Medicine -- Anecdotes; Physicians -- Great Britain
John Archer, the author of "Every Man his own Doctor," and "Secrets
Disclosed," was an advocate of generous diet and enlightened
sensuality. His place of business was "a chamber in a Sadler's howse
over against the Black Horse nigh Charing-cross," where his hours of
attendance for some years were from 11 A. M. to 5 P. M. each day. On
setting up a house at Knightsbridge, where he resided in great style,
he shortened the number of hours daily passed in London. In 1684 he
announced in one of his works--"For these and other Directions you may
send to the Author, at his chamber against the _Mews_ by
Charing-cross, who is certainly there from twelve to four, at other
times at his house at Knightsbridge, being a mile from Charing-cross,
where is good air for cure of consumptions, melancholy, and other
infirmities." He had also a business established in Winchester Street,
near Gresham College, next door to the _Fleece Tavern_. Indeed,
physician-in-ordinary to the King though he was, he did not think it
beneath him to keep a number of apothecaries' shops, and, like
Whitaker, to live by the sale of drugs as well as fees. His cordial
dyet drink was advertised as costing 2_s._ 6_d._ per quart; for a box
containing 30 morbus pills, the charge was 5_s._; 40 corroborating
pills were to be had for the same sum. Like Dr. Everard, he
recommended his patients to smoke, saying that "tobacco smoke purified
the air from infectious malignancy by its fragrancy, sweetened the
breath, strengthened the brain and memory, and revived the sight to
admiration." He sold tobacco, of a superior quality to the ordinary
article of commerce, at 2_s._ and 1_s._ an ounce. "The order of taking
it is like other tobacco at any time; its virtues may be perceived by
taking one pipe, after which you will spit more, and your mouth will
be dryer than after common tobacco, which you may moisten by drinking
any warm drink, as coffee, &c., or with sugar candy, liquorish, or a
raisin, and you will find yourself much refreshed."
Whilst Whitaker and Archer were advising men to smoke and drink,
another physician of the Court was inventing a stomach-brush, in some
respects much like the bottle-brush with which fly-poison ought to be
taken from the interior of black bottles before wine is committed to
them. This instrument was pushed down the gullet, and then poked about
and turned round, much in the same way as a chimney-sweeper's brush is
handled by a dexterous operator on soot. It was recommended that
gentlemen should thus sweep out their insides not oftener than once a
week, but not less frequently than once a month. The curious may find
not only a detailed description but engraved likeness of this
remarkable stomach-brush in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. xx., for
the year 1750.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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