Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)Wootton, A. C.
History
Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Wootton, A. C.
Pharmacy -- History
John Taylor (the original “Doctor”) never discontinued his treatment
of horse complaints, and was believed to have taken more pride and
pleasure in his veterinary work than in his dealings with humans. But
the latter flocked to him from all parts of the country. Cancers,
improperly set fractures, and deformities were his specialities, but
his practice gradually extended to all kinds of ills. A crowd of rich
and poor patients had to find lodgings somehow in the village, for
they sometimes had to stay for weeks there. Fifty at a time could be
seated in the long room where John treated them. They came in at one
end of the room and went out at the other, and no one, no matter what
his rank, was allowed to have the slightest preference. Eighteen-pence
a week for medicine and treatment was the charge to all, and those who
could not afford that fee were never asked for it. A lord drove up in
his carriage one day, and the powdered footman was sent to ask John
Taylor to “wait upon his lordship.” “Tell the man he must come in here
and take his turn like the rest, if he wants me to wait on him,” said
John; and “the man” had to do so. It is recorded that he left Whitworth
cured.
The other doctors used to tell of Taylor’s failures; but as his cases
were mostly those which they had pronounced incurable, it is not
astonishing if he did not always succeed. But he effected many notable
cures. A lady with a cancer in the breast who had been given up by her
own doctors came from a hundred miles away to Whitworth. John examined
the breast, and then said, “What art thou come here for, woman?” “To
be cured, of course,” she answered. “Not all the doctors in England
can cure thee,” he said sternly; “thou must go home and die.” “I shall
not go home,” said the lady, “till you have tried your hand on me. I
can bear any pain you inflict, and I can only die at last.” “Thou art
a brave lass,” said John; “I will try, and God prosper us.” The lady
stayed at Whitworth six months, and went home cured. She lived thirty
years longer.
This lady was well known to William Howitt, a Quaker and popular
writer in the first half of the nineteenth century. In an article he
wrote in Tait’s _Edinburgh Magazine_, 1839, Mr. Howitt relates
recollections of a visit he had paid to Whitworth some twenty years
previously, and from that visit, and from the conversations he had had
with the lady just referred to, he had gathered the particulars which
he gave in his article.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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