from memory, if you can get it before your eyes." From his return to Edinburgh until his death his life was busy, happy, and victorious. Full of work, eager, hospitable, faithful in his friendships, homely in his hab- its, he was one of the best-liked men of his time. The following is Cunningham's account of him : - " Though his painting-rooms were in York Place, his dwelling- house was at St. Bernard's, near Stockbridge, overlook- ing the water of Leith - a romantic place. The steep banks were then finely wooded ; the garden grounds varied and beautiful; and all the seclusion of the coun- try could be enjoyed, without the remoteness. The mo- tions of the artist were as regular as those of a clock. He rose at seven during summer, took breakfast about eight with his wife and children, walked up to his great room in 32 York Place, now occupied by Colvin Smith, R. S. A., and was ready for a sitter by nine; and of sitters he generally had, for many years, not fewer than three or four a day. To these he gave an hour and a half each. He seldom kept a sitter more than two hours; unless the person happened - and that was often the case - to be gifted with more than common talents. He then felt himself happy, and never failed to detain the party till the arrival of a new sitter inti- mated that he must be gone. For a head size he gener- ally required four or five sittings, and he preferred paint- ing the head and hands to any other part of the body: assigning as a reason that they required least considera- ton. A fold of drapery, or the natural ease which the 352 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. casting of a mantle over the shoulder demanded, occa- sioned him more perplexing study than a head full of thought and imagination. Such was the intuition with which he penetrated at once to the mind, that the first sitting rarely came to a close without his having seized strongly on the character and disposition of the individ- ual. He never drew in his heads, or indeed any part of the body, with chalk, - a system pursued successfully by Lawrence; but began with the brush at once. The forehead, chin, nose, and mouth were his first touches. He always painted standing, and never used a stick for resting his hand on ; for such was his accuracy of eye, and steadiness of nerve, that he could introduce the most delicate touches, or the utmost mechanical regularity of line, without aid, or other contrivance than fair off-hand dexterity. He remained in his painting-room till a little after five o'clock, when he walked home, and dined at six." One of his sitters thus describes him: -" He spoke a few words to me in his usual brief and kindly way-■ evidently to put me into an agreeable mood ; and then, having placed me in a chair on a platform at the end of his painting-room, in the posture required, set up his easel beside me, with the canvas ready to receive the color. When he saw all was right, he took his palette and his brush, retreated back step by step, with his face towards me, till he was nigh the other end of his room; ne stood and studied for a minute more, then came up to the canvas, and, without looking at me, wrought upon it with color for some time. Having done this, he re- treated in the same manner, studied my looks at that distance for about another minute, then came hastily up to the canvas and painted a few minutes more. I had SIR HENRY RAEBURN. 353 sat to other artists ; their way was quite different - they made an outline carefully in chalk, measured it with compasses, placed the canvas close to me, and look- ing me almost without ceasing in the face, proceeded to fill up the outline with color. They succeeded best in the minute detail - Raeburn best in the general result of the expression; they obtained by means of a multi- tude of little touches what he found by broader masses; they gave more of the man - he gave most of the mind." " Like Sir Joshua, he placed his sitters on a high plat- form, shortening the features, and giving a pigeon-hole view of the nostrils. The notion is that people should be painted as if they were hanging like pictures on the wall, a Newgate notion, but it was Sir Joshua's. Raeburn and I have had good-humored disputes about this: I appealed to Titian, Vandyck, etc., for my authorities ; they always painted people as if they were sitting opposite to them, not on a mountebank stage, or dangling on the wall." This great question we leave to be decided by those who know best. His manner of taking his likenesses explains the simplicity and power of his heads. Placing his sitter on the pedestal, he looked at him from the other end of a long room, gazing at him intently with his great dark eyes. Having got the idea of the man, what of him carried furthest and " told," he walked hastily up to the canvas, never looking at his sitter, and put down what he had fixed in his inner eye; he then withdrew again, took another gaze, and recorded its re- sults, and so on, making no measurements. His hands are admirably drawn, full of expression, and evidently portraits. He was knighted by George the Fourth at Hopetoun