Читать книгу A Book About Doctors - John Cordy Jeaffreson - Страница 9

Table of Contents

"Medicine is a science which hath been, as we have said, more professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced; the labour having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in progression. For I find much iteration, and small progression."—Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning.

The British doctor, however, does not make his first appearance in sable dress and full-bottomed wig. Chaucer's physician, who was "groundit in Astronomy and Magyk Naturel," and whose "study was but lytyl in the Bible," had a far smarter and more attractive dress.

"In sanguyn and in perse he clad was al,

Lined with taffata and with sendal."

Taffeta and silk, of crimson and sky-blue colour, must have given an imposing appearance to this worthy gentleman, who, resembling many later doctors in his disuse of the Bible, resembled them also in his love of fees.

"And yit he was but esy of dispence,

He kepte that he won in pestelence;

For gold in physik is a cordial;

Therefore he lovede gold in special."

Amongst our more celebrated and learned English physicians was John Phreas, born about the commencement of the fifteenth century, and educated at Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship on the foundation of Balliol College. His M. D. degree he obtained in Padua, and the large fortune he made by the practice of physic was also acquired in Italy. He was a poet and an accomplished scholar. Some of his epistles in MS. are still preserved in the Balliol Library and at the Bodleian. His translation of Diodorus Siculus, dedicated to Paul II., procured for him from that pontiff the fatal gift of an English bishopric. A disappointed candidate for the same preferment is said to have poisoned him before the day appointed for his consecration.

Of Thomas Linacre, successively physician to Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Princess Mary, the memory is still green amongst men. At his request, in conjunction with the representations of John Chambre, Fernandus de Victoria, Nicholas Halswell, John Fraunces, Robert Yaxley (physicians), and Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII. granted letters patent, establishing the College of Physicians, and conferring on its members the sole privilege of practicing, and admitting persons to practice, within the city, and a circuit of seven miles. The college also was empowered to license practitioners throughout the kingdom, save such as were graduates of Oxford and Cambridge—who were to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the new college, save within London and its precincts. Linacre was the first President of the College of Physicians. The meetings of the learned corporation were held at Linacre's private house, No. 5, Knight-Rider Street, Doctors' Commons. This house (on which the Physician's arms, granted by Christopher Barker, Garter King-at-arms, Sept. 20, 1546, may still be seen,) was bequeathed to the college by Linacre, and long remained their property and abode. The original charter of the brotherhood states: "Before this period a great multitude of ignorant persons, of whom the greater part had no insight into physic, nor into any other kind of learning—some could not even read the letters and the book—so far forth, that common artificers, as smiths, weavers and women, boldly and accustomably took upon them great cures, to the high displeasure of God, great infamy of the Faculty, and the grievous hurt, damage, and destruction of many of the king's liege people."

Linacre died in the October of 1524. Caius, writing his epitaph, concludes, "Fraudes dolosque mire perosus, fidus amicis, omnibus juxta charus; aliquot annos antequam obierat Presbyter factus; plenus annes, ex hac vita migravit, multum desideratus." His motive for taking holy orders towards the latter part of his life is unknown. Possibly he imagined the sacerdotal garb would be a secure and comfortable clothing in the grave. Certainly he was not a profound theologian. A short while before his death he read the New Testament for the first time, when so great was his astonishment at finding the rules of Christians widely at variance with their practice, that he threw the sacred volume from him in a passion, and exclaimed, "Either this is not the gospel, or we are not Christians."

Of the generation next succeeding Linacre's was John Kaye, or Key (or Caius, as it has been long pedantically spelt). Like Linacre (the elegant writer and intimate friend of Erasmus), Caius is associated with letters not less than medicine. Born of a respectable Norfolk family, Caius raised, on the foundation of Gonvil Hall, the college in the University of Cambridge that bears his name—to which Eastern Counties' men do mostly resort. Those who know Cambridge remember the quaint humour with which, in obedience to the founder's will, the gates of Caius are named. As a president of the College of Physicians, Caius was a zealous defender of the rights of his order. It has been suggested that Shakespeare's Dr. Caius, in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," was produced in resentment towards the president, for his excessive fervor against the surgeons.

