The Funny Side of Physic: Or, The Mysteries of Medicine, Presenting the Humorous and Serious Sides of Medical Practice. An Exposé of Medical Humbugs, Quacks, and Charlatans in All Ages and All Countries.Crabtre, Addison Darre
History
The Funny Side of Physic: Or, The Mysteries of Medicine, Presenting the Humorous and Serious Sides of Medical Practice. An Exposé of Medical Humbugs, Quacks, and Charlatans in All Ages and All Countries.
Crabtre, Addison Darre
Medicine -- Anecdotes; Quacks and quackery
Another Dr. Mead, uncle to the above, lived to the age of one hundred and
forty-nine years. Both of these physicians were remarkable for their
kindness and liberality. The latter left five pounds a year to the poor,
to continue forever.
BEAUTY NOT POTENT WITH LADIES.
A handsome person is not alone requisite to win the affections of a
sensible lady. Radcliffe, who was as great a humbug in affairs matrimonial
as in all other matters, was represented as being "handsome and imposing
in person;" but his overbearing manner, and his coarse flings at the
softer sex, made him anything but a favorite with the ladies. While he
professed to be a misogynist, he made several unsuccessful attempts,
particularly late in life, to commit himself to matrimony.
A lady, with "a singing noise in her head," asked what she should do for
it. "Curl your hair at night with a ballad," was the coarse reply.
Once, when sitting over a bottle of wine at a public house, Queen Anne
sent her servant for Dr. Radcliffe to hasten to her Royal Highness, who
was taken suddenly ill with what was vulgarly called "the blue devils," to
which gormandizers are subject, but more properly termed indigestion.
"When the wine is in, the wits are out," was readily demonstrated in this
case; for, on a second messenger arriving from the queen for her physician
to make all haste, Radcliffe banged his fist down on the board, at which
other physicians also sat, and exclaimed,--
"Go tell her Royal Highness that she has nothing but the vapors."
When, on the following morning, the process being reversed,--the "wine was
out, and wits were in"--the doctor presented himself, with pomp and a show
of dignity, at St. James', judge of his mortification, when the
chamberlain stopped him in the anteroom, and informed him that he was
already succeeded by Dr. Gibbons.
The queen never forgave him for saying she had the "vapors." Radcliffe
never forgave Dr. Gibbons for superseding him. "Nurse Gibbons," he would
bitterly exclaim, "is only fit to look after nervous women, who only fancy
sickness."
When the doctor was forty-three years of age, he made love to a lady of
half his years, and followed with an offer of marriage, which was
accepted. As the fact became public, the doctor was warmly congratulated
upon his good fortune, for the lady was not only young, but was a beauty,
and an heiress to seventy-five thousand dollars.
The wedding day was set, which was to crown Radcliffe's happiness, when a
little drawback arose, which was not previously mentioned in the bills.
The peculiar condition of the beauty's health rendered it expedient that,
instead of the doctor, she should marry her father's book-keeper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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