House, and made His Majesty's Limner for 354 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. Scotland soon after. He was a Royal Academician for some years before his death, and Member of the Acade* mies of New York and South Carolina, as well as of Florence and Athens. Sir Henry died, after a short illness, on the 8th of July 1823, beloved and honored by all.1 " Honest Al- lan " sums up his personal character thus: - " The character of Raeburn appears to have been every way unblemished; he was a candid modest man, ever ready to aid merit, and give a helping hand to genius in art. His varied knowledge, his agreeable manners, his nu- merous anecdotes, and his general conversation, at once easy and unaffected, with now and then a touch of hu- morous gayety, made him a delightful companion; he told a Scotch story with almost unrivalled naivete of ef- fect, and did the honors of a handsome house and ele- gant table with all the grace of a high-bred gentleman. Through life he discharged, with blameless attention, all the duties of a good citizen. His pencil never kept him from his place in church on Sunday, and in the days of trouble he was a zealous volunteer. First and last, among all the children of art no one was ever more widely respected than Sir Henry Raeburn; and his tall, handsome figure, and fine open manly countenance, will not be forgotten for many a day in ' the place which knew him.' " The remarkable collection of Photographs from Rae- burn's Portraits now given in this volume, though want- ing the charm of color, and most of them from engrav ings - masterly indeed, but still inexpressive in some 1 He is buried in the mortuary of St. John's, Edinburgh, but to our hanie there is not a word to say where he lies. SIR HENRY RAEBURN. 355 degree of the full power and sweetness of the original - gives us a good sample of this great master's faculty of rendering the human countenance. Judging from those we know, we may say that the cardinal virtue of mak- ing a strong, true likeness is preeminent in Raeburn's work ; he seizes the essential features and expression, which make the man to differ from all other men ; and he gives the best of him. Take that of Dr. Nathaniel Spens as a Royal Archer: we do not know a nobler portrait; look at his eye, at his firm legs, at his gloved hands, at the cock of his bonnet. At his feet is a sturdy Scotch thistle, bristling all over with Nemo me. This great picture is done to the quick, tense with concen- trated action, and that arrow, " shot by an archer strong," you know the next instant will be off and home. There is true genius here. This picture is now in Archers' Hall; we grudge them it - it should be seen of all men. There is Dr. Adam of the High School - the perfec- tion of a Rector - firm, reasonable, loving. The hold- ing out the hand to still the unseen boys brings to mind that fine story of him when dying: lifting up his thin hand he said - " But it grows dark, boys ; you may go." Then there is Scott, sitting on ruins, his dog Camp -■ the English bull-terrier on whose death-day he wrote saying he could not dine out, because " a very dear friend " had died - at his feet; the stern old keep of Hermitage in the distance - was there ever a more po- etic picture of a poet ? Look at his child-mouth - his rapt, brooding eyes, seeing things invisible, peopling the past. Camp with his unreflex, ani mal eyes is looking as only dogs look, into the visible and the near. What cares he for knights of old and minstrelsy and gla- 356 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. mourye ? he is snuffing up some possible foumart, or, watching the twinkling fud of a vanishing rabbit. The replica of this portrait has in it two favorite greyhounds of Sir Walter, " Douglas" and " Percy," and the Braes of Yarrow for the background. Then look at Sir Harry Moncreiff. What a thorough gentleman - what a broad, sunny-hearted Churchman ! Look at the hands, how expressive! Again, there's Professor Robison. Did you ever see a dressing-gown so glorified? and the nightcap, and the look of steady speculation in the eyes - a philosopher all over. John Tait and Grandson. Mr. Tait was grandfather to the present Archbishop of Canterbury, and the little mannie gazing at the watch is the present Sheriff of Perthshire. There is another of Scott - quite different but very fine - the bluff, cordial man of the world - with his pleasant mouth that has a burr in it. This must have been done in his prime. Francis Horner - gentle and immovable - the Ten Commandments written all over his face, as Sydney Smith said. John Clerk, his " herrin' " friend, ugly and snuffy, shrewd and subtle; the crouching Venus among the law-papers - beautifully drawn - indicating John's love of Art. Archibald Constable, the handsome, buirdly book- seller of genius, to whom the world owes more of its enjoyment from Scott than it is aware of, and to whose powers and worth and true place in the literature of this century, his son, I rejoice to see, has done a long-delayed act of justice and of filial affection, and done it well. Lord Newton, full-blooded, full-brained, taurine with SIR HENRY RAEBURN. 