“At present my desire is to have a good Bone-setter.”—Sir J. Denham.

These words, which Dr. Johnson used to illustrate the word Bone-setter in his famous dictionary, are better known than any other quotation bearing on the ancient art of the Bone-setter. There are scattered through the realms of English literature frequent allusions to those, who, in times past, practised this special branch of the surgical art, for the art is as old as the history of civilization itself, and was probably coeval with the fall of man. The assuaging of pain and the cure of injuries caused by external violence would naturally excite the ingenuity of the sufferer and suggest contrivances to those around them. The Egyptians are credited with a knowledge of surgery, though they appear to have relied on incantation and astrology for their medical practice. It is somewhat curious that one of our leading medical journals should have suggested, within a brief period, that Bone-setters likewise had recourse to charms and magic—thus credulity, in those who would ridicule the credulous, repeats itself even in these enlightened days. The intermediate history of surgery is full of strange changes and mutations; but, apart from the ordinary practices of the art, (with its cauterization and its cruel operations,) the cure of sprains, the reducing of dislocations and fractures, appears to have been practised by those who were neither leeches or barber-chirurgeons. In the seventeenth century when Harvey was studying the circulation of the blood, and Wiseman publishing those treatises which are the foundation of the modern system of surgery, one Friar Moulton had published The Compleat Bone-setter, and in the year 1665 an edition of it, “Englished and Enlarged” by Robert Turner, was printed for Thomas Rooks, of the “Lamb and Ink Bottle” at the East-end of St. Pauls. I have not been able to trace any separate publication on this subject during the two centuries which intervened between it and the work by Dr. Wharton Hood, which was issued in 1871, in a separate volume, after the greater part of it had appeared in the Lancet. Before the publication of this work, the poor Bone-setter had to endure contumely and insult at the hands of the faculty. Through their organs in the press they were denounced either as charlatans or quacks—as ignorant or presumptuous individuals who traded upon a “lucky” case to the detriment of the general practitioner. There were some, indeed, who by intercourse and observation knew that Bone-setters pursued their calling with success; that the principles which they followed were sound, gained by experience and improved by constant practise; that they possessed, in the different parts of the country where they lived, the confidence of the people, though they were not educated in the medical or surgical schools. They received their training at the hands of their predecessors, for the art was a special one and peculiar to several families whose traditions, observation, and method of practise were handed down from father to son. Daughters practised the art with success as well as the sons, and success crowned their efforts, and amongst them all the family of Matthews were pre-eminent in the Midlands, and whose representative I have the honour and privilege to be.

Mr. Charles Waterton, of Walton Hall, the eminent naturalist, who bears testimony to the good the Bone-setters have done, tells us, in the pleasant autobiographical notes to his Wanderings and Essays on Natural History—that every country in Europe, so far as I know to the contrary, has its Bone-setter independent of the surgeon. In Johnson’s Dictionary, under the article “Bone-setting,” we read that a Sir John Denham exclaimed “Give me a good Bone-setter!” In Spain the Bone-setter goes under the significant denomination of Algebusta. Here in England, however, the vast increase of practitioners in the art of surgery appears to have placed the old original Bone-setter in the shade; and I myself in many instances, have heard this most useful member of society designated as a mere quack; but most unjustly so, because a quack is generally considered as one devoid of professional education, and he is too apt to deal in spurious medicines. But not so the Bone-setter, whose extensive and almost incessant practice makes ample amends for the loss of anything that he might have acquired, by attending a regular course of lectures, or by culling the essence of abstruse and scientific publications. With him theory seems to be a mere trifle. Practice—daily and assiduous practice—is what renders him so successful in the most complicated cases. By the way in which you put your foot to the ground, by the manner in which you handle an object, the Bone-setter, through the mere faculty of his sight, oftentimes without even touching the injured part, will tell you where the ailment lies. Those only, who have personally experienced the skill of the Bone-setter, can form a true estimation of his merit in managing fractures and reducing dislocations. Further than this, his services in the healing and restorative art would never be looked at. This last is entirely the province of Galen and his numerous family of practitioners. Wherefore, at the time that I unequivocally avow to have the uttermost respect for the noble art of surgery in all its ramifications, I venture to reserve to myself the following (without any disparagement to the learned body of gentlemen who profess it) sincere esteem for the old practitioners who do so much for the public good amongst the lower orders, under the denomination of British Bone-setters. Many people have complained to me of the rude treatment they have experienced at the hands of the Bone-setter; but let these complainants bear in mind, what has been undone by force must be replaced by force; and that gentle and emollient applications, although essentially necessary in the commencement, and also in the continuation of the treatment, would ultimately be of no avail, without the final application of actual force to the injured parts. Hence the intolerable and excruciating pain on these occasions. The actual state of the accident is to blame—not the operation. The thanks of every Bone-setter is due to the eminent naturalist for his testimony of the value of, and his vindication of, the art they practise. His own quoted case is a peculiar one, but the experience of every Bone-setter could furnish a parallel and even more surprising instances of cures effected when the resources of scientific surgery have failed.

