GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS.

If I confine this chapter to modern physicians, it will be brief. Though doctors are usually pretty good livers, they, at this day of the world, too well know the deadly properties of the villanous concoctions sold as liquors to risk much of it in their own systems.

There is a whole sermon on eating in our first text above, and, while we admit that gluttony is reprehensible, we detest “the shrivelled soul” who starves wittingly his body to heap up riches, or under the idle delusion of starving out disease, or “mortifying the flesh.” If not very “mortifying,” it is very depressing, to be bored by one of these “lean, lank hypochondriacs,”—to have to entertain, or be entertained by, such. O, give me the wide-mouthed, the round-faced, or abdomened, the cheerful, laughing man, especially if he’s a doctor.

A GOOD LIVER.

“Ah, doctor,” said a poor, emaciated invalid to me during my first year’s practice at ——, “you do me good like a medicine by your presence. Why, the blue devils leave the house the moment you enter. I don’t believe you was ever blue.”

“Hereafter my patients shall never know that I am.”

Nor is it necessary to gulp down ardent spirits to keep the spirits up. Stimulants produce an unnatural buoyancy of spirits, and the unnatural destroys the natural habit of the system. A good and natural habit does not grow upon a person to his injury; an unnatural one always does, ending in his destruction. A good living gives good spirits; cÆteris paribus, a poor living low spirits.

A modern Silenus.

Silenus, of the mythologists, was a demigod, who became the nurse, the preceptor, and finally the attendant, of Bacchus. He was represented as a fat, bloated old fellow, riding on an ass, and drunk every day in the year.

I knew a “bright and shining light” in the medical profession who turned out a modern Silenus. This was Dr. G., of Plymouth, Conn. His father had given him the best medical education which this country afforded. He was a gentleman of superior address, as well as talent, tall, straight, and handsome as an Apollo, with a dark, flashing eye, a massive brow, shaded by a profusion of jet-black locks. How long he had practised medicine I do not know. Throughout the county he had an excellent professional reputation, particularly as a surgeon. His instruments were numerous, and of the best and latest improvements. Alas that such a man should be lost to the community, and to humanity! But his appetite for intoxicating drink knew no bounds. His thirst was as insatiable as Tantalus’.

When I first knew him, he still was in practice, but the better portion of the community had ceased to trust him. He never was sober for a day. He occupied then a little office in the square, containing a front and a back room. In the latter were his few medicines,—there was no apothecary in town,—and a number of large glass jars, containing excellent anatomical and foetal specimens. This room was not finished inside, and the walls were full of nails, projecting through from the clapboards outside.

One day a Mr. Hotchkiss went after him, hoping to find the doctor sufficiently sober to prescribe for a patient, in a case of emergency.

“What do you suppose I found him doing?” said Mr. Hotchkiss to me.

“Hiding from the snakes in his back room?” I suggested.

“No, sir; he had the tremens, and with his coat off, his hair standing every way, his eyes glaring like a demon’s, he had his case of forceps strewn over the floor, and was diving at the ends of the clapboard nails, which he called devils, that came through the boards, in the back office.”

“Ah, there you are! Another devil staring at me!” he shouted; and with the bright, gleaming forceps he dove at a nail, wrenched it from the wall, and flinging it on the floor, he stamped on it, crying, “Another dead devil! Come on. Ah, ha! there you are again!” and he dove at another. When he broke a forceps he flung it on the floor, and caught a new pair. I tried to stop him, but he only accused me of being leagued with his evil majesty to destroy him.

A DOCTOR KILLING THE DEVILS.

PAYING FOR HIS WINE.Another day, after having pawned nearly all his instruments for money with which to buy liquor to appease his raving appetite, he was seen to unseal one of the jars containing a foetal specimen, pour out a quantity of the diluted alcohol in which it had long been preserved, and drink it down with the avidity of a starving man.

His last instrument and case pawned, he sold the coat from his back to buy liquors. He could no longer get practice, no longer pay his board, and he became an outcast from all respectable society, and a frequenter of bar-rooms. A poor and simple old woman in the remote part of the town took compassion on him, and gave him a home. But nothing could chain his uncontrollable passion for intoxicating drinks.

A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR.

The last time I saw him was in the month of December. He was in a grocery, warming himself by the store fire. He wore a crownless hat, a woman’s shawl over his shoulders, and a pair of boy’s pants partially covered his legs; no stockings covered his ankles, and a pair of old, low shoes encased his feet. The light had fled from his once beautiful, lustrous eyes; great wrinkles furrowed his once manly brow; his hair, once dark and glossy as the raven’s wing, was now streaked with gray, uncombed and unkempt, hanging, knotted and snarled, over his neck and bloated face.

