Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887: Volume 1, Number 1
Philosophy
Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887: Volume 1, Number 1
Medicine -- Periodicals; Phrenology -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
"The effect of these boors in their constant inroads upon a fasting
man, whose surroundings and conditions were not of the best, to say
the least, may be easily imagined. When these fanatics were prevented
by the watchers from extracting what little of life was left in the
object of their devotions, their indignation took various forms of
expression. As a rule they denounced the whole thing as a humbug, and
every one participating as frauds. Now and then it became positively
necessary, in common decency and self-respect, to show these
charlatans the way to the door, notwithstanding their protests that
they had paid twenty-five cents for the purpose of ventilating their
empty heads. As a general thing, by Dr. Tanner's direction, the
admission fee was returned to these people. Even on the thirty-ninth
day, when the doctor desired all the quiet he could obtain, one of
these gentry, who said he was a physician from Long Island, talked so
loudly that he had to be called to order, and then nothing daunted, he
asked the faster to go in his enfeebled condition to the south
gallery, where his writing materials were, to prepare an autograph for
the applicant. The _Herald_ reporter on watch at the time, through
whom the request was made for the autograph, gave the fellow a settler
by remarking, that he, as a layman, thought the first rudiments taught
in the medical profession, were those of feelings of humanity.
"Then the wits had their time of it. They showered in caricatures and
doggerel by the barrel. None enjoyed these more than the doctor
himself. By his direction the funniest of the cartoons were pasted
against the wall of the gallery in which the doctor slept and the
watchers sat. Above the whole was the legend in German text, 'Tanner
Art Gallery,' and during the closing days and hours of the fast it was
a source of much attraction and a great deal of merriment to the
thousands of visitors who sought the place."
Before the fasting began I witnessed an amusing specimen of the
medical scepticism. One of the medical visitors inspected the hall
closely, and finding in the back part that a piece of nearly worn out
carpet remained on the floor, proceeded to rip it up and tear it away,
as if he suspected there might be a trap door concealed.
Medical education has been miserably cramped and benighted by the
total ignoring of the nobler element of the human constitution.
CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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