Medicine -- Anecdotes; Physicians -- Great Britain
The man who was fool enough to write such stuff as this had, however,
some common sense. He detected the real cause of the maladies of half
those who consulted him, and he did his utmost to remove it. Like the
French quack Villars, he preached up "abstinence" and "cleanliness."
Of the printed "general instructions" to his patients, No. 2 runs
thus:--"It will be unreasonable for Dr Graham's patients to expect a
complete and lasting cure, or even great alleviation of their peculiar
maladies, unless they keep their body and limbs most perfectly clean
with frequent washings, breathe fresh open air day and night, be
simple in the quality and moderate in the quantity of their food and
drink, and totally give up using deadly poisons and weakeners of both
body and soul, and the canker-worms of estates, called foreign tea and
coffee, red port wine, spirituous liquors, tobacco and snuff, gaming
and late hours, and all sinful and unnatural and excessive indulgence
of the animal appetites, and of the diabolical and degrading mental
passions. On practising the above rules, and a widely-open window day
and night, and on washing with cold water, and going to bed every
night by eight or nine, and rising by four or five, depends the very
perfection of bodily and mental health, strength, and happiness."
Many to whom this advice was given thought that ill-health, which made
them unable to enjoy anything was no worse an evil than health brought
on terms that left them nothing to enjoy. During his career Graham
moved his "Temple of Health" from the Adelphi to Pall-Mall. But he did
not prosper in the long-run. His religious extravagances for a while
brought him adherents, but when they took the form of attacking the
Established Church, they brought on him an army of adversaries. He
came also into humiliating collision with the Edinburgh authorities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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