Clergymen and Doctors 5

Clergymen and Doctors 5

ABERNETHY AND THE DUKE OF YORK.

 

The Duke of York once consulted Abernethy. During the time his Highness

was in the room, the doctor stood before him with his hands in his

pockets, waiting to be addressed, and whistling with great coolness.

The Duke, naturally astonished at his conduct, said, "I suppose you

know who I am?"--"Suppose I do; what of that? If your Highness of York

wishes to be well, let me tell you," added the surgeon, "you must do as

the Duke of Wellington often did in his campaigns,--_cut off the

supplies_, and the enemy will quickly leave the citadel."

 

 

AN UNLUCKY COINCIDENCE.

 

Dean Ramsay "remembers in the parish church of Fettercairn, though it

must be sixty years ago, a custom, still lingering in some parts of the

country, of the precentor reading out each single line before it was

sung by the congregation. This practice gave rise to a somewhat unlucky

introduction of a line from the first Psalm. In most churches in

Scotland the communion tables are placed in the centre of the church.

After sermon and prayer, the seats round these tables are occupied by

the communicants while a psalm is being sung. One communion Sunday, the

precentor observed the noble family of Eglantine approaching the

tables, and likely to be kept out by those who pressed in before them.

Being very zealous for their accommodation, he called out to an

individual whom he considered to be the principal obstacle in clearing

the passage, 'Come back, Jock, and let in the noble family of

Eglantine;' and then, turning to his psalm-book, he took up his duty,

and went on to read the line, '_Nor stand in sinners' way_.'"

 

 

LICENSED LAY PREACHING.

 

In 1555, Mr. Tavernier, of Bresley, in Norfolk, had a special licence

signed by Edward VI., authorizing him to preach in any part of his

Majesty's dominions, though he was a layman; and he is said to have

preached before the King at court, wearing a velvet bonnet or round

cap, a damask gown, and a gold chain about his neck. In the reign of

Mary he appeared in the pulpit of St. Mary's at Oxford, with a sword by

his side and a gold chain about his neck, and preached to the scholars,

opening his discourse in this wise: "Arriving at the mount of St.

Mary's, in the stony stage where I now stand, I have brought you some

fine biscuits, baked in the oven of charity, carefully conserved for

the chickens of the church." This sort of style, especially the

alliteration, was much admired in those days, even by the most

accomplished scholars; and was long afterwards in high favour both with

speakers and hearers. At the time Mr. Tavernier first received

commission as a preacher, good preaching was so very scarce, that not

only the King's chaplains were obliged to make circuits round the

country to instruct the people, and to fortify them against Popery, but

even laymen, who were scholars, were, as we have seen, employed for

that purpose.

 

 

DR. BARROW'S RHYMES WITH REASON.

 

In the days of Charles II., candidates for holy orders were expected to

respond in Latin to the various interrogatories put to them by the

bishop or his examining chaplain. When the celebrated Barrow (who was

fellow of Trinity College, and tutor to the immortal Newton) had taken

his bachelor's degree, he presented himself before the bishop's

chaplain, who, with the stiff stern visage of the times, said to

Barrow--

 

"_Quid est fides?_" (What is faith?) "_Quod non vides_" (What thou dost

not see),

 

answered Barrow with the utmost promptitude. The chaplain, a little

annoyed at Barrow's laconic answer, continued--

 

"_Quid est spes?_" (What is hope?)

 

"_Magna res_" (A great thing),

 

replied the young candidate in the same breath.

 

"_Quid est caritas?_" (What is charity?)

 

was the next question.

 

"_Magna raritas_" (A great rarity),

 

was again the prompt reply of Barrow, blending truth and rhyme with a

precision that staggered the reverend examiner, who went direct to the

bishop and told him that a young Cantab had thought proper to give

rhyming answers to three several moral questions, and added that he

believed his name was Isaac Barrow, of Trinity College, Cambridge.

"Barrow! Barrow!" said the bishop, who well knew the literary and moral

worth of the young bachelor; "if that's the case, ask him no more

questions, for he is much better qualified to examine us than we are to

examine him." Barrow received his letters of orders forthwith.

 

 

HOW TO BE KEPT IN HEALTH.