357 potential vigor. His head is painted with a Rabelaisian richness; you cannot but believe, when you look at the vast countenance, the tales of his feats in thinking and in drinking, and in general capacity of body and of mind. Jamie Balfour, in the act of singing " When I hae a saxpence under my thoom." You hear the refrain - " Toddlin' hame, toddlin' hame, round as a neep she cam' toddlin' hame." Mr. Melville of Hanley, with whom have perished so many of the best Edinburgh stories, used to tell how he got this picture, which for many years hung and sang in his hospitable dining-room. It was bought, at the selling off of the effects of the old Leith Golf-House, by a drunken old caddy, for 30s. Mr. Melville heard of this, went to the ancient creature, and got it for 40s. and two bottles of whiskey. James Stuart of Dunearn offered him (Mr. Melville) £80 and two pipes of wine for it, but in vain. Sir David Wilkie coveted it also, and promised to pay for it by a picture of his own, but died before this was fulfilled. Raeburn's own portrait - handsome, kindly, full of genius. How is it that all painters glorify themselves so delightfully ? Look at Vandyck, Nicolas Poussin, Hogarth, Rubens, Sir Joshua, and our own Duncan. Like Sir Joshua, Raeburn has been well engraved on the whole. The number of his engraved portraits is remarkable, greater than any British painter except Reynolds. Mr. Drummond had 125, and there may be ten or fifteen more. Beugo's vigorous and crisp graver ha.« rendered worthily Dr. Spens, " lord of the unerring bow; " and Charles Turner's brown mezzotint of Sir Walter, and those of Sir Harry Moncreiff and Professors Jardine and Robison, and many others, and Walker's stippling of Lord Hopetoun and Scott, are masterpieces 358 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. of their art. There is also one head in line by the fa- mous Sharpe, besides Ward (painter of the famous Bull, in mezzotint. Raeburn is generally said to have failed in painting ladies. I think this a mistake. He certainly is mainly a painter of men; but this arose very much from his having more men than women as sitters. Can anything be more homely - more like a Scottish gudewife, more aidd-farrant - than Mrs. Hamilton, the author of " The Cottagers of Glenburnie " and " Mrs. M'Clarty " and " I canna be fash'd," - what sweeter, more " full of all blessed conditions," than Mrs. Scott Moncrieff, now in our National Gallery, and one of the loveliest female portraits we know ? as also is Mrs. Gregory, now in Canaan Lodge, a beautiful woman and picture, and Mrs. Kennedy, mother of the staunch intrepid old Whig of Dunure. I shall mention only one other portrait, it is of the true heroic type - the full-length of Lord Duncan, in the Trinity House of Leith, which might without misgiving hang alongside of Sir Joshua's Lord Heathfield, holding the key of Gibraltar in his hand. It is, as we have said, a heroic picture. The hero of Camperdown and captor of De Winter is standing at a table with his left hand resting on the finger-tips - a favorite posture with Rae- burn ; the right hanging quietly at his side and its distended veins painted to the life. It is the incarnation of quiet, cheerful, condensed power and command. The eyes, bright, almost laughing and at their ease, - the mouth, fixed beyond change, almost grim, - the whole man instinct with will and reserved force. The color- ing is exquisite, and the picture in perfect condition. I end with the following excellent estimate of Rae SIR HENRY RAEBURN. 359 burn s merits as an artist: - " His style was free and bold, his coloring rich, deep, and harmonious. He had a peculiar power of rendering the head of his figure bold, prominent, and imposing. The strict fidelity of his representations may in a great degree be attributed to his invariable custom of painting, whether the prin- cipal figure or the minutest accessory, from the person or the thing itself - never giving a single touch from memory or conjecture. It has been judiciously said that all who are conversant with the practice of the Art must have observed how often the spirit which gave life and vigor to a first sketch has gradually evaporated as the picture advanced to its more finished state. To preserve the spirit, combined with the evanescent delicacies and blendings which nature on minute inspection exhibits, constitutes a perfection of art to which few have at- tained. If the works of Sir Henry Raeburn fail to ex- hibit this rare combination in that degree, to this dis- tinction they will always have a just claim, that they possess a freedom, a vigor, and a spirit of effect, and carry an impression of grace, life, and reality, which may be looked for in vain amidst thousands of pictures, both ancient and modern, of more elaborate execution and minute finish." He recorded men rather as Field- .ng than as Richardson-had they handled the brush instead of the pen - would have done; still the per- fection is when both qualities are at their best in one man, as in Da Vinci and Titian and Holbein. Since writing the above I have been to Charlesfield, the residence of Sir Henry's grandson, L. W. Raeburn. I wish I had been there before. It is a snug old Scotch house near Mid-Calder, on a burn of its own, which paraffine has defiled with its stench and prismatic films. 