“Against an elm a Sheep was tied: The butcher’s knife in blood was dyed-- The patient flock, in silent fright, From far beheld the horrid sight. A savage Boar, who near them stood, Thus mocked to scorn the fleecy brood:-- ‘All cowards should be served like you. See, see, your murderer is in view: With purple hands and reeking knife, He strips the skin yet warm with life. Your quartered sires, your bleeding dams, The dying bleat of harmless lambs, Call for revenge. O stupid race! The heart that wants revenge is base.’ ‘I grant,’ an ancient Ram replies, ‘We bear no terror in our eyes. Yet think us not of soul so tame, Which no repeated wrongs inflame-- Insensible of every ill, Because we want thy tusks to kill-- Know, _those who violence pursue Give to themselves the vengeance due_, For in these massacres they find The two chief plagues that waste mankind-- Our skin supplies the wrangling bar: It wakes their slumbering sons to war. And well Revenge may rest contented, Since drums and parchment were invented.’”[139] XIX. CHEYNE. 1671-1743. One of the most esteemed of English physicians, and one of the first medical authorities in this country who expressly wrote in advocacy of the reformed diet, descended from an old Scottish family. He studied medicine at Edinburgh--then and still a principal school of medicine and surgery--where he was a pupil of Dr. Pitcairn. At about the age of thirty he removed to London, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and took his M.D. degree, commencing practice in the metropolis. The manner of life of a medical practitioner in the first half of the last century differed considerably from the present fashion. Not only personal inclination, but even professional interest, usually led him to frequent taverns and to indulge in all the excesses of “good living;” for in such boon companionship he most easily laid the foundation of his practice. Cheyne’s early habits of temperance thus gave way to the double temptation, and soon by this indulgence he contracted painful disorders which threatened his life. An enormous weight of flesh, intermittent fevers, shortness of breath, and lethargy combined to enfeeble and depress him.