How to Discover Convalescence

The following conversation once passed between Bouvart and a French marquis, whom he had attended during a long and severe indisposition. One day, when the former called, he was thus addressed by the marquis: "Good day to you, Mr Bouvart. I feel quite in spirits and think my fever has left me."

"I am sure of it," replied the doctor. "Your first expression convinced me of it."

"Pray, explain yourself."

"Nothing more easy. In the first stage of your illness, when your life was in danger, I was your dearest friend; as you began to get better, I was your good Bouvart; and now, I am Mr Bouvart. Depend upon it, you are quite recovered."

The Last Fee

The late Dr B of Bristol, who died very rich, coming into the bedroom of a patient a very few minutes after he had expired, perceived something glittering through the clenched fingers of one hand. He gently opened them, took out a guinea, and put it into his pocket, observing, "This was certainly intended for me!"

Extraordinary and Fatal Effects of Drunkenness

A short time ago, an unfortunate man in the neighbourhood of Maidstone, much addicted to fighting, during a fit of drunkenness fancied a post in his road home was an antagonist, when he attacked it with so much violence that the injuries he himself received caused his death a short time afterwards.

The Curious Case of the Mummy

According to the French journals, a mummy brought from Egypt by a traveller into a Belgic town was taken by the authorities of the place for the victim of some assassination baked in an oven. Neither the case which contained it, the hieroglyphics, nor the bandages could undeceive them. A surgeon was actually sent for to examine the body, which was afterwards publicly exposed, and so far was the error carried on, that the corpse was said to be that of one of the miners of the neighbourhood who was missing.

Hippocratic Corpus

In the infancy of physic, the Egyptians and Chaldeans first introduced the method of placing the sick in public streets and highways in order to receive information from travellers passing by as to the manner that they had been cured of like diseases.

Herodotus tells us the Babylonians obliged themselves by a law to observe the same wise custom. In Greece, it also prevailed, where offerings on votive tables were hung up in the temple of Æsculapius, the god of physic, whereon the name of the disease and medicines which cured it were engraved and recorded for the public good.

From these rude outlines, the venerable Hippocrates collected his aphorisms, so justly admired for ages, and delivered down to posterity, as the very basis of true medical knowledge.

Egyptian Physicians

Montaigne says it was an Egyptian law that the physician, for the first three days, should take charge of his patient at the patient's own peril, but afterwards at his own. He mentions that, in his time, physicians gave their pills in odd numbers, appointed remarkable days in the year for taking medicine, gathered their simples at certain hours, assumed austere and even severe looks, and prescribed, among their choice drugs, the left foot of a tortoise, the liver of a mole, and blood drawn from under the wing of a white pigeon.

Egyptian Rations

The rations of the Egyptian soldiers were, according to Herodotus, five pounds of baked bread, two pounds of beef, and half a pint of wine, daily.

A Man Porcupine

A middle-aged man, of very athletic and robust form of body, presented himself at the Westminster Hospital, a few weeks ago, in order to show himself to the surgeons and students of the establishment. He is completely covered with a green horny substance, in the form of quills, not dissimilar to those which are produced on the porcupine. The parts which have escaped the deformity, are his face, the palm of his hands, and soles of his feet; every other part of his person is abundantly supplied with this green horny substance. He sheds his horns or quills annually, and a fresh crop succeeds. The ladies, we understand, are particularly anxious to win his good opinion.

[From: the London Medical and Surgical Journal]

Effects of the Sting of the Tarantula.

M. Rinzi, a Neapolitan physician, lately read a memoir before the Académie de Médicine on the subject of Tarentisme. The tarantula - the insect which gives rise to this affection - is of variable bulk; it is sometimes found as large as a beetle. Its sting at first produces a little inflammation, like that from the sting of a bee; the patient presently becomes gloomy and morose; his chest expands with difficulty; he has giddiness and irregular pulse; he falls into a state of moping, which can scarcely be dispelled. Music is generally employed for the purpose; and the sounds of a violin or a bagpipe are deemed most efficacious for curing the disorder; "will he, nill he," the patient sets to dance, he perspires and never ceases till he falls asleep. This sleep cures him. The dance in question is the true tarentella. Ammonia, treacle, the saline waters in the environs of a neighbouring convent, fumigations, and citric acid in drinks, are also used; but dancing is the sure remedy for restoring the troubled innervation. Two or three cases were related by M.Rinzi. The memoir was referred to a commission, and the report by M. Virey has not been unfavourable; but instead of awarding their thanks to the author, it was agreed that M. Rinzi's paper should be simply deposited in the archives.