Of the older Bone-setters we find some extraordinary accounts, and evidently not penned by friendly hands. One of the most famous of the Bone-setters of the last century was Mrs. Mapp, of Epsom, who was the daughter of a Bone-setter named Wallin, of Hindon, Wiltshire. The accounts of her life and career, which have come down to us, are very contradictory. For instance, the London Magazine tells us that in August, 1736, the town was surprised with the fame of a young woman at Epsom, who, though not very regular in her conduct (so it was said) wrought such cures that seem miraculous in the Bone-setting way. The concourse of people to Epsom on this occasion is incredible, and it is reckoned she gets nearly 20 guineas a day, she executing what she does in a very quick manner. She has strength enough to put in any man’s shoulder without any assistance; and thus her strength makes the following story the more probable. A man came to her, sent, as is supposed by some surgeons, on purpose to try her skill, with his hand bound up, and pretended his wrist was put out, which upon examination she found to be false; but, to be even with him in his imposition, she gave it a wrench which really put it out, and bade him go to the fools who sent him and get it set again, or, if he would come to her that day month, she would do it herself. It is further stated that since she became famous she married one Mr. Hill Mapp, late servant to a mercer on Ludgatehill who, it is said, soon left her and carried off £100 of her money. Her professional success, however, says another account, must have gone far to solace her for matrimonial failure. Besides driving a profitable trade at home, she used to drive to town once a week in a coach-and-four, and return again bearing away the crutches of her patients as trophies of honour. She held her levees at the “Grecian” Coffee House, where she operated successfully upon a niece of Sir Hans Sloane. The same day she straightened the body of a man whose back had stuck out two inches for nine years; and a gentleman who went into the house with one shoe-heel six inches high came out again cured of a lameness of twenty years standing, and with both his legs of equal length. It does not appear that she was always so successful, for one Thomas Barber, tallow-chandler, of Saffron-hill, thought proper to publish a warning to her would-be patients. The cure of Sir Hans Sloane’s niece made Mrs. Mapp town talk, and, if it was only known that she intended to make one of the audience, the theatre favoured with her presence, was crowded to excess. A comedy was announced at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, called The Husband’s Relief; or the Female Bone-setter, and the Worm Doctor. Mrs. Mapp attended the first night, and was gratified at hearing a song in her praise, of which we give two verses as a specimen:

