In October 1815, Henry Austen was dangerously ill. He had by this time moved into another house, which was in Hans Place, quite near his former residence in Sloane Street, though the connection with the bank in Henrietta Street was still kept up. Both his sisters were with him at first, and an express was sent for his brother Edward, so critical was his state considered to be, but he rallied, and afterwards, when he was out of danger, Edward and Cassandra went on to Chawton, and Jane was left to nurse him back to complete health. The ideas of medicine at that time were primitive, and consisted chiefly of unmitigated blood-letting, an extraordinary custom, which must have been responsible for many a weak body’s giving up the ghost. This incredible system is exemplified in the following anecdote. When Mrs. Lybbe Powys’ son Philip had a coach accident she comments on his treatment thus: “He has not, since the accident, tasted a bit of meat, or drunk a drop of wine, had a perpetual blister ever since, and blooded every three or four days for many weeks.” Well may the editor of the book remark, “Truly Mr. Powys’ enduring this treatment was a survival of the fittest!” There was then a wide distinction between the Physician and the Apothecary, which may be noticed in Jane’s playful repudiation: “You seem to be under a mistake as to Mr. H. you call him an apothecary. He is no apothecary, he has never been an apothecary; there is not an apothecary in the neighbourhood—the only inconvenience of the situation perhaps—but so it is, we have not a medical man within reach. He is a Haden, nothing but a Haden, a sort of wonderful nondescript creature on two legs, something between a man and an angel, but without the least spice of an apothecary. He is perhaps the only person not an apothecary hereabouts.”