“Don’t you recollect me?” he asked, with a shaking voice and a distressing effort at a smile. Ah, it was sickening to the senses.

Alas! Such another wreck may I never behold. What power shall awaken him from his awful condition, and

“Picture a happy past,
Gone from his sight,
Bring back his early youth,
Cloudless and bright;
Tell how a mother’s eye
Watched while he slept,
Tell how she prayed for him,
Sorrowed and wept.
“Point to the better land,
Home of the blest,
Where she has passed away,
Gone to her rest.
O’er the departed one
Memory will yearn;
God, in his mercy, grant
He may return.”

Fatal Errors.

Unfortunately, it is much easier to copy a great man’s imperfections than those qualities which give him his greatness. Too often, also, are their defects mistaken for their marks of distinction,—vice for virtue,—and copied by the young, who have not the ability to imitate their greatness.

“General Grant smokes!”

“President Grant drinks!”

These two sentences, with the lamentable fact of their probable truth, have made more smokers of young men in the military and civil walks of life than all other texts in the English language. General or President Grant is not responsible for the lack of brains in the community, to be sure; but if “great men” will persist in bad habits, young men should be taught the difference between them and their virtues, and cautioned to shun them, or their bark will be stranded far out of sight of their desired haven,—the port of their ambition,—and nothing but a worthless wreck remains to tell what better piloting might have done for them. The voyage ended cannot be re-commenced.

A student of medicine, in New York, brought a bottle of liquor to our room. I told him where that bottle would carry him.

“Pshaw! It’s only a pint of wine. Dr. Abernethy, the great English surgeon, bought one hundred and twenty-six gallons at once, and he did not die a drunkard,” was his contemptuous reply.

“But you must remember that Abernethy lived in the days of good port wine, when every man had something to say of the sample his hospitality produced of his popular beverage. The doctor, who never was intemperate, was very hospitable.

“‘Honest John Lloyd!’—what an anomaly when applied to a rum-seller—was a great wine merchant of London, a particular friend of Abernethy’s, and of all great men of his day, who loved wines and brandies.

“One day I went to Lloyd’s just as Dr. Abernethy left.

“‘Well,’ said Mr. Lloyd, ‘what a funny man your master is.’

“‘Who?’ said I.

“Why, Mr. Abernethy. He has just been here and paid me for a pipe of wine, and threw down a handful of notes and pieces of paper, with fees. I wanted him to stop to see if they were all right, and said, ‘Some of those fees may be more than you think, perhaps.’ ‘Never mind,’ said he; ‘I can’t stop; you have them as I took them,’ and hastily went his way.

“In occasional habits we may most safely recollect that faults are no less faults (as Mirabeau said of Frederick the Great) because they have the shadow of a great name; and we believe that no good man would desire to leave a better expiation of any weakness than that it should deter others from a similar error.”

In fact, the doctor was opposed to drunkenness, and also gluttony, although he himself “was a good liver,” as the following anecdote will show:—

A wealthy merchant who resided in the country had been very sick, and barely recovered, when, from the same cause, he was again threatened with a return of the like disease.

“I went to see him at home, and dined with him. He seemed to think that if he did not drink deeply, he might eat like a glutton,” said the doctor. “Well, I saw he was at his old tricks again, and I said to him, ‘Sir, what would you think of a merchant, who, having been prosperous in business and amassed a comfortable fortune, went and risked it all in what he knew was an imprudent speculation?’

“Why, sir,” he exclaimed, “I should say he was a great ass.”

“‘Nay, then, thou art the man,’ said Abernethy.”

The leopard does not change his spots. For the truth of this read the life and fall of Uniac.

O, it is a fearful thing to become a drunkard.

The habit once acquired is never gotten entirely rid of. It sleeps—it never dies, but with the death of the victim.

Young men, avoid the first drink. Never take that first fatal glass; thus, and only thus, are you safe from a drunkard’s grave, and the curse entailed upon your progeny.

Strength in Weakness.

“Sir, I am advised that you have a barrel of beer in your room,” said the president of one of our New England colleges to a student, who, contrary to rule and usage, had actually purchased a barrel of the delightful stuff made from brewed hops, copperas, and filthy slops, and deposited it under the bed, convenient for use.

“Yes, sir; such is the fact,” replied the student.

“What explanation can you give for such conduct, sir?”