Mrs. Mapp soon afterwards removed from Epsom to Pall Mall, but she did not forget her country friends. She gave a plate of 10 guineas to be run for at Epsom, and went to see the race. Singularly enough the first heat was won by a mare called “Mrs. Mapp,” which so delighted the doctress, that she gave the jockey a guinea, and promised to make it a 100 if he won the plate, but to his chagrin he failed to do so. The fair Bone-setter’s career was but a brief one. In 1736 she was at the height of her prosperity, yet, strange to say, she died at the end of 1737 in miserable circumstances, as set forth in a paragraph in the London Daily Post of December 22nd, 1737. The success and reputation of Mrs. Mapp has met with a parallel in our own day. Just at the time when Dr. Wharton Hood was showing the English surgeons how to imitate the practice and cures of the Bone-setter, the medical journals gave prominence to the doings and manipulation of a female Bone-setter named Regina Dal Cin, who had astonished the surgical world both in Italy and Austria. Dr. A. Joannides1 describes her manipulations which he witnessed in company with many hundreds of medical men and students in the Ospedal Civico at Trieste. He says, “No case of reductions of the femur were witnessed by me. Many cases of muscular rigidity of the upper and lower extremities, and more especially of the small articulations, have been either completely and instantaneously cured or partially ameliorated. No attempt has been made in cases of old dislocations with fistulas or scars.” Her doings excited some attention even in this country. We are told that she was an intelligent looking woman, about fifty-five years of age, and that she had practised the art, which had been taught her by her mother and grandfather for about forty years at a place named Vittoria, in the province of Treviso. After the death of her mother, she joined her brother, who kept a public-house, where she exercised her skill on the lame and the crippled frequenters of the establishment, and effected a number of cures. A medical eye witness tells us that her activity, flexibility, and sensibility of the tips of her fingers, and her habit of incessantly talking to the patient whilst operating, are the qualities on which her success in operating depends. Gradually coming into notice among persons of various classes of society, she obtained a wide spread of reputation, and visited among other places, Venice, Trieste, Pesth, and Vienna. In each place crowds of patients, both belonging to the locality and coming from a distance flocked to her. She professed especially to treat deformities of the hip joint, even reducing dislocations of long standing, whether congenital or acquired. She does not operate except in the presence of a surgeon. This, according to one account of her, was a measure taken for her own safety, as she was once interfered with by the Austrian law for practising without a legal qualification. A Royal Commissary of the district of Vittoria, however, gave her permission to practice the reduction of human joints, and especially of femoral luxations, provided that she operated in the presence of a physician. The British Medical Journal devoted some space to Regina Dal Cin’s method of procedure which shows that she practised on similar grounds to the English Bone-setter, as detailed in these pages. We are told by the journal in question she first applies poultices for some days, for the purpose of softening the tissues; this having been effected to her satisfaction, she operates by rapidly performed process of manipulation. Professional opinion was divided as to her merits. Her supporters alleged that her cures, including the reduction of old dislocations, were genuine; that—as Dr. Schivardi of Milan observes—“science ought to be grateful to her for having amply demonstrated by a vast number of facts (1) that dislocations even of long standing can be cured without recourse to any great violence, or to the ponderous instruments hitherto deemed indispensable; (2) that small and modest apparatus suffice, after the operation, to keep the limb in its place—nay, are more efficacious than strong instruments; (3) that quiet and absolute repose for eight days, and moderate repose for other twenty days, suffices to enable Nature to bring to the new domicile given to the head of the joint all the materials necessary for the fabrication of the fresh ligaments required.” On the other hand her opponents, more or less, denied her cures, and considered her an impostor. Dr. Neudoorfer, apparently admitting some of her cures of ankylosed hip-joint, states that the method which she follows is nearly the same as the process of “apolipsis,” recommended and practised by him several years ago, for the removal of fibrous ankylosis. She paid a visit to Vienna, where her proceedings attracted a good deal of attention, and gave rise, to some degree, of controversy in medical circles. A specially appointed committee accompanied her in her visits to four patients, and their report was unfavourable to her pretensions, and resulted in the withdrawal of the permission given to practice in Vienna.

A few months prior to these experiments in Vienna, there died at Watford, one of the best known bone-setters, Mr. Richard Hutton of Watford, Herts. The Lancet in recording his decease on January 6th, 1871, makes the following admission in a very different tone it assumed barely two years before. It calls him a successful bone-setter, for “successful he certainly was, and it were folly to deny it, in some cases which had baffled the skill of the best surgeons; but his failures were many, though these of course were little heard of. Following the general practice of bone-setters he diagnosed a dislocation, or several dislocations, in every case in which he was consulted; and when, fortunately, the case was one of chronic thickness about a joint, with possibly partial ankylosis or adhesion of tendons, the greatest success attended his rough manipulations in many instances. Every now and then Hutton got into difficulties by attacking an acutely inflamed joint, or by lighting up mischief in an old case; but as a rule he was too cautious thus to be caught out. We have seen some of his successes and some of his failures, and the redeeming feature about him was that though an empiric, he was not an extortionate one, and in many cases refused remuneration altogether.”

