The fore-arms, now in the custody of the College of Surgeons, were for a time separated. One of them was retained by Mr. Cullum, and the other, becoming the property of some mute inglorious Barnum, was taken about to all the fairs and wakes of the county, and exhibited as a raree-show at a penny a peep. The vagrant member, however, came back after a while to Mr. Cullum, and he presented both of the mutilated pertions to their present possessors. CHAPTER XXVII. THE COUNTRY MEDICAL MAN. The country doctor, such as we know him--a well-read and observant man, skilful in his art, with a liberal love of science, and in every respect a gentleman--is so recent a creation, that he may almost be spoken of as a production of the present century. There still linger in the provinces veteran representatives of the ignorance which, in the middle of the last century, was the prevailing characteristic of the rural apothecary. Even as late as 1816, the law required no medical education in a practitioner of the healing art in country districts, beyond an apprenticeship to an empiric, who frequently had not information of any kind, beyond the rudest elements of a druggist's learning, to impart to his pupils. Men who commenced business under this system are still to be found in every English county, though in most cases they endeavour to conceal their lack of scientific culture under German or Scotch diplomas--bought for a few pounds. Scattered over these pages are many anecdotes of provincial doctors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from which a truthful but not complimentary picture of their order may be obtained. Indeed, they were for the most part vulgar drunken knaves, with just learning enough to impose on the foolish crowds who resorted to them. The most brilliant of the fraternity in Henry the Eighth's reign was Andrew Borde, a Winchester practitioner. This gentleman was author and buffoon, as well as physician. He travelled about the country from market to fair, and from fair to market, making comic orations to the crowds who purchased his nostrums, singing songs, and enlivening the proceedings when they were becoming dull with grimaces of inexpressible drollery. It was said of Sir John Hill, "For physic and farces His equal there scarce is; His farces are physic, His physic a farce is." Borde's physic doubtless was a farce; but if his wit resembled physic, it did so, not (like Hill's) by making men sick, but by rousing their spirits and bracing their nerves with good hearty laughter. Everywhere he was known as "Merry Andrew," and his followers, when they mounted the bank, were proud to receive the same title.