[From: The Doctor, November 6, 1833]

Indian Physicians

The physicians of the interior of North America, generally treat their patients in the same way, whatever may be their disorder. They first enclose them in a narrow cabin, in the midst of which is a stone red hot, on which they throw water till the patient is covered with a warm vapour, and is in a profuse perspiration, when they hurry him thence, and plunge him into the next river. This is repeated as often as they consider necessary; and by this method extraordinary cures are sometimes performed; but it also frequently happens that persons die in the very operation, especially when they are afflicted with the new disorders brought to them from Europe, and it is partly owing to this manner of proceeding, that the small-pox has proved so much more fatal to them than to other nations. It must, however, be acknowledged that they have the use of some specifics of wonderful efficacy, the power of which they however attribute to the ceremonies with which they are administered.

[From: The Doctor, May 7, 1834]

Matters of the head and heart

Touched by the King

From: Sir Charles Bell. The Hand, Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design, London: William Pickering, 1837: 200-201.

A noble youth of the family of Montgomery, from a fall and consequent abscess on the side of the chest, had the interior marvellously exposed; so that after his cure, on his return from his travels, the heart and lungs were still visible and could be handled; which when it was communicated to Charles I, he expressed a desire that the admirable Harvey (the discoverer of the circulation of the blood) should be permitted to see the youth and examine his heart.

"When," says Harvey, "I had paid my respects to this young nobleman, and conveyed to him the king's request, he made no concealment but exposed the left side of his breast, when I saw a cavity into which I could introduce my fingers and thumb. Astonished with the novelty, again and again I explored the wound, and first marvelling at the extraordinary nature of the cure, I set about the examination of the heart.

Taking it in one hand, and placing the finger of the other on the pulse of the wrist, I satisfied myself that it was indeed the heart which I grasped.

I then brought him to the king, that he might behold and touch so extraordinary a thing, and that he might perceive, as I did, that unless when we touched the outer skin, or when he saw our fingers in the cavity, this young nobleman knew not that we touched the heart.

Naval surgeons

From: United Service Journal. [Royal United Services Institute, founded in 1831 at the instigation of the Duke of Wellington.]

So late as 1802, the King of Sweden engaged some British surgeons to serve in his ships of war; their perplexity and mortification may be imagined, on finding that they were expected to shave the whole ship's company as a duty belonging to their station.

In early Victorian times, exercise was held to be more important in youth than attention to the 'mental branches of education'. Salzmann's 'Gymnastics for Youth' even warned parents of 'the disease of education', from which multitudes died every year. By inducing 'forcible respiration', exercise was said to prevent 'narrowness of the chest, which is so injurious to the lungs'.

English physicians such as Dr Thomas Graham (Modern Domestic Medicine, 8^th edition, 1840) believed as a general rule that riding was the best exercise for regaining health, and walking for retaining it. This rule 'did not prohibit the invalid from walking daily, but only inculcates that to him horse exercise is preferable in the beginning, as the chief mode of exercising the body'.

The Doctor: A Medical and Philosophical Penny Magazine, and Family Journal of Health of 1835, informed its readers that 'after every other remedy had been tried in vain, several ladies who had for a long time been afflicted with rheumatism resolved to try the effects of Callisthenic exercises. The consequence was that after having persevered in them for several months, they were effectually cured, their appetite increased, their general health improved, and they became less sensible of cold, or of variation of temperature'.

The same magazine warned that 'want of exercise causes all those affections which deform and enervate the system in early life, and entail disease on the offspring: curved spine, growing out at the hips and shoulders, scrofula, bilious disorders, nervous irritability, etc'.

'Nervous disorders' were quite common in the 19^th century. Doctors reasoned that because the 'labouring classes of the community are seldom afflicted with these, it was natural to suppose that a resolute course of exercise would be an effectual remedy.'

Those who embarked upon such a training programme were advised to 'clear the stomach' and rid themselves 'of all superfluities, either of blood or anything else,' by taking an emetic medicine, followed 2 days later by a dose of Glauber salts, repeated twice at two daily intervals. This medicinal combination was guaranteed to 'clear any man of all the noxious matter he may have in his stomach and intestines.'

Ale and Hearty

Nottingham Ale

from an English Ballad (circa 17th century):

Ye doctors, who more executions have done

With bolus and potion, and powder and pill,

Than hangman with halter, and soldier with gun,

Or miser with famine, or lawyer with quill,

To dispatch us the quicker, you forbid us malt liquor,

Till our bodies grow thin, and our faces look pale;

Observe them who pleases, what cures all diseases,

Is a comforting dose of good Nottingham Ale.

