’I sits with my feet in a brook, And if they ax me for why, In spite of the physic I took, It’s rheumatiz kills me, says I.’[#]
[#] In searching for material for these pages I had occasion to read the lives of a good many doctors; half of them, I should say, died of rheumatism and gout.
This was the desperate remedy taken by Caroline, Queen of that brute George II., when he expected her to take her usual walk with him, though both her feet were swollen with rheumatism. She plunged them in a bath of cold water, and managed to go out with him that afternoon.
I read in some publication—_London Society_, I think—in an article on medicine, that it is a sensible plan, adopted by some wise people, to pay a medical man a yearly sum to look up a household periodically and keep them in good health. This seems to me as insane a plan as can well be imagined. Fancy the physicking such a family, especially the children and servants, must all the year round undergo! For the doctor does not like to take his money and do nothing for it; so, if there happens to be no real illness, he must exhibit his draughts and pills, just to show that he is honestly earning his fee. The regular attendant, the family doctor, means that the family are hospitalizing all the year round. Better go and live in the island of Sark. Sir Robert Inglis, in his account of the Channel Islands, says that at Sark there is no doctor, and that in the years 1816 and 1820 there was not one death on the island, containing a population of five hundred persons, and that on an average of ten years the mortality is not quite one in a hundred. But let us return to the old doctors.
Dr. George Fordyce, who came in 1762 from Edinburgh to London, very speedily made himself a name by a series of public lectures on medical science, which he afterwards published in a volume entitled ’Elements of the Practice of Physic,’ which passed through many editions. Unfortunately he was given to drink, and though he never was known to be dead drunk, yet he was often in a state which rendered him unfit for professional duties. One night when he was in such a condition, he was suddenly sent for to attend a lady of title who was very ill. He went, sat down, listened to her story, and felt her pulse. He found he was not up to his work; he lost his wits, and in a moment of forgetfulness exclaimed: ’Drunk, by Jove!’ Still, he managed to write out a mild prescription. Early next morning he received a message from his noble patient to call on her at once. Dr. Fordyce felt very uncomfortable. The lady evidently intended to upbraid him either with an improper prescription or with his disgraceful condition. But to his surprise and relief she thanked him for his prompt compliance with her pressing summons, and then confessed that he had rightly diagnosed her case, that unfortunately she occasionally indulged too freely in drink, but that she hoped he would preserve inviolable secrecy as to the condition he had found her in. Fordyce listened to her as grave as a judge, and said: ’You may depend upon me, madam; I shall be as silent as the grave.’