It was through this Mr. Hutton that the Lancet was enabled to publish a portion of the system practised by him, and which has been since partly followed by the faculty; but even the Lancet, after admitting the skill of the Bone-setters and their success, cannot repress the habitual sneer at their successful and humble operations. We have an instance of this, when recording the death in May, 1875, of a celebrated Bone-setter, of the name of Burbidge, who died in Frimley, Surrey, where local tradition ascribed numerous cures to his manipulative skill. “We do not know” says the leading medical organ “whether any spells or incantations were used at the ceremonies in which he operated, as practised by some of his genus!” The writer must have been dreaming of the medical practitioners in the time of the Pharaohs when he penned this. Mr. Burbidge’s father and grandfather were celebrated Bone-setters.

Another famous and “good Bone-setter” is recorded by Mr. C. Waterton, in his Essays on Natural History before quoted: “About half a mile from Wakefield’s Mammoth Prison, on the Halifax Road, nearly opposite to a pretty Grecian summer-house, apparently neglected, resides Mr. Joseph Crowther, the successful Bone-setter. He has passed the prime of life, being now in his seventy-seventh year, but unfortunately he has no son to succeed him. I might fill volumes with the recital of cases which he has brought to a happy conclusion. Two in particular, dreadful and hopeless to all appearance, have placed his wonderful abilities in so positive a light before my eyes, that I consider him at the head of his profession as a Bone-setter, and as a rectifier of the most alarming dislocations which are perpetually occurring to man in his laborious journey through this disastrous vale of tears.”

The published accounts of voyagers and travellers are full of anecdotes of those who practise “bone-setting” in different parts of the world. There is a wonderful similarity in their modes of treatment as thus detailed. An instance or two will suffice. Mons. C. S. Sonnini, in his Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, published, at the beginning of this century, on his journey towards Abyssinia, was sent for in his character as a physician to attend the second officer in command at Miniet, who had broken his leg three days before. He found that the leg had been set by a Copt, whose “curious” mode of treating the case was thought worthy of chronicling by the traveller. “The patient,” he tells us, “was laid on the ground without either mattress, bed, or carpet, but merely on a bed of sand. His leg and thigh were extended and fixed between stakes driven into the earth, which also supported a small brick wall, raised on each side in such a manner that the fractured limb was confined in a piece of mason work, where it was to remain till the completion of the cure. In order to promote the formation of the callus of the fracture, the doctor had made a sort of cement, oil, and the white of eggs, which he every day applied to the leg.”

Friar Moulton gives a recipe of a similar kind to be applied whilst the bone is “setting.” Cateron, in his Travels in Algeria, gives a instance of the same mode of treatment. He writes, “On our return, I called upon the Schiek, Lisaid-Mansor, I found him stretched on a couch built of stonework, cemented with clay, covered only with a few rags, and with a stone for a pillow. His leg surrounded with bandages and herbs, was firmly tied up in and kept straight by a thick slip of bark. His foot was immovably fixed to a stake, stuck in the ground. He is obliged to remain in this condition until the bones are united. This severe treatment is not unfrequently fatal, but, if the Arab has a good constitution, and gangrene does not set in, he recovers with a limb more or less straight. The poor Schiek was busy flipping off with a handkerchief tied to a stick, the swarms of flies which were attracted to his wound. At the foot of the couch was the Tebib or surgeon, himself reciting incantations like his Egyptian predecessors, and prayers over the broken limb. He appeared much put out by my entrance, for the Arabs think that all Europeans understand medicine; but he was re-assured when he saw I looked on without interfering.”

There have been many, and are still Bone-setters of eminence in different parts of the country, who are ready with their welcome and useful services, when other Denhams cry out for “a good bone-setter.” The benefits they have conferred in the past on the sufferers by external violence will be indicated by the testimony of well-known public personages in the next chapter.