360 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. I shall never forget it, nor the kindness of the three friends-who showed me their cherished treasures, and who inherit the simplicity, heartiness, and glowing rich eyes of their grandfather. The house is overrun with the choicest Raeburns. In the lobby there is a big man, as many stones weight as the Claimant, who is handed down as an Irish Duke. Then there is Francis Jeffrey when in his prime - very fine - keen and kindly, the beautiful, sweet, mobile mouth, the rich, brown eyes. A head of the Duke of Gordon - finished and noble. There was a comico-trag- ic story attached to this. The head was once on a full- length body in the Highland dress; there being so little room in the house, or rather so many pictures in it, this, the last Duke of Gordon, the " Cock of the North," was put in the nursery, and my friend the master of the house said, ashamedly, that he and his brother used to send sundry pennies through the person of his Grace, and shot arrows plentifully into his sporran, and all over him, so much so that the body had to be destroyed. Our friend is penitent to this day. In the lobby are several of the animal-painter Howe's spirited oil sketches of cart-horses and ploughmen, full of rough genius and "go." In the dining-room are the heads of his famil- iars - whose full portraits he had done - painted from love and for himself. I question if any such record of pictorial genius and friendship exists. The walls are literally covered. There is Cockburn with his melan- choly, wonderful eye, with a joke far in; Skirving, the crayon portrait-painter, full of fire and temper, fit son the man who wrote " Hey, Johnnie Cope " and chal- lenged one of his affronted troopers to combat. Rennie, the great engineer - the large, powerful, SIR HENRY RAEBURN 361 constructive beaver-Yike face of the inspired millwright of East Linton. Professor Dalzel - exquisite for delicate, refined ex- pression and sweetness - the lactea ubertas of the dear old man, - his Analecta Majora and Minora lying on the table. Besides many others, over the fireplace is a life-size portrait of Mr. Byres of Tonley,1 whom we have men- tioned as at Rome with Raeburn ; this was painted long after, and is of the first quality, done with the utmost breadth of felicity. The ruffles of his shirt are still of dazzling whiteness, as if bleached by the burn-side. At the fireside is a small head of Ferguson the poet, by Runciman - intense and painful, the eyes full of peril- ous light and coming frenzy, - in color dingy beside the glow of Raeburn. It is not the same portrait as the one engraved in his works, also by Runciman. In a bed- room is Professor Playfair - very fine ; Mr. Edgar ; and a most curious portrait of Raeburn's son and his horse : the horse is by Sir Henry - strong, real, per- fectly drawn; the son, painted after his father's death, is by John Syme, remembered by some of us for his wooden pictures. Anything more ludicrous than the strength of the horse's portrait and the weakness of the man's I never saw ; it is like meeting with a paragraph by the worthy Tupper, or some other folk we know, in a page of Thackery or Swift. A comical incongruity of the same kind was shown to me by Mr. James Drum- mond, R. S. A., who knew and had so many things that no- body else had or knew. It is the record of a clever dodge. Mr. Hatton, the print-seller, had a fine print of Dr. Thomas Hope, Professor of Chemistry in the University, - 1 He was the cicerone of Gibbon in Rome. 362 SIR HENRY RAEB URN. whose only joke, by the by, I well remember, and apply it, sometimes to other than gaseous bodies, - when lecturing upon hydrogen, he used to end with " In fact, gentlemen, in regard to this remarkable body, we may almost say that it is possessed of absolute levity." Well, Hatton, when George the Fourth came to Scotland, and we were all mad about him, from Sir Walter downwards, having made his utmost out of the plate as Dr. Hope, scraped his head out and put in that of the bewigged and becurled " First Gentleman in Europe." The rest of the plate remains unchanged, except the royal arms on the book, and the Star of the Garter on the Doctor's breast! Dr. Hope had not much of the heroic in his face or nature, but his head by Raeburn keeps its own and more against that of His Most Gracious Majesty - by Mr. Hatton ; it is altogether one of the best of jokes. Maxwell of Pollok - the head finished on the naked canvas - amazing freshness and vigor, as if done at a heat. Henry Mackenzie, " The Man of Feeling " - very fine. Up-stairs on the landing, Lady in green silk pelisse, through whose body had gone another nursery penny, now neatly healed. Mrs. Vere of Stonebyres, Sir Henry's step-daughter, lying asleep, her head on a pillow - a very fine study. My eye was arrested by a portrait above a door; it was the head and neck, life-size, of a young man of great beauty. This, my friends told me, was the por- trait of Peter Raeburn, Sir Henry's eldest son, painted by himself, when he knew he was dying of consump- tion, and given by him to his mother 1 His father used to say that if he had lived he would have far surpassed him. SIR HENRY RAEBURN. 