 

Sir G. Staunton related a curious anecdote of old Kien Long, Emperor of

China. He was inquiring of Sir George the manner in which physicians

were paid in England. When, after some difficulty, his Majesty was made

to comprehend the system, he exclaimed, "Is any man well in England,

that can afford to be ill? Now, I will inform you," said he, "how I

manage my physicians. I have four, to whom the care of my health is

committed: a certain weekly salary is allowed them, but the moment I am

ill, the salary stops till I am well again. I need not inform you that

my illnesses are usually short."

 

 

JOHN HUNTER ROUTING THE ROUT.

 

Mr. Jeaffreson, in his amusing _Book about Doctors_, tells a good story

about the great anatomist, John Hunter. "His wife, though devoted in

her attachment to him, and in every respect a lady worthy of esteem,

caused her husband at times no little vexation by her fondness for

society. She was in the habit of giving enormous routs, at which

authors and artists, of all shades of merit and demerit, used to

assemble to render homage to her literary powers, which were very far

from commonplace. Hunter had no sympathy with his wife's poetical

aspirations, still less with the society which those aspirations led

her to cultivate. Grudging the time which the labours of practice

prevented him from devoting to the pursuits of his museum and

laboratory, he could not restrain his too irritable temper when Mrs.

Hunter's frivolous amusements deprived him of the quiet requisite for

study.... Imagine the wrath of such a man, finding, on his return from

a long day's work, his house full of musical professors, connoisseurs,

and fashionable idlers--in fact, all the confusion and hubbub and heat

of a grand party, which his lady had forgotten to inform him was that

evening to come off! Walking straight into the middle of the principal

reception-room, he faced round and surveyed his unwelcome guests, who

were not a little surprised to see him--dusty, toil-worn, and grim--so

unlike what 'the man of the house' ought to be on such an occasion. 'I

knew nothing,' was his brief address to the astounded crowd--'I knew

nothing of this kick-up, and I ought to have been informed of it

beforehand; but, as I have now returned home to study, I hope the

present company will retire.' Mrs. Hunter's drawing-rooms were speedily

empty."

 

 

ANTICS OF THE FANATICS.

 

In concord, yet in contrast, with Dr. South's censure on the fanatics

of the Commonwealth, noticed on a former page, we take this from the

_Loyal Satirist, or Hudibras in Prose_, published among _Somers'

Tracts_:--"Well, who's for Aldermanbury? You would think a phoenix

preached there; but the birds will flock after an owl as fast; and a

foot-ball in cold weather is as much followed as Calama (Calamy) by all

his rampant dog-day zealots. But 'tis worth the crouding to hear the

baboon expound like the ape taught to play on the cittern. You would

think the church, as well as religion, were inversed, and the anticks

which were used to be without were removed into the pulpit. Yet these

apish tricks must be the motions of the spirit, his whimsie-meagrim

must be an ecstatie, and Dr. G----, his palsy make him the father of

the sanctified shakers. Thus, among Turks, dizziness is a divine

trance, changlings and idiots are the chiefest saints, and 'tis the

greatest sign of revelation to be out of one's wits.

 

"Instead of a dumb-shew, enter the sermon dawbers. O what a gracious

sight is a silver inkhorn! How blessed a gift is it to write shorthand!

What necessary implements for a saint are cotton wool and

blotting-paper! These dablers turn the church into a scrivener's shop.

A country fellow last term mistook it for the Six Clerks' Office. The

parson looks like an offender upon the scaffold, and they penning his

confession; or a spirit conjured up by their uncouth characters. By his

cloak you would take him for the prologue to a play; but his sermon, by

the length of it, should be a taylor's bill; and what treats it of but

such buckram, fustian stuff? What a desperate green-sickness is the

land fallen into, thus to doat on coals and dirt, and such rubbish

divinity! Must the French cook our sermons too! and are frogs, fungos,

and toadstools the chiefest dish in a spiritual collation? Strange

Israelites! that cannot distinguish betwixt mildew and manna. Certainly

in the brightest sunshine of the gospel clouds are the best guides; and

woodcocks are the only birds of paradise. I wonder how the ignorant

rabbies should differ so much, since most of their libraries consist

only of a concordance. The wise men's star doubtless was an _ignis

fatuus_ in a churchyard; and it was some such Will-o'-th'-Whisp steered

prophetical Saltmarsh, when, riding post to heaven, he lost his way in

so much of revelation as not to be understood; like the musick of the

spheres, which never was heard."