“Well,” began the student with the boldest confidence, “the truth is, my physician, in consideration of my ill health, advised me to take a little ale daily; and not wishing to be seen visiting the beer-shops where the beverage is retailed, I decided to buy a barrel, and take it quietly at my room.”“Indeed! and have you derived the anticipated benefit therefrom, sir?” inquired the president.

“O, yes, sir; indeed I have. Why, when I first had the barrel placed in my room two weeks ago, I could not move it. Now, sir, I can carry it with the greatest of ease.”

The president smiled, and ordered the barrel removed, saying that “in consideration of his rapid convalescence the treatment could safely be discontinued.”

A warm Place for a Cook.

Soon after the completion of the Roberts Opera House, in Hartford, Conn., the Putnam Phalanx held a grand ball within its walls. The music was exquisite; the prompters the best in the state; the ladies were the most beautiful and dressy in the land; and all went splendidly, till the supper was discussed. There had been a misunderstanding about the number for whom supper was to be prepared, and it was found out, when too late, that there were a hundred more guests than plates. The supper was spread in the basement. When the writer went down with friends, the tables, which had already been twice occupied, presented a disgusting scene—all heaped up with dirty dishes, debris of “fowl, fish, and dessert,” and great complaint was made by the hungry dancers, while some unpleasant epithets, and uncomplimentary remarks were hurled at the heads of the innocent caterers.

With our party were Dr. C., a great joker, and Dr. D., his match.

“If you don’t like this fare you can go through into the restaurant,” said one of the waiters. “It is all the same,” he added.

We required no second invitation. We did ample justice to the fare provided, and retired, leaving Dr. C. to bring up the rear. In a half minute he came running after us, saying,—“The fellow told me I must pay for the supper in there, extra!”

“Well, what did you tell him?”

“Why, I told him to go to h——.”

“Well, you did right; let him go; that is just the place for him.”

On another occasion, the dinner not being forthcoming at a hotel where we dined, the doctor “fell to,” and soon demolished the best part of a blanc-mange pudding before him.

“That, sir, is dessert,” politely interrupted the waiter, in dismay at seeing his dessert so rapidly disappearing.

“No matter,” said the doctor, finishing it; “I could eat it if it were the Great Sahara!”

A Modern Gilpin.

The widow Wealthy lived in the country. She was a blooming widow, fair, plump, and—sickly. She owned a valuable farm, just turning off from the main thoroughfare,—broad acres, nice cottage house, great barn and granary, and she was considered, by certain eligible old bachelors, and a widower or two, as “a mighty good catch.”

Dr. Filley practised in the country. He was a bachelor, above forty. He was a short, thick-set man, with a fair practice, which might have been better, but for certain whispers about a growing propensity to—drinking! That’s the word. Of course he denied the insinuation, and defied any one to prove that he was ever the worse for liquor. The doctor was attendant, professionally, upon the widow, and—well you know how the gossips manage that sort of a thing in the country. But who was to know whether “the doctor made more visits per week to the widow Wealthy than her state of health seemed to warrant”? or who knew that “the widow was ‘sweet’ towards the little doctor, and that she intended he should throw the bill all in at the end of the year—himself to boot?” Never mind his rivals; they do not come into our amusing story.John, the widow’s hired man, was sent very unexpectedly, one day in autumn, for the doctor to call that afternoon, to see the invalid. Very unexpectedly to the widow, and greatly to her mortification, two gossiping neighbors called at her residence just as the doctor was expected to arrive. “O, she was so glad to see Mrs. —— and Mrs. ——!”

Dr. Filley rode a scraggy little Canadian horse,—a fiery, headstrong beast, but a good saddle horse. Somehow, the unexpected call, at that hour, slightly “flustered” the little doctor; but he threw his saddle-bags over his shoulder, mounted the beast, and turned his head towards the widow’s residence.

“I b’lieve I am a little nervous over this colt; I wonder what’s the matter!” And he tried to rein up the headstrong little beast, to give himself time to—sober off!

“I reary bl’eve I’m a little—taken by surprise—ho, Charley! Why, what’s got inter—pony? Goes like ’r devil. Ho, ho, boy.”

Pretty soon the beast struck into a gallop; and now he reached the lane that led into Mrs. Wealthy’s farm. The pony knew the lane as well as his master, and the barn better. The said lane led by the barn-yard and out-buildings, the house being beyond. The barn-yard bars were down, and the pony made for the opening, in a clean gallop, over the fallen bars, right in amongst the cattle, the sheep, and the swine. A big ox gave a bellow at the sudden arrival, and, with tail and head in air, ran to the opposite side of the yard, intruding upon the comfort of a big old sow, that was dozing in the mud. With a loud snort, the discomfited porker rushed from the mire just in time to meet the horse, and in attempting to pass on both sides at once, she went between the short fore legs of the pony, and brought up with a loud squeal, and a shock that sent the rider over the horse’s head, down astride the hog. The pony reared, wheeled, and ran out of the yard at one pair of bars, and the sow went pell-mell out of the other, bearing the doctor and saddle-bags swiftly along towards the house.