363 The drawing-room is crowded with perfections. When you enter, above the fireplace is his own incomparable portrait, than which - as our President of the Royal Academy says - no better portrait exists: it glorifies the little room, and is in perfect condition; the engrav- ing gives no full idea of the glow of the great dark eyes, the mastery of touch, the ardor and power of the whole expression. Opposite him is his dear little wife, comely and sweet and wise, sitting in the open air with a white head-dress, her face away to one side of the picture, her shapely, bare, unjewelled arms and hands lying crossed on her lap. Boy with cherry - very like Reynolds. Then there is another funny incongruity: Mrs. Raeburn, his son's wife, a woman of great beauty, a sister of that true hu- morist to whom we owe " Sir Frizzle Pumpkin," and much else - the Rev. James White - is sitting with two young Edgars at her knees. Her head and bust are by Sir J. Watson Gordon, the youngsters by Rae- burn, and oh 1 the difference I Dr. Andrew Thomson, the great preacher and ecclesi- astical pugilist - very powerful. Next him, in the corner, is the gem of all, a little oval picture of Eliza Raeburn, his eldest granddaughter, who died at six; there she is - lovely, her lucid blue eyes, her snowy bosom, her little mouth, just open enough to indicate the milk-white teeth, the sunny hair, the straightforward gaze, the sweetness ! It is not possible to give in words the beauty of this; Correggio or Gior- gione need not have been ashamed of it, and there is a depth of human expression I have never seen in them ; ihe was her grandfather's darling, and she must be of every one who looks at her, though she has been fifty years in her grave. 364 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. Thomson of Duddingston - heavy and strong. I was confirmed by the grandchildren as to the aim pie, frank, hearty nature of the man, his friendliness and cheery spirit, his noble presence - six feet two - and his simple, honest pleasures and happy life. I am indebted to Mrs. Ferrier, widow of Professor Ferrier of St. Andrews, and eldest daughter of Pro- fessor Wilson, the renowned " Christopher North," for the following recollections of St. Bernard's House and the Raeburn family. She was then about six years of age. Our first parents " skelpin' aboot " before the Fall, and before " Shelly " in his old white hat, is a great idea. " More than half a century ago I was frequently in my childhood at St. Bernard's House, on the banks of the Water of Leith, which were in those days green and smooth to the river's edge. This old house was reached by a broad avenue of trees and shrubbery from Ann Street, where we lived for some years ; this would be about 1820. This interesting old house was surrounded by large green fields, a fine orchard of apple and pear- trees, and leading from this was another avenue of old stately elms, part of which still remain with the rookery in St. Bernard's Crescent. On the right hand of this avenue was a nice old garden, well stocked, and with hot-houses. " In this ancient mansion lived the Raeburn family, with whom we were very intimate as children and like- wise school companions, though there were some years between our ages. Sir Henry and Lady Raeburn, and their son and his wife, with three children, comprised the family party at this time. The great portrait-painter SIR HENRY RAEBURN. 365 as far as I can recollect him, had a very impressive ap- pearance, his full, dark, lustrous eyes, with ample brow and dark hair, at this time somewhat scant. His tall, large frame had a dignified aspect. I can well remem- ber him, seated in an arm-chair in the evening, at the fireside of the small drawing-room, a newspaper in his hand, with his family around him. His usual mode of address to us when spending the evenings, while he held out his hand with a kind smile, was " Well, my dears, what is your opinion of things in general to-day?" These words always filled us with consternation, and we all huddled together like a flock of scared sheep, vainly attempting some answer by gazing from one to the other; and with what delight and sense of freedom we were led away to be seated at the tea-table, covered with cookies, bread and butter and jelly I From this place of security we stole now and then a fearful glance at the arm-chair in which Sir Henry reclined. After tea we were permitted to go away for play to another room, where we made as much noise as we liked, and gener- ally managed to disturb old Lady Raeburn, not far from the drawing-room, where we had all been at tea on our best behavior, in the presence of her great husband. This old lady was quite a character, and always spoke in broad Scotch, then common