The Dr. Woodward we mentioned above seems to have been a very irascible and objectionable individual. He so grossly insulted Sir Hans Sloane, when he was reading a paper of his own before the Royal Society in 1710, that, under the presidency of Sir Isaac Newton, he was expelled from the Society. Among medical oddities of the rougher sort we may reckon Mounsey, a friend of Garrick, and physician to Chelsea Hospital. His way of extracting teeth was original. Round the tooth to be drawn he fastened a strong piece of catgut, to the opposite end of which he fastened a bullet, with which and a strong dose of powder he charged a pistol. On the trigger being pulled, the tooth was drawn out. Of course, it was but seldom he could prevail on anyone to try the process. Once, having induced a gentleman to submit to the operation, the latter at the last moment exclaimed: ’Stop! stop! I’ve changed my mind.’ ’But I have not, and you are a fool and a coward for your pains,’ answered the doctor, pulling the trigger, and in another instant the tooth was extracted. Once, before setting out on a journey, being incredulous as to the safety of cash-boxes and safes, he hid a considerable quantity of gold and notes in the fireplace of his study, covering them with cinders and shavings. A month after, returning luckily sooner than he was expected, he found his housemaid preparing to entertain a few friends at tea in her master’s room. She was on the point of lighting the fire, and had just applied a candle to the doctor’s notes, when he entered the room, seized a pail of water which happened to be standing near, and throwing its contents over the fuel and the servant, extinguished the fire and her presence of mind at the same time. Some of the notes were injured, and the Bank of England made some difficulty about cashing them. ’When doctors disagree,’ etc. Do they ever agree? Yes, when, after a consultation over a mild case which has no interest for any of them, they over wine and biscuits agree that the treatment hitherto pursued had better be continued. To discuss it further would interrupt the pleasant chat over the news of the day! But when they meet over a friendly glass at the coffee-house they go at it hammer and tongs. Dr. Buchan, the author of ’Domestic Medicine,’ of which 80,000 copies were sold during the author’s lifetime, and which, according to modern medical opinion, killed more patients than that—doctors like cheap medicine as little as lawyers like cheap law—Dr. Gower, the urbane and skilled physician of Middlesex Hospital, and Dr. Fordyce, a fashionable physician, whose deep potations never affected him, used to meet at the Chapter Coffee-House, and hold discussions on medical topics; but they never agreed, and with boisterous laughter used to ridicule each other’s theories. But they all agreed in considering the Chapter punch as a safe remedy for all ills.