I have no better authority for this than a magazine extract. But there
have been men of science silly enough to entertain opinions quite as
absurd, and presumptuous enough to think themselves wiser than their
Maker.
Supposing the said Dr. Moreton has not been unfairly dealt with in
this statement, it would have been a most appropriate reward for his
sagacity if some one of the thousand and one wonder-working Saints of
the Pope's Calendar had reversed his own calves for him, placed them
in front, conformably to his own notion of the fitness of things, and
then left him to regulate their motions as well as he could. The
_Gastrocnemius_ and the _Solæus_ would have found themselves in a new
and curious relation to the _Rectus femoris_ and the two _Vasti_, and
the anatomical reformer would have learnt feelingly to understand the
term of antagonizing muscles in a manner peculiar to himself.
The use to which this notable philosopher would have made the calf of
the leg serve, reminds me of a circumstance that occurred in our
friend's practice. An old man hard upon threescore and ten, broke his
shin one day by stumbling over a chair; and although a hale person who
seemed likely to attain a great age by virtue of a vigorous
constitution, which had never been impaired through ill habits or
excesses of any kind, the hurt that had been thought little of at
first became so serious in its consequences, that a mortification was
feared. Daniel Dove was not one of those practitioners who would let a
patient die under their superintendence _secundum artem_, rather than
incur the risque of being censured for trying in desperate cases any
method not in the regular course of practise: and recollecting what
he had heard when a boy, that a man whose leg and life were in danger
from just such an accident, had been saved by applying yeast to the
wound, he tried the application. The dangerous symptoms were presently
removed by it; a kindly process was induced, the wound healed, and the
man became whole again.
Dove was then a young man; and so many years have elapsed since old
Joseph Todhunter was gathered to his fathers, that it would now
require an antiquarian's patience to make out the letters of his name
upon his mouldering headstone. All remembrance of him (except among
his descendants, if any there now be) will doubtless have past away,
unless he should be recollected in Doncaster by the means which Dr.
Dove devised for securing him against another such accident.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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