 

 

POPE'S LAST EPIGRAM.

 

During Pope's last illness, it is said, a squabble happened in his

chamber between his two physicians, Dr. Burton and Dr. Thomson, who

mutually charged each other with hastening the death of the patient by

improper treatment. Pope at length silenced them by saying, "Gentlemen,

I only learn by your discourse that I am in a dangerous way; therefore,

all I now ask is, that the following epigram may be added after my

death to the next edition of the Dunciad, by way of postscript:--

 

'Dunces rejoice, forgive all censures past, The greatest dunce has

kill'd your foe at last.'"

 

 

TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD.

 

The experiment of transferring the blood of one animal into the

vascular system of another, by means of a tube connected with a vein of

the receiving animal and an artery of the other--which had been

unsuccessfully attempted in 1492 in the hope of saving the life of Pope

Innocent VIII.--was first tried in England in the year 1657 by Clarke,

who failed in his attempts. Lower, of Oxford, succeeded in 1665, and

communicated his success to the Royal Society. This was on dogs. Coxe

did it on pigeons; and Coxe and King afterwards exhibited the

experiment on dogs before the Society, transfusing the blood from vein

to vein. It was again performed from a sheep to a dog, and the

experiment was frequently repeated. The first attempts at transfusion

appear to have been instigated merely by curiosity, or by a disposition

to inquire into the powers of animal economy. But higher views soon

opened themselves; it was conceived that inveterate diseases, such as

epilepsy, gout, and others, supposed to reside in the blood, might be

expelled with that fluid; while with the blood of a sheep or calf the

health and strength of the animal might be transferred to the patient.

The most sanguine anticipations were indulged, and the new process was

almost expected to realize the alchemical reveries of an elixir of life

and immortality. The experiment was first tried in France, where the

blood of a sheep, the most stupid of all animals, according to Buffon,

was transfused into the veins of an idiotic youth, with the effect, as

was asserted, of sharpening his wits; and a similar experiment was made

without injury on a healthy man. Lower and King transferred blood from

a sheep into the system of a literary man, who had offered himself for

the experiment, at first without inconvenience, but afterwards with a

less favourable result; the Royal Society still recommending

perseverance in the trials. These events were not calculated to

maintain the expectation of brilliant results that had been raised; and

other occurrences produced still more severe disappointment. The French

youth first mentioned died lethargic soon after the second transfusion;

the physicians incurred great disgrace, and were judicially prosecuted

by the relations. Not, however, discouraged by this unlucky event, they

soon after transfused the blood of a calf into a youth related to the

royal family, who died soon after of a local inflammation. The

Parliament of Paris now interfered, and proscribed the practice; and

two persons having died after transfusion at Rome, the Pope also issued

a prohibitory edict. Since the publication in 1824, however, of Dr.

Blundell's _Physiological and Pathological Researches_, transfusion has

been recognised as a legitimate operation in obstetric surgery--the

object being to obviate the effects of exhaustion from extreme loss of

blood by hæmorrhage.

 

 

FATHER ANDRE BOULANGER.

 

France has produced several entertaining preachers, among whom was

André Boulanger, better known as "little Father André," who died about

the middle of the seventeenth century. His character has been variously

drawn. He is by some represented as a buffoon in the pulpit; but others

more judiciously observe, that he only indulged his natural genius, and

uttered humorous and lively things to keep the attention of his

audience awake. "He told many a bold truth," says the author of _Guerre

des Auteurs, Anciens et Modernes_, "that sent bishops to their

dioceses, and made many a coquette blush. He possessed the art of

biting while he smiled; and more ably combated vice by his ingenious

satire, than by those vague apostrophes which no one takes to himself.

While others were straining their minds to catch at sublime thoughts

which no one understood, he lowered his talents to the most humble

situations, and to the minutest things." In fact, Father André seems to

have been a sort of seventeenth century Spurgeon, as two samples may

serve to show. In one of his sermons he compared the four doctors of

the Latin Church to the four kings of cards. "St. Augustine," said he,

"is the King of Hearts, for his great charity; St. Ambrose is the King

of Clubs (_treflé_), by the flowers of his eloquence; St. Gregory is

the King of Diamonds, for his strict regularity; and St. Jerome is the

King of Spades (_pique_), for his piquant style." The Duke of Orleans

once dared Father André to employ any ridiculous __EXPRESSION__ about him.