Caius terminated his laborious and honourable career on July the 29th, 1573, in the sixty-third year of his age.[2] He was buried in his college chapel, in a tomb constructed some time before his decease, and marked with the brief epitaph—"Fui Caius." In the same year in which this physician of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth died, was born Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, Baron Aulbone of France, and Sir Theodore Mayerne in England. Of Mayerne mention will be made in various places of these pages. There is some difficulty in ascertaining to how many crowned heads this lucky courtier was appointed physician. After leaving France and permanently fixing himself in England, he kept up his connection with the French, so that the list of his monarch-patients may be said to comprise two French and three English sovereigns—Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of France, and James I., Charles I., and Charles II. of England. Mayerne died at Chelsea, in the eighty-second year of his age, on the 15th of March, 1655. Like John Hunter, he was buried in the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. His library went to the College of Physicians, and his wealth to his only daughter, who was married to the Marquis of Montpouvillon. Though Mayerne was the most eminent physician of his time, his prescriptions show that his enlightenment was not superior to the prevailing ignorance of the period. He recommended a monthly excess of wine and food as a fine stimulant to the system. His treatise on Gout, written in French, and translated into English (1676) by Charles II.'s physician in ordinary, Dr. Thomas Sherley, recommends a clumsy and inordinate administration of violent drugs. Calomel he habitually administered in scruple doses. Sugar of lead he mixed largely in his conserves; pulverized human bones he was very fond of prescribing; and the principal ingredient in his gout-powder was "raspings of a human skull unburied." But his sweetest compound was his "Balsam of Bats," strongly recommended as an unguent for hypochondriacal persons, into which entered adders, bats, suckling whelps, earth-worms, hog's grease, the marrow of a stag, and the thigh-bone of an ox. After such a specimen of the doctor's skill, possibly the reader will not care to study his receipts for canine madness, communicated to the Royal Society in 1687, or his "Excellent and well-approved Receipts and Experiments in Cookery, with the best way of Preserving." Nor will the reader be surprised to learn that the great physician had a firm belief in the efficacy of amulets and charms.

But the ignorance and superstition of which Mayerne was the representative were approaching the close of their career; and Sir Theodore's court celebrity and splendour were to become contemptible by the side of the scientific achievements of a contemporary. The grave closed over Mayerne in 1655; but in the December of 1652, the College of Physicians had erected in their hall a statue of Harvey, who died on the third of June, 1657, aged seventy-nine years.

"The circling streams, once thought but pools of blood

(Whether life's fuel, or the body's food),

From dark oblivion Harvey's name shall save."

Aubrey says of Harvey—"He was not tall, but of the lowest stature; round-faced, olivaster (waintscott) complexion; little eie—round, very black, full of spirit; his haire was black as a raven, but quite white twenty years before he dyed. I remember he was wont to drink coffee, which he and his brother Eliab did, before coffee-houses were in fashion in London. He was, as all the rest of his brothers, very cholerique; and in his younger days wore a dagger (as the fashion then was); but this doctor would be apt to draw out his dagger upon every slight occasion. He rode on horse-back with a foot-cloath to visit his patients, his man following on foot, as the fashion then was, was very decent, now quite discontinued."

Harvey's discovery dates a new era in medical and surgical science. Its influence on scientific men, not only as a stepping-stone to further discoveries, but as a power rousing in all quarters a spirit of philosophic investigation, was immediately perceptible. A new class of students arose, before whom the foolish dreams of medical superstition and the darkness of empiricism slowly disappeared.

Of the physicians[3] of what may be termed the Elizabethan era, beyond all others the most sagacious and interesting, is William Bulleyn. He belongs to a bevy of distinguished Eastern Counties' physicians. Dr. Butts, Henry VIII.'s physician, mentioned in Strype's "Life of Cranmer," and made celebrated amongst doctors by Shakespeare's "Henry the Eighth," belonged to an honourable and gentle family sprinkled over Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire. The butcher king knighted him by the style of William Butts of Norfolk. Caius was born at Norwich; and the eccentric William Butler, of whom Mayerne, Aubrey, and Fuller tell fantastic stories, was born at Ipswich, about the year 1535.

William Bulleyn was born in the isle of Ely; but it is with the eastern division of the county of Suffolk that his name is especially associated. Sir William Bulleyn, the Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk in the fifteenth year of Henry VII., and grandfather of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, was one of the magnates of the doctor's family—members of which are still to be found in Ipswich and other parts of East Anglia, occupying positions of high respectability. In the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, no one ranked higher than William Bulleyn as botanist and physician. The record of his acuteness and learning is found in his numerous works, which are amongst the most interesting prose writings of the Elizabethan era. If Mr. Bohn, who has already done so much to render old and neglected authors popular, would present the public with a well-edited reprint of Bulleyn's works, he would make a valuable addition to the services he has already conferred on literature.

After receiving a preliminary education in the University of Cambridge, Bulleyn enlarged his mind by extended travel, spending much time in Germany and Scotland. During the reign of Queen Mary he practiced in Norwich; but he moved to Blaxhall, in Suffolk (of which parish it is believed his brother was for some years rector). Alluding to his wealthy friend, Sir Thomas Rushe, of Oxford, he says, with a pun, "I myself did know a Rushe, growing in the fenne side, by Orford, in Suffolke, that might have spent three hundred marks by year. Was not this a rush of estimation? A fewe sutche rushes be better than many great trees or bushes. But thou doste not know that countrey, where sometyme I did dwell, at a place called Blaxall, neere to that Rushe Bushe. I would all rushes within this realme were as riche in value." (The ancient family still maintain their connection with the county.) Speaking of the rushes near Orford, in Suffolk, and about the isle of Ely, Bulleyn says, "The playne people make mattes and horse-collars of the greater rushes, and of the smaller they make lightes or candles for the winter. Rushes that growe upon dry groundes be good to strewe in halles, chambers, and galleries, to walk upon—defending apparell, as traynes of gownes and kirtles, from the dust."

