The duel between Mead and Woodward, as it is more particularly mentioned in another part of these volumes, we need here only to allude to. The contest between Cheyne and Wynter was of a less bloody character. Cheyne was a Bath physician, of great practice and yet greater popularity--dying in 1743, at the age of seventy-two. At one time of his life he was so prodigiously fat that he weighed 32 stone, he and a gentleman named Tantley being the two stoutest men in Somersetshire. One day, after dinner, the former asked the latter what he was thinking about. "I was thinking," answered Tantley, "how it will be possible to get either you or me into the grave after we die." Cheyne was nettled, and retorted, "Six or eight stout fellows will do the business for me, but you must be taken at twice." Cheyne was a sensible man, and had more than one rough passage of arms with Beau Nash, when the beau was dictator of the pump-room. Nash called the doctor in and asked him to prescribe for him. The next day, when the physician called and inquired if his prescription had been followed, the beau languidly replied:-- "No, i' faith, doctor, I haven't followed it. 'Pon honour, if I had I should have broken my neck, for I threw it out of my bed-room window." But Cheyne had wit enough to reward the inventor of the white hat for this piece of insolence. One day he and some of his learned friends were enjoying themselves over the bottle, laughing with a heartiness unseemly in philosophers, when, seeing the beau draw near, the doctor said:-- "Hush, we must be grave now, here's a fool coming our way." Cheyne became ashamed of his obesity, and earnestly set about overcoming it. He brought himself down by degrees to a moderate diet, and took daily a large amount of exercise. The result was that he reduced himself to under eleven stone, and, instead of injuring his constitution, found himself in the enjoyment of better health. Impressed with the value of the discovery he had made, he wrote a book urging all people afflicted with chronic maladies to imitate him and try the effects of temperance. Doctors, notwithstanding their precepts in favour of moderation, neither are, nor ever have been, averse to the pleasures of the table. Many of them warmly resented Cheyne's endeavours to bring good living into disrepute, possibly deeming that their interests were attacked not less than their habits. Dryden wrote, "The first physicians by debauch were made. Excess began, and sloth sustained the trade; By chase our long-liv'd fathers earned their food, Toil strung their nerves and purified their blood; But we, their sons, a pamper'd race of men, Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten. Better to hunt in fields for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught; The wise for cure on exercise depend, God never made his work for man to mend."