among the old families, now extinct. I can never forget the manner in which we uproarious creatures tormented her, flinging open the door of her snug little room, whither she had fled for a little quiet from our incessant provocations and unwea- ried inventions at amusement, which usually reached the climax by throwing bed-pillows at her and nearly smoth- ering her small figure. At this juncture she would rise up, and, opening the door of a cupboard, would bring out 366 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. of it a magnificent bunch of grapes, which she endeav- ored to divide among us with these words of entreaty, "Hoot, hoot, bairns, here's some grapes for ye; noo gang awa' an' behave yersels like gude bairns, an' dinna deave me ony mair." For a short time the remedy effected a lull in the storm, which, at the least hint, was ready to set in with renewed vigor. She would then throw out of a wardrobe shawls, turbans, bonnets, and gear of all sorts and colors, in which we arrayed our- selves to hold our court, Anne Raeburn being very often our Queen. Beyond the walls of the house we used to pass hours of a sunny forenoon in drawing a yellow child's coach, which held two of us, who were as usual enveloped in shawls and decorated with feathers and flowers for our masquerading. There was a black pony ; I remember well its being led up and down the long avenue by an old nurse with some one of the Raeburn children on it. When we were in quieter moods at play we used to go up four or five steps at the end of the passage leading to the great drawing-room, which was seldom entered except on company days. We children never quite felt at our ease when we stealthily opened the door of this large apartment; we imagined there might be a ghost somewhere. There was a curious old beggar-man, I must not forget to mention, who was fed and supported by the family, by name Barclay, alias Shelly, so called not from the poet, but from his shell- ing the peas, and who lived in some outhouse. This old creature was half-witted, and used to sweep the withered leaves from the lawn, manage the pigs, etc.; short of stature, of a most miserable aspect, on his head an old gray hat crushed over his face, which was grizzly with unshaven beard. He wore a long-tailed coat, probably SIR HENRY RAEBURN. 367 one of Sir Henry's, and always had a long stick in his hand. We wished to be very familiar with him, but were never at our ease, owing to his strange appearance and his shuffling gait. He exercised a great fascination over us, and we used to ask him to tell us stories, al- though he was nearly idiotic - "silly," to use a common Scotch phrase. He often said, as he turned round and pointed to the banks of the river, " Ou eye, bairns, I can weel remember Adam and Eve skelpin' aboot naket amang the gowans on the braes there." At times this dirty, uncanny old man got hold of a fiddle, on which he scraped with more energy than success. " After Sir Henry's death and our removal from Ann Street, the old house of St. Bernard's passed into the silence of memory, but I have all my life been intimate with the family " We now part with regret from this fine old friend. We have been nobly entertained; it has been a quite rare pleasure to rest our mind and eyes on his character and works - to feel the power of his presence - his great gifts - his frank, broad, manly nature. We have come to know him and his ways and be grateful to him. We see him in his spacious room in York Place, hearty and keen, doing his best to make his sitters look them- selves and their best, instead of looking " as if they could n't help it." He had a knack of drawing them mt on what their mind was brightest, and making them forget and be themselves. . For is it not this self-con- sciousness - this reflex action, this tiresome ego of ours, which makes us human, and plays the mischief with so much of us, to which man owes so much of his misery and greatness ? What havoc it makes of photographs, 368 SIR HENRY RAEBURN. unless they be of dogs or children, or very old people, whose faces like other old houses are necessarily pictu- resque. Sir Joshua used to suffer, as all portrait-pain- ters must who wish to get at the essence of their man, from this self-consciousness in his sitters. He used to tell that the happiest picture he ever painted was done in this wise : some Sir John had been importuned by his family year after year to sit to him. He never would. One day a friend came and said he was going to sit to Reynolds, and wished Sir John to come and keep him company. He was delighted, went day after day with his friend, and was most agreeable. He was not allowed to see the picture till it was finished, and then he beheld •-himself I a perfect likeness. If we could get the sun to take us in this unbeknown sort of way, he would make a better thing of us than he generally does. In looking over Raeburn's portraits, one feels what would we not give to have such likenesses of Julius Cae- sar and Hannibal, Plato and Alcibiades, of Lucian and ^sop, Moses and St. Paul, as we have here of Dugald Stewart and