An eye for brandy

From The Doctor, Dec 31, 1834

A loving husband once waited on a physician to request him to prescribe for his wife's eyes, which were very sore. "Let her wash them," said the doctor, "every morning with a small glass of brandy." A few weeks afterwards the doctor chanced to meet the husband. "Well, my friend, has your wife followed my advice?" "She has done everything in her power to do it, doctor," said the spouse, "but she never could get the glass higher than her mouth."

Small beer

Chambers's Journal, Jan 2^nd 1875

When Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, lay prostrate with pleuritic fever, the greatest physicians in the land found their skill avail nothing. And all the statesman's alarmed friends got for expending seven hundred guineas in fees was the cold comfort that everything that could be done had been done, and the case was hopeless. Whilst those gathered round the bedside of the supposed dying man listened for his last sigh, he faintly murmured, "Small beer, small beer." The doctors did not think it worthwhile to say nay, and a half-gallon cup of small beer was out to the lips of the sick man, who drained it to the dregs, and then demanded another draught, which he served in the same way; then turning on his side, he went off into a deep slumber, attended with profuse perspiration, and awoke a new man.

On death, and the many and uncommon ways to it

Heraclitus, an Ephesian philosopher, being seized with a dropsy called anasarca, was advised by his physicians to daub his body from head to foot with cow-dung and sit in the warm sun, as a proper method to cure it. He observed their directions but his servant leaving him alone, and the dogs taking him, by smell and view to be a wild beast, fell violently upon him and worried him to death.

Anacreon, an ancient lyric poet, having outlived the usual standard of life, and yet endeavouring to prolong it by drinking the juice of raisins, was choked by a stone of a raisin that happened to fall into the liquor when straining it.

Drusius Pompeius, the son of Claudius Caesar by Herculanilla, among other boyish tricks, accustomed himself to throw up a pear and catch it in his mouth; but in the end, it fell so far into his throat, that it stopped his breath and suffocated him.

Pope Adrian IV drinking a draught of spring water to refresh himself when he was thirsty, a flea falling into the glass as he was drinking, it choked him. Tarquin Priscus died in the same manner, by a fish-bone sticking in his throat.

Charles II, king of Navarre, by a vicious life in his youth, fell into a paralytic distemper in his old age that took away the use of his limbs. His physicians directed him to be sewed up in a sheet that had been steeped in strong distilled spirits, to recover the natural heat of his benumbed joints. The surgeon having sewed him up very close and strong, and wanting a knife to cut off the thread, made use of a candle that was at hand to burn it off; but the flame from the thread reaching the sheet, the spirits wherewith the sheet was wet immediately taking fire, burnt so vehemently that no endeavours could extinguish the flame. And so the miserable king lost his life in using the means to recover his health.

Terpander, the famous harper of Sparta, as he was singing to that instrument, opened his mouth so wide in straining his voice to the pitch of the harp that an unhappy wag standing by threw a fig into his mouth in pure jest and merriment, which, contrary to the intention of him that threw it, stuck so fast in his throat that he was strangled by it before any help could be had to draw it out.

Resuscitation and Cruelty

M. Antoine Pitarro, Doctor in Medicine of the faculties of Paris, Naples, and Salernum, related the following fact: An officer who had taken part in the Neapolitan revolution, was arrested by the orders of a late distinguished admiral, and having been transported to the island of Ischia, was there sentenced to be hung, and, after the execution, his body was deposited in a magazine. The victim was left unheeded in this place during twenty-four hours, when a young Neapolitan surgeon, well skilled in the physical sciences, passed by, and observed that there were certain signs such as to encourage a trial to bring him to life. He resolved to make it in submitting him to the action of the galvanic pile. After making the necessary preparations he galvanized the body, and had the inexpressible joy of producing organic movement and kindling the vital flame! But, alas! The admiral was informed of this extraordinary fact, which had been regarded by the inhabitants of the island as a miracle - the officer was again executed, together with the surgeon who had thus endeavoured to rescue a miserable victim!

Difference of the skulls of Egyptians and Persians

Herodotus informs us that after the battle between the Persians, under Cambyses, and the Egyptians, the slain of both nations were separated; and upon examining the heads of the Persians, there skulls were found to be so thin, that a small stone would easily perforate them: while, on the other hand, the heads of the Egyptians were so firm, that they could scarcely be fractured by the largest stones. The cause of this remarkable difference Herodotus ascribes to a custom the Egyptians had of shaving their heads from the earliest infancy, and going uncovered in all states of the weather; whereas the Persians always kept their heads warm by wearing heavy turbans.

Excerpts from 'The Doctor'

...a weekly paper that sold for one penny in England during 1833-35.

The Ill Effects of Tea

Since the year 1666, every honest physician will allow that tea has been the ruin of millions of constitutions, in all parts of the globe where it has been used; it has flattered the tastes; and has at the same time been a dagger to the hearts of numbers; it has been the cause of drinking spirituous liquors, and Dr.Lettsom says, it relaxes the whole frame, and that neither man, woman or child should drink it by any means. A person drinking tea was bought to a state of despondency. Physicians' advice proved of no affect, upon which she attempted four times to hang herself, but was prevented; but after that she stabbed herself with her scissors in the belly, is now cured by ginseng tea and other remedies.

Partial Memory Loss

The late Dr. Schoerf, the author of several valuable medical works, on his recovery from a violent attack of fever, did not recollect a single word of Latin, though his memory in every other respect seemed perfect. He was very uneasy, not knowing how he should be able to write his prescriptions; but after a few days of convalescence, Latin words returned insensibly to his memory as his strength increased, and finally he became as good a Latinist as ever.

Accidental Vaccination

A practitioner in the neighbourhood of St. Mary Axe, who was, a few days since, called to vaccinate a child, met with the following accident. At the moment he was about to perform the operation, the little patient, by a sudden struggle, drove the hand of the surgeon towards his face, and made the lancet slightly penetrate his nose. The vaccine matter in a short time took effect on the practitioner's frontispiece, and so covered it with the eruption, that he has been compelled to leave his practice for a time, and seek a clean face in the country.

Eastern Logic

It is related of the Emperor of China, that when he is in health his physicians receive a monthly salary, but the instant indisposition overtakes him, the salary is stopped until his recovery.

Salivation by Sarsaparilla

It is mentioned by Cox, in his Narrative of a Residence on the Columbia River, that several of his party who used the fresh sarsaparilla, which grows in abundance in this situation were salivated by it. This fact is interesting as connected with the antisyphilitic and antimercurial powers of the remedy. We do not know whether the homoeopathists have got possession of this circumstance, but if not they are heartily welcome to it.

Blind Drunk

A loving husband once waited on a physician to request him to prescribe for his wife's eyes, which were very sore. "Let her wash them," said the doctor, "every morning with a small glass of brandy." A few weeks afterwards the doctor chanced to meet the husband. "Well, my friend, has your wife followed my advice?" "She has done everything in her power to do it, doctor," said the spouse, "but she never could get the glass higher than her mouth."

The Ruling Passion

A gambler on his death-bed, having seriously taken leave of his physician, who told him that he could not live beyond eight o'clock next morning, exerted the small strength he had left to call the doctor back, which having accomplished with difficulty, for he could hardly exceed a whisper, "Doctor," said he, "I'll bet you five guineas I live till nine."

Antipathy to the Medical Profession

A person who was remarkable for his antipathy to the medical profession, observed that physicians were like hog-butchers. "I am glad," said a gentleman, "that you have so charitable an opinion of them, for hog-butchers always cure as many as they kill."

An Excellent Ointment in Cases Where the Eyelashes Fall Off

Take of Red Precipitate in the finest powder, ten grains; Spermaceti Ointment, three drachms. Mix. To be applied to the eyelids on going to bed, by means of a camel-hair pencil.

Origins of the expression 'trod on a frog' (syn. 'let fluffy off the chain').

Johann Ernst Greding [1718-1755] gives an account of a medical practitioner who applied to him for assistance, under an impression that his stomach was filled with frogs, which had been successively spawning ever since he had bathed, as a boy, in a pool in which he had perceived a few tadpoles. He had spent his life trying to dispel this imaginary evil, and had travelled to numerous places to consult the first physicians of the day about his obstinate malady. Attempts to convince him that the gurglings or borborygmi he heard were from extricated and erratic wind were in vain. "He argued himself," says Greding "into a great passion in my presence, and asked me if I did not hear the frogs croak."

Voltaire's opinion of Medicine.

A young man, who had got a strong inclination to study medicine, took an opportunity to mention the matter to Voltaire. "Ah!" replied the wit, "consider what it is that you are going to set about; to put a parcel of drugs, of whose properties you know nothing, into a body, of the nature of which you are, if possible, more ignorant. If you have really a fancy to kill men, why, turn soldier at once; and then, at least, you'll kill nobody but those who have the means of defending themselves."

Why medical men are exempt from disease.

Bernadino Ramazzini [1663-1714], an Italian physician, said that "medical practitioners are comparatively exempt from ordinary diseases, in consequence of their good exercise, and their hilarity of mind when they go home with their fees in their pockets". He adds, "that medical men are never so unwell, as when no one else is unwell."

The pharmacist-doctor turf war started early.

An apothecary in the country sent a lady three draughts, and on being asked what effect they were intended to produce, said, 'The first, madam, is to warm you, the second to cool you, and the third to prevent the excessive effect of either'.

[from The Doctor, 1835]