This, however, the good father did, very adroitly. He addressed the

Duke thus: "_Foin de vous, Monseigneur; foin de moi; foin de tous les

auditeurs_." He saved himself from the consequences of his jest, by

taking for his text the seventh verse of the tenth chapter of Isaiah,

where it is said, "All the people are grass"--_Foin_ in French

signifying hay, and being also an interjection, "Fie upon!"

 

 

AN INTERCESSOR FOR HIMSELF.

 

A Protestant renting a little farm under the second Duke of Gordon, a

Catholic, fell behind in his payments; and the steward, in his master's

absence, seized the farmer's stock and advertised it to be rouped on a

certain day. In the interval, the Duke returned home, and the tenant

went to him to entreat indulgence. "What is the matter, Donald?" said

the Duke, seeing him enter with sad and downcast looks. Donald told his

sorrowful tale concisely and naturally: it touched the Duke's heart,

and produced a formal quittance of the debt. Donald, as he cheerily

withdrew, was seen staring at the pictures and images he saw in the

Duke's hall, and expressed to his Grace, in a homely way, a wish to

know who they were. "These," said the Duke, "are the saints who

intercede with God for me." "My Lord Duke," said the tenant, "would it

not be better to apply yourself directly to God? I went to mickle Sandy

Gordon, and to little Sandy Gordon; but if I had not come to your good

Grace's self, I could not have got my discharge, and baith I and my

bairns had been harried out of house and hame."

 

 

WHITFIELD'S INFLUENCE ON THE CHURCH.

 

Toplady speaks thus, in a sermon, of the Establishment to which he

belonged, and the effect on its ministers of the work of Whitfield

beyond its pale:--"I believe no denomination of professing Christians

(the Church of Rome excepted) were so generally void of the light and

life of godliness, so generally destitute of the doctrine and of the

grace of the gospel, as was the Church of England, considered as a

body, about fifty years ago. At that period, a _converted_ minister in

the Establishment was as great a wonder as a comet; but now, blessed be

God, since that precious, that great apostle of the English empire, the

late dear Mr. Whitfield, was raised up in the spirit and power of

Elias, the word of God has run and been glorified; many have believed

and been added to the Lord all over the three kingdoms; and still,

blessed be His name, the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls continues

to issue His word; and great is the company of preachers, greater and

greater every year." This was indeed a liberality far in advance of

Toplady's time.

 

 

GENEROSITY OF DR. GREGORY.

 

It was the custom of the Professors of Edinburgh University, in the

time of this amiable and learned man--as it is partly still--to receive

at their own residences the fees from students intending to attend

their lectures; some old students yet remembering that, when other

material for the class-tickets failed, and sometimes even when it did

not, the necessary formula was written on the back of a playing-card.

While Dr. Gregory was one day at the receipt of fees, he left his room,

in which was a single student, and went into an adjoining apartment for

more admission cards. In this room there was a mirror, in which the

doctor saw the student lift and pocket a portion of a pile of guineas

that lay on the table. Dr. Gregory took no notice of what he had seen

till he was showing the student out; but on the threshold he said, with

a voice marked with deep emotion, "Young man, I saw what you did just

now. Keep the money; I know what distress you must be in. But for God's

sake never do it again; it can never succeed." The remorseful student

sought in vain to persuade the Professor to take back the money: "No,

this must be your punishment, that you must keep it now that you have

taken it." The kind warning was not lost; the student, we are assured,

turned out a good and honest man. At another time Gregory attended a

poor medical student, ill of typhus fever, who offered him the

customary fee of a guinea. The doctor refused it in silence, and with

signs of annoyance and anger at the offer; whereupon the student

hastily said, "I beg your pardon, Dr. Gregory; I did not know your

rule. Dr. A. has always taken a fee." "Oh, he has, has he?" said

Gregory; "then, my young friend, ask him to meet me here in

consultation--and offer me the fee first." The consultation took place,

and the student offered the fee; whereupon the good Gregory broke out:

"Sir, do you mean to insult me? Is there a Professor in this University

who would so far degrade himself, as to take payment from one of his

brotherhood, and a junior?" Dr. A. did not enjoy the little scene that

had been prepared for him; and that very day he returned the fees he

had taken of the sick student.