The hired man witnessed the sudden change of steeds, and gave the alarm. The widow—not so very sick—was just graciously showing her two unwelcome lady callers out, after being worried nearly an hour by their company; and taking an anxious look towards the lane, she saw the doctor coming on a clean—no, dirty—gallop, on her old sow.

She lost no time in giving a loud scream. What else should she do?

“O, goodness gracious! What is that?”

“O Lord, save and defend us! What is it?” exclaimed the two ladies, in chorus.

“A man on a hog!”

“The doctor on a sow!” again in chorus.

Now the pony and the swine met, the doctor still clinging to the sow’s ear with one hand, and to the tail with the other; of course, having turned a clean summersault from the pony, facing towards the sow’s hind quarters. The swine, beset on all sides, sheered off, and made directly through a large duck-pond in the field, scattering the geese and ducks every way, which, crying out, “Quack, quack!” made off as fast as feet and wings could carry them. Half way across the pond the doctor lost his balance, and, with his saddle-bags, fell splashing into the water.

Another scream from the ladies,—only two of them.

The widow, like a sensible woman, when she saw the doctor’s danger, ran for the well-pole. “Here, John, here! Take this well-hook, and fish him out quick, before he drowns.”

John obeyed, and in an instant the doctor was safely landed.

The doctor was sobered.

The widow, seeing no further danger, like a true woman, fainted.

THE DOCTOR ON A SOW.

RESCUE OF THE DOCTOR.Leaving the muddy and half-drowned doctor, who looked like a well-wet-down bantam cock, John turned to his mistress, whom he picked up from the grass, and carried into the house. The two ladies, who had witnessed her discomfiture, assisted in loosening the stays, and administering some salts, which revived the widow.

“O, did you ever see such a comical sight?”

“Never. O, wasn’t it horrid? The little doctor riding backward, on a horrid, dirty, old pig! O, if I ever!”

And the ladies laughed in unison, in which the widow actually joined.

“But what has become of the poor, wet fellow? And did John rescue the saddle-bags?” inquired the widow.

John, meantime, had returned to the doctor’s assistance. He now fished out the saddle-bags, and the unfortunate doctor started on foot for home, whither the pony had long since fled.

The story, in the mouth of one servant and three ladies, was anything but a secret, and—you know how it is in the country.

········

The widow still holds the farm in her own name, in a town in New England.

Dr. Filley practises physic in California.

A scientific Gourmand.

Our familiar friend, “A Book about Doctors,” which we have before introduced to your notice as the only amusing work in the English language, upon the subject, gives a long list of bon vivants of the old school, amongst whom are some eminent names in the medical profession. In fact, the abstemious doctors during the past centuries would seem to have been far in the minority. Even Harvey was accused of being fond of brandy.

“Dr. George Fordyce was fond of substantial fare, like Radcliffe, who was a gormand. For above twenty years Fordyce dined at Dolly’s chop-house. The dinner he there consumed was his only meal during the four and twenty hours.

“Four o’clock was his dinner hour. Before him was set a silver tankard of strongest ale, a bottle of port wine, and a quarter pint of brandy.

“The dinner was preluded by a dish of broiled fowl, or a few whitings. Having leisurely devoured this plate, the doctor took a glass of brandy, and ordered his steak, which was always a prime one, weighing one and a half pounds. Of course, vegetables, etc., accompanied the steak.

“When the man of science had devoured the whole of this, the bulk of which would have kept a boa constrictor happy a twelvemonth, he took the rest of his brandy, drank off the tankard of ale, and topped off by sipping down his bottle of port wine.

“Having thus brought his intellects, up or down, to the standard of his pupils, he rose, and walked down to Essex Street, and delivered his six o’clock lecture on chemistry.” (He lived to the age of sixty-six.)

Another glutton, in contrast with whom Fordyce was an abstinent, was Dr. Beauford. In 1745 he was summoned to appear before the privy council, to answer some questions relative to Lord B., with whom the doctor was intimate.

“Do you know Lord Barrymore?” asked one of the lords.

“Intimately, most intimately,” replied the doctor.

“You were often with him?”

