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
Mr. Jeaffreson says, "the same dull sarcasms about killing patients and
whipping boys into blockheads are repeated over and again; and as if to
show, with the greatest possible force, the pitch to which the evil of the
times had risen, the coarsest and most disgusting of all these lampoon
writers was a lady of rank,--the Countess of Sandwich!"
Wouldn't a young Harvard or Yale medical graduate, without money, friends,
or a practice, leap for joy with the knowledge that he had two-score
_disinterested_ writers advertising him into universal notice, since it is
considered a burning disgrace for an honorable, upright, and educated
physician to advertise himself!
Of course Sir Richard rose, in spite of his foes, to whom he seldom
replied. He says, in one of his own works, "I am but a hard-working
doctor, spending my days in coffee-houses (where physicians were wont to
receive apothecaries, and, hearing the cases of their patients, prescribe
for them without seeing them, at half price), receiving apothecaries, or
driving over the stones in my carriage, visiting my patients."
The honest, upright man who rises from nothing, and continues to ascend
right in the teeth of immense opposition from his enemies, seldom relapses
into obscurity in after life. Though Dr. Blackmer failed as a poet, he
died esteemed as an honest man, a consistent Christian, and an excellent
physician.
A WEAVER AND A QUAKER BOY.
Many cases might be instanced of weavers becoming physicians, but let one
suffice. John Sutcliffe, a Yorkshire weaver, with no early educational
advantages, and with the broadest provincial dialect, became a respectable
apothecary, and subsequently a first-class medical practitioner. He rose
entirely by his own integrity, frugality, industry, and intelligence.
Amongst his apprentices was Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, whose name must ever
rank high as a literary man, and a benevolent and successful physician.
Lettsom was born in the West Indies, and was a Quaker. The place under the
Yorkshire apothecary was secured for the boy by Mr. Fothergill, a Quaker
minister of Warrington, England.
A senior drug clerk informed the rustic inhabitants of the arrival of a
Quaker from a far off county, where the people were _antipodes_,--whose
feet were in a position exactly opposite to those of the English. Having
well circulated this startling information, the merry clerk and
fellow-apprentices laid back to enjoy the joke all by themselves.
The very day the new apprentice entered upon his duties, the apothecary
shop became haunted by an immense and curious crowd of gaping rustics, old
and young, male and female, to see the wonderful Quaker who was accustomed
to walking on his head!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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