 

 

RUDE TRUTH FOR A QUEEN.

 

It is well known to how great an extent Queen Elizabeth, with all her

strength of mind, was beset by the weakness of her sex in what

concerned her age and her personal appearance. "The majesty and gravity

of a sceptre," says one of her contemporaries, "could not alter the

nature of a woman in her. When Bishop Rudd was appointed to preach

before her, he, wishing in a godly zeal, as well became him, that she

should think sometimes of mortality, being then sixty-three years of

age--he took his text fit for that purpose out of the Psalms, xc. 12:

'Teach us to _number_ our days, that we may incline our hearts unto

wisdom;' which text he handled most learnedly. But when he spoke of

some sacred and mystical numbers, as three for the Trinity, three times

three for the heavenly hierarchy, seven for the Sabbath, and seven

times seven for a jubilee; and lastly, nine times seven for the grand

climacterical year (her age), she, perceiving whereto it tended, began

to be troubled by it. The Bishop, discovering that all was not well,

for the pulpit stood opposite her Majesty, he fell to treat of some

more plausible (pleasing) numbers, as of the number 666, making

_Latinus_, with which, he said, he could prove Pope to be Antichrist,

etc. He still, however, interlarded his sermon with scripture passages,

touching the infirmities of age, as that in Ecclesiastes: 'When the

grinders shall be few in number, and they wax dark that look out of the

windows,' etc.; 'and the daughters of singing shall be abased;' and

more to that purpose. The Queen, as the manner was, opened the window;

but she was so far from giving him thanks or good countenance, that she

said plainly: 'He might have kept his arithmetic for himself; but I see

the greatest clerks are not the wisest men;' and so she went away

discontented."

 

 

AN ARCHBISHOP'S INSTALLATION FEAST.

 

Fuller, in his _Church History_, relates that "George Nevill, brother

to the great Earl of Warwick, at his instalment into the Archbishoprick

of York, gave a prodigious feast to all the nobility, most of the prime

clergy, and many of the great gentry, wherein, by his bill of fare,

three hundred quarters of wheat, three hundred and thirty tuns of ale,

one hundred and four tuns of wine, one pipe of spiced wine, eighty fat

oxen, six wild bulls, one thousand and four wethers, three hundred

hogs, three hundred calves, three thousand geese, three thousand

capons, three hundred pigs, one hundred peacocks, two hundred cranes,

two hundred kids, two thousand chickens, four thousand pigeons, four

thousand rabbits, two hundred and four bitterns, four thousand ducks,

two hundred pheasants, five hundred partridges, four thousand

woodcocks, four hundred plovers, one hundred curlews, one hundred

quails, one thousand egrets, two hundred roes, above four hundred

bucks, does, and roebucks, one thousand five hundred and six hot

venison pasties, four thousand cold venison pasties, one thousand

dishes of jelly parted, four thousand dishes of plain jelly, four

thousand cold custards, two thousand hot custards, three hundred pike,

three hundred bream, eight seals, four porpoises, and four hundred

tarts. At this feast the Earl of Warwick was steward, the Earl of

Bedford, treasurer, the Lord of Hastings, comptroller, with many more

noble officers; servitors, one thousand; cooks, sixty-two; kitcheners,

five hundred and fifteen.... But," continues honest Fuller, "seven

years after, the King seized on all the estate of this archbishop, and

sent him over prisoner to Calais in France, where _vinctus jacuit in

summa inopia_, he was kept bound in extreme poverty. Justice thus

punished his former prodigality."

 

 

DA VINCI A GREAT ANATOMIST.

 

Leonardo Da Vinci, to his talents as a painter, added that of being the

best anatomist and physiologist of his time, and was the first person

who introduced the practice of making anatomical drawings. Vassari, in

his _Lives of the Painters_, says that Leonardo made a book of studies,

drawn with red chalk, and touched with a pen with great diligence, of

such subjects as Marc Antonio de la Torre, an excellent philosopher of

that day, had dissected. "And concerning those from part to part, he

wrote remarks in letters of an ugly form, which are written by the left

hand backwards, and not to be understood but by those who knew the

method of reading them; for they are not to be read without a

looking-glass." Those very drawings and writings alluded to by Vassari,

were happily found to be preserved in the royal collection of original

drawings, where Dr. Hunter was