Dr. Adam, Horner and Scott ? What we want is the eyes, the soul looking out. There are genu- ine busts of the great ancients, men and women; we know the snub nose of Socrates, the compact skull of Hannibal, and we have a whole row of these tremendous fellows the Roman Emperors, but we want to see ihe eyes of Caesar and the keen, rich twinkle of Aristopha*, es. What would a Burns be without the eyes ? SOMETHING ABOUT A WELL. SOMETHING ABOUT A WELL. ■HEN a boy I knew, and often still think, of a well far up among the wild hills - alone, with- out shelter of wall or tree, open to the sun and all the winds. There it lies, ever the same, self-con- tained, all-sufficient; needing no outward help from stream or shower, but fed from its own unseen, unfailing spring. In summer, when all things are faint with the fierce heat, you may see it, lying in the dim waste, a daylight star, in the blaze of the sun, keeping fresh its circle of young grass and flowers. The small birds know it well, and journey from far and near to dip in it their slender bills and pipe each his glad song. The sheep-dog may be seen halting, in his haste to the uplands, to cool there his curling tongue. In winter, of all waters it alone lives; the keen ice that seals up and silences the brooks and shallows has no power here. Still it cherishes the same grass and flowers with its secret heat, keeping them in perpetual beauty by its soft, warm breath. Nothing can be imagined more sweetly sudden and beautiful than our well seen from a distance, set with its crown of green, in the bosom of the universal snow. One might fancy that the Infant Spring lay nestled 372 SOMETHING ABOUT A WELL. there out of grim Winter's way, waiting till he would be passed and gone. Many a time, as a boy, have I stood by the side of this lonely well, " held by its glittering eye," and gazing into its black crystal depths, until I felt something like solemn fear, and thought it might be as deep as the sea ! It was said nobody knew how deep it was, and that you might put your fishing-rod over head, and not find the bottom. But I found out the mystery. One supremely scorch- ing summer day, when the sun was at his highest noon, I lay poring over this wonder, when behold, by the clear strong light, I saw far down, on a gentle swelling like a hill of pure white sand (it was sand), a delicate column, rising and falling, shifting in graceful measures, as if governed by a music of its own. With what awful glee did I find myself sole witness of this spectacle ! If I had caught a Soul, or seen it winking at me out of its window, I could have scarcely been more amazed and delighted. What was it? May be the Soul of the Well? May be Truth ? found at last where we have been so often told to seek for it. How busy, how nimble, how funny ! Now twisting, now untwisting, now sinking on its bed as if fainting with ecstasy, then starting bolt upright and spinning round like a top ; again it would curl up like a smooth pillow, and anon pause for a moment as if hovering with out-stretched wings, and then fold itself once more on its bed. I have often seen it since, and it was always at its work, and is so doubtless still, morn, noon, and night, incessantly, and its out-flow all the year round was the same. Such is our well, at all times the same, full, clear, deep, composed; its only motion a gentle equable SOMETHING ABOUT A WELL. 373 heaving, its only sound the liquid gurgle of its over- flowings among the roots of the flowers, its open face reflecting the heavens, calm or in storm, and though disquieted by every wandering wind, or dipping fly, or scampering " well-washer," soon recovering its placid face, while its depths rest forever untroubled. Pray you have a heart like this well, full, deep, clear, unchangeable, with Truth at the bottom; and a merry dancing elf there too, dancing to himself, "ever wealthy with the treasure of his own exceeding pleasure." In the time of hot raging passion, a fountain of cool- ness. In shivering grief and bleak misery, a refuge from the storm, a covert from the tempest, and at all times a " balm that tames all anguish, that steeps in rich reward all suffering, a saint that evil thoughts and aims taketh away." Fearless alike of fire and frost, cool, not cold, warm, not hot. How many such hearts are at this moment beating in the bosoms of our mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, as little known, it may be, as this wilderness well, as full of goodness and love that never fails, passing away in silence, and telling no tale of all the good they do, and known only by the verdure that conceals their course. Long may thy springs, Quietly as a sleeping infant'sbreath, Send up cool waters to the Traveller With soft and easy pulse; nor ever cease Yon tiny cone of sand its soundless dance Which at the bottom, like a fairy's page, As merry and no taller, dances still. And long may our wells of living water find duty and affection, and making the wilderness and the solitary place to rejoice, their exceeding great reward, and else- where spring up to everlasting life. 124A April, 1836. J. B. 1874.