What manner of man, then, was this Marat, physically? Extraordinary! Semi-human from most accounts. Says Carlyle: “O Marat, thou remarkablest horse-leech, once in d’Artois’ stable, as thy bleared soul looks forth through thy bleared, dull-acrid, woe-stricken face, what seest thou in all this?” Again: “One most squalidest bleared mortal, redolent of soot and horse-drugs.” There appears to have been a certain amount of foundation for the lie that Marat had been nothing more than a horse-doctor, for once when he was brevet-surgeon to the bodyguard of the Compte d’Artois he had found that he could not make a living, and had been driven to dispense medicines for men and horses; his enemies afterwards said that he had never been anything more than a horse-leech. Let us not deprive our own profession of one of its ornaments. His admirer Panis said that while Marat was hiding in the cellars, “he remained for six weeks on one buttock in a dungeon”; immediately, therefore, he was likened to St. Simeon Stylites, who, outside Antioch, built himself a high column, repaired him to the top, and stood there bowing and glorifying God for thirty years, until he became covered with sores. Dr. Moore gives the best description of him. “Marat is a little man of a cadaverous complexion, and countenance exceedingly expressive of his disposition; to a painter of massacres Marat’s head would be invaluable. Such heads are rare in this country (England), yet they are sometimes to be met with in the Old Bailey.” Marat’s head was enormous; he was less than five feet high, with shrivelled limbs and yellow face; one eye was higher placed than the other, “so that he looked lop-sided.” As for his skin disease, modern writers seem to consider that we should nowadays call it “dermatitis herpetiformis,” though his political friends artlessly thought it was due to the humours generated by excessive patriotism in so small a body attacking his skin, and thus should be counted for a virtue. Carlyle hints that it was syphilis, thus following in the easy track of those who attribute to syphilis those things which they cannot understand. But syphilis, even if painful, would not have been relieved by sitting for hours daily in a hot bath.