He tells of the virtues of Suffolk sage (a herb that the nurses of that county still believe in as having miraculous effects, when administered in the form of "sage-tea"). Of Suffolk hops (now but little grown in the county) he mentions in terms of high praise—especially of those grown round Framlingham Castle, and "the late house of nunnes at Briziarde." "I know in many places of the country of Suffolke, where they brew theyr beere with hoppes that growe upon theyr owne groundes, as in a place called Briziarde, near an old famous castle called Framingham, and in many other places of the country." Of the peas of Orford the following mention is made:—"In a place called Orforde, in Suffolke, betwene the haven and the mayne sea, wheras never plow came, nor natural earth was, but stones onely, infinite thousand ships loden in that place, there did pease grow, whose roots were more than iii fadome long, and the coddes did grow uppon clusters like the keys of ashe trees, bigger than fitches, and less than the fyeld peason, very sweete to eat upon, and served many pore people dwelling there at hand, which els should have perished for honger, the scarcity of bread was so great. In so much that the playne pore people did make very much of akornes; and a sickness of a strong fever did sore molest the commons that yere, the like whereof was never heard of there. Now, whether th' occasion of these peason, in providence of God, came through some shipwracke with much misery, or els by miracle, I am not able to determine thereof; but sowen by man's hand they were not, nor like other pease."[4]

In the same way one has in the Doctor's "Book of Simples" pleasant gossip about the more choice productions of the garden and of commerce, showing that horticulture must have been far more advanced at that time than is generally supposed, and that the luxuries imported from foreign countries were largely consumed throughout the country. Pears, apples, peaches, quinces, cherries, grapes, raisins, prunes, barberries, oranges, medlars, raspberries and strawberries, spinage, ginger, and lettuces are the good things thrown upon the board.

Of pears, the author says: "There is a kynd of peares growing in the city of Norwich, called the black freere's peare, very delicious and pleasaunt, and no lesse profitable unto a hoate stomacke, as I heard it reported by a ryght worshipful phisicion of the same city, called Doctour Manfield." Other pears, too, are mentioned, "sutch as have names as peare Robert, peare John, bishop's blessyngs, with other prety names. The red warden is of greate vertue, conserved, roasted or baken to quench choller." The varieties of the apple especially mentioned are "the costardes, the greene cotes, the pippen, the queene aple."

Grapes are spoken of as cultivated and brought to a high state of perfection in Suffolk and other parts of the country. Hemp is humorously called "gallow grasse or neckweede." The heartesease, or paunsie, is mentioned by its quaint old name, "three faces in one hodde." Parsnips, radishes, and carrots are offered for sale. In the neighborhood of London, large quantities of these vegetables were grown for the London market; but Bulleyn thinks little of them, describing them as "more plentiful than profytable." Of figs—"Figges be good agaynst melancholy, and the falling evil, to be eaten. Figges, nuts, and herb grace do make a sufficient medicine against poison or the pestilence. Figges make a good gargarism to cleanse the throates."

The double daisy is mentioned as growing in gardens. Daisy tea was employed in gout and rheumatism—as herb tea of various sorts still is by the poor of our provinces. With daisy tea (or bellis-tea) "I, Bulleyn, did recover one Belliser, not onely from a spice of the palsie, but also from the quartan. And afterwards, the same Belliser, more unnatural than a viper, sought divers ways to have murthered me, taking part against me with my mortal enemies, accompanied with bloudy ruffins for that bloudy purpose." Parsley, also, was much used in medicine. And as it was the custom for the doctor to grow his own herbs in his garden, we may here see the origin of the old nursery tradition of little babies being brought by the doctor from the parsley bed.[5]

Scarcely less interesting than "The Book of Simples" is Bulleyn's "Dialogue betweene Soarenes and Chirurgi." It opens with an honourable mention of many distinguished physicians and chirurgians. Dr. John Kaius is praised as a worthy follower of Linacre. Dr. Turner's "booke of herbes will always grow greene." Sir Thomas Eliot's "'castel of health' cannot decay." Thomas Faire "is not deade, but is transformed and chaunged into a new nature immortal." Androwe Borde, the father of "Merry Andrews," "wrote also wel of physicke to profit the common wealth withal." Thomas Pannel, the translator of the Schola Saternitana, "hath play'd ye good servant to the commonwealth in translating good bookes of physicke." Dr. William Kunyngham "hath wel travailed like a good souldiour agaynst the ignorant enemy." Numerous other less eminent practitioners are mentioned—such as Buns, Edwards, Hatcher, Frere, Langton, Lorkin, Wendy—educated at Cambridge; Gee and Simon Ludford, of Oxford; Huyck (the Queen's physician), Bartley, Carr; Masters, John Porter, of Norwich; Edmunds of York, Robert Baltrop, and Thomas Calfe, apothecary.

"Soft chirurgians," says Bulleyn, "make foul sores." He was a bold and courageous one. "Where the wound is," runs the Philippine proverb, "the plaster must be." Bulleyn was of the same opinion; but, in dressing a tender part, the surgeon is directed to have "a gladsome countenance," because "the paciente should not be greatly troubled." For bad surgeons he has not less hostility than he has for