“We dine together almost daily when his lordship is in town,” answered the doctor, with expressions of delight.

“What do you talk about?”

“Eating and drinking.”

“Eating and drinking! What else?” asked his lordship.

“O, my lord, we never talk about anything but eating and drinking,—except—”“Except what, sir?”

“Except drinking and eating, my lord.”

The council retired, greatly disappointed, for they had expected to worm some important secret from the doctor.

At Finch Lane Tavern, where Dr. Beauford used to receive the apothecaries at half fee, he was represented as sitting over his bottles and glasses, from which he drank deeply, never offering one of his clients a drop, though they often sat opposite, at the same table, looking with anxious countenances and watering mouths upon the tempting cordials, as the doctor tossed them off.

“Doorn’t go to ’im,” etc.

“Not many years since, in a fishing village on the eastern coast, there flourished a doctor in great repute amongst the poor, and his influence over the humble patients literally depended on the fact that he was sure, once in the twenty-four hours, to be handsomely intoxicated.

“Dickens has told us how, when he bought the raven immortalized in ‘Barnaby Rudge,’ the vender of that sagacious bird, after enumerating his various accomplishments, said, in conclusion,—

“‘But, sir, if you want him to come out strong, you must show him a man drunk.’

“The simple villagers of Flintbeach had a firm faith in the strengthening effect of looking at a tipsy doctor. They usually postponed their visits to Dr. Mutchkins till evening, because they then had the benefit of the learned man in his highest intellectual condition.

“‘Doorn’t go to ’im i’ the morning; he can’t doctor no ways to speak on till he’s had a glass,’ was the advice usually given to strangers not aware of the doctor’s little peculiarities.”

Dr. Butler’s Beer and Bath.

An amusing description is given of one Dr. Butler, of London, who, like the above, used to get drunk nightly. He was the inventor of a beer which bore his name, something like our Ottawa, “with a stick in it,” by one Dr. Irish. We once saw a drunken fellow holding on to a lamp post, while he held out one hand, and was arguing with an imaginary policeman that he was not drunk,—only had been taking a “little of that—hic—beverage, Dr. Waterwa’s Irish beer, by the advice of his physician.”

“ONLY IRISH BEER.”

Dr. Butler had an old female servant named Nell Boler. At ten o’clock, nightly, she used to go to the tavern where the doctor was, by that hour, too drunk to go home alone, when, after some argument and a deal of scolding from Nell for his “beastly drunkenness,” she would carry the inebriated doctor home, and put him to bed.

“Notwithstanding that Dr. Butler was fond of beer and wine for himself, he was said to approve of water for his patients. Once he occupied rooms bordering on the Thames. A gentleman afflicted by the ague came to see him. Butler tipped the wink to his assistant, who tumbled the invalid out of the window, slap into the river. We are asked to believe that the surprise actually cured the patient of his disease.”

CURE FOR THE AGUE.

Water did not cure the doctor, however, but beer did.

Dr. Burrowly was stricken down in his prime, and just as he was about to succeed to the most elevated position in the medical profession.

The doctor was a politician, as well as an excellent surgeon. When Lords Gower and Vandeput were contesting the election for Westminster, in 1780, the doctor was supporting the latter. One Weatherly, who kept a tavern, and whose wife wore the —— belt, was very sick. Mrs. Weatherly deeply regretted the fact of the sickness, as she wanted her husband to vote for Lord T. Late on election day, Dr. Burrowly called round to see his patient, quite willing that he should be sufficiently sick to keep him from going to the polls. To his surprise he found him up, and dressed.

“Heyday! how’s this?” exclaimed the doctor, in anger. “Why are you up, without my permission?”“O, doctor,” replied Joe Weatherly, feebly, “I am going to vote.”

“Vote!” roared the doctor, not doubting that his wife had urged him to attempt to go to the polls to vote for Lord J. “To bed. The cold air would kill you. To bed instantly, or you’re a dead man before nightfall.”

“I’ll do as you say, doctor; but as my wife was away, I thought I could get as far as Covent Garden Church, and vote for Sir George Vandeput.”

“For Sir George, did you say, Joe?”

“O, yes, sir; I don’t agree with my wife. She’s for Lord Trentham.”

The doctor changed his prognosis.

“Wait. Let me see; nurse, don’t remove his stockings;” feeling the man’s pulse. “Humph! A good firm stroke. Better than I expected. You took the pills? Yes; they made you sick? Nurse, did he sleep well?”

“Charmingly, sir;” with a knowing twinkle of the eye.

“Well, Joe, if you are bