CHAPTER IX.

READE. An excellent picture of a physician of the fifteenth century is drawn by that master in the art of fiction, Charles Reade, in his work _The Cloister and the Hearth_, a story of much historic interest and beauty. The hero, Gerard, wounded in an encounter with a bear, lies sick at Düsseldorf, and is visited by a physician. “It was an imposing figure that entered the sick room; an old gentleman in a long sober gown trimmed with rich fur, cherry-coloured hose, and pointed shoes, with a sword by his side in a morocco scabbard, a ruff round his neck, not only starched severely, but treacherously stiffened in furrows by rebatoes, or a little hidden framework of wood; and on his head a four-cornered cap with a fur border; on his chin and bosom, a majestic white beard. This was the full dress of a physician. A boy followed at his heels with a basket, where phials, lint, and surgical tools rather courted than shunned observation.” The old doctor, on learning that his patient suffered from a wound, exclaimed, “This must be cauterised forthwith,” and immediately called for his urchin to heat his iron. Gerard, who didn’t like the look of things, informed the leech the wound was caused by the bear’s paw, and not his jaw. “And why did’st not tell me that at once?” “Because you kept telling me instead.” “Never conceal aught from your leech, young man,” continued the senior, who was a good talker, but one of the worst listeners in Europe. “Well, it is an ill business. All the horny excrescences of animals—to wit, claws of tigers, panthers, badgers, cats, bears, and the like, and horn of deer, and nails of humans, especially children, are imbued with direst poison. I had better have been bitten by a cur, _whatever you may say_, than gored by a bull or stag, or scratched by bear. However, shalt have a good biting cataplasm for thy leg; meantime keep we the body cool: put out thy tongue!—good!—fever. Let me feel thy pulse: good!—fever! I ordain flebotomy, and on the instant. Hans, go fetch the things needful, and I will entertain the patient meantime with reasons.” The man of art then entered into a learned disquisition on pathology and the healthful practice of blood-letting. Time was evidently no object, neither the extremity of his patient. “Think not,” said he warmly, “that it suffices to bleed; any paltry barber can open a vein. The art is to know what vein to empty, and for what disease. T’other day they brought me one tormented with earache. I let him blood in the right thigh, and away flew his earache. By-the-bye, he has died since then. Another came with the toothache. I bleed him behind the ear, and relieved him in a jiffey. He is also since dead as it happens.” After thus reciting his powers in venesection, the worthy doctor thought he could not do better than back it up with a show of knowledge, and recommenced on a new theme. “Know, young man, that two schools of art contend at this moment throughout Europe. The Arabian, whose ancient oracles are Avicenna, Rhazes, Allricazis; and its revivers are Chauliac and Lanfranc; and the Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus, and Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine’s very oracles—Phœbus, Chiron, Æsculapius, and his sons Podalinus and Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus; Praxagoras, who invented the arteries, and Dioctes, _qui primus urinæ animum dedit_. All these taught orally. Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from Æsculapius, and of him we have manuscripts, to him we owe ‘the vital principle’. He also invented the bandage, and tapped for water on the chest; and above all, he dissected, yet only quadrupeds, for the brutal prejudices of the pagan vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him followed Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in the human body.” “Surely, sir, the Almighty gave us all that is in our bodies, and not Aristotle nor any Grecian man,” objected Gerard humbly. “Child! of course He gave us the thing; but Aristotle did more—he gave us the name of the thing. But young men will still be talking. The next great light was Galen; he studied at Alexandria, then the home of science. He, justly malcontent with quadrupeds, dissected apes, as coming nearer to man, and bled like a Trojan. Then came Theophilus, who gave us the nerves, the lacteal vessels, and the _pia mater_.” “I am put to silence, sir.” “And that is better still, for garrulous patients are ill to cure, especially in fever. I say, then, that Eristratus gave us the cerebral nerves and the milk vessels; nay, more, he was the inventor of lithotomy, whatever you may say. Then came another whom I forget; you do somewhat perturb me with your petty exceptions. Then came Ammonius, the author of lithotrity, and here comes Hans with the basin to stay your volubility. Blow thy chafer, boy, and hand me the basin; ’tis well. Arabians, quotha! What are they but a sect of yesterday, who about the year 1000 did fall in with the writings of those very Greeks, and read them awry, having no concurrent light of their own? for their demi-god and camel-driver, Mahomed, impostor in science as in religion, had strictly forbidden them anatomy, even of the lower animals, the which he who severeth from medicine, _tollit solem e mundo_, as Tully quoth. Nay, wonder not at my fervour, good youth; where the general weal stands in jeopardy a little warmth is civic, humane, and honourable. Now, there is settled of late in this town a pestilent Arabist, a mere empiric, who, despising anatomy, and scarce knowing Greek from Hebrew, hath yet spirited away half my patients, and I tremble for the rest. Put forth thine ankle; and thou, Hans, breathe on the chafer.” At the end of this tirade Gerard’s friend and fellow-traveller Denys appears on the scene, and will not hear of the bleeding being carried out. The blustering but good-tempered soldier soon comes to hot words with the old physician on the subject, and a wordy battle ensues, which ends by the doctor being offended, and decides to beat a dignified retreat. The concluding scene is too good to omit, and we will give it in the author’s own words. “Ah! you reject my skill, you scorn my art. My revenge shall be to leave you to yourself; lost idiot, take your last look at me, and at the sun. Your blood be on your head!” And away he stamped. But on reaching the door he whirled and came back, his wicker tail twirling round after him like a cat’s. “In twelve hours at furthest you will be in the secondary stage of fever. Your head will split. Your carotids will thump. Aha! And let but a pin fall, you will jump to the ceiling. Then send for me, and _I’ll not come_.” He departed. But at the door-handle gathered fury, wheeled and came flying, with pale, terror-stricken boy and wicker tail whisking after him. “Next will come—_Cramps of the stomach_. Aha! “Then—_Bilious vomit_. Aha! “Then—_Cold sweat and deadly stupor_. “Then—_Confusion of all the senses_. “Then—_Bloody vomit_. “And after that nothing can save you, not even I; and if I could I would not, and so farewell.” Even Denys changed colour at threats so fervent and precise; but Gerard only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard bolster with kindling eye. This added fuel to the fire, and brought the insulted ancient back from the impassable door, with his whisking train. “And after that—_Madness!_ “And after that—_Black vomit!_ “And then—_Convulsions!_ “And then—_That cessation of all vital functions the vulgar call ‘death,’_ for which thank your own Satanic folly and insolence. Farewell.” He went. He came. He roared: “And think not to be buried in any Christian churchyard, for the bailiff is my good friend, and I shall tell him how and why you died: _felo de se! felo de se!_ Farewell.” Gerard sprang to his feet on the bed by some supernatural gymnastic power excitement lent him, and, seeing him so moved, the vindictive orator came back at him fiercer than ever, to launch some master-threat the world has unhappily lost, for as he came with his whisking train and shaking his fist, Gerard hurled the bolster furiously in his face and knocked him down like a shot, the boy’s head cracked under his falling master’s, and crash went the dumb-stricken orator into the basket, and there sat, wedged in an inverted angle, crushing phial after phial. The boy, being light, was strewed afar, but in a squatting posture, so that they sat in a sequence, like graduated specimens, the smaller howling. But soon the doctor’s face filled with horror, and he uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled with wonderful agility for one of his age. He was sitting on the hot coals. They had singed the cloth, and were now biting the man. Struggling wildly but vainly to get out of the basket, he rolled over with it sideways, and lo! a great hissing; then the humane Gerard ran and wrenched off the tight basket, not without a struggle. The doctor lay on his face groaning, handsomely singed with his own chafer, and slaked a moment too late by his own villainous compounds, which, however, being as various and even beautiful in colour as they were odious in taste, had strangely diversified his grey robe, and painted it more gaudy than neat. Gerard and Denys raised him up and consoled him. “Courage, man, ’tis but cautery; balm of Gilead—why, you recommended it but now to my comrade here.” A curious specimen of medical treatment came to light when Philip, Duke of Burgundy, lay sick at Bruges. He was a doughty warrior this Earl of Holland, as he was sometimes called, and wealthy withal, so the best advice was secured. “Now, paupers got sick and got well as Nature pleased, but woe betided the rich,” says the novelist, “in an age when for one Mr. Malady killed, three fell by Dr. Remedy. “The duke’s complaint, nameless then, is now called diphtheria. He was old and weak, so Dr. Remedy bled him. “The duke turned cold—wonderful! “Then Dr. Remedy had recourse to the arcana of science. “Ho! This is grave. Flay me an ape incontinent, to clap him to the duke’s breast! Officers of state ran septemvious, seeking an ape to counteract the blood-thirsty tomfoolery of the human species. “But an ape could not be found. “Then Dr. Remedy grew impatient, and bade flay a dog. “A dog is next best to an ape; only it must be a dog all of one colour. “So they flayed a liver-coloured dog and clapped it, yet palpitating, to their sovereign’s breast; and he died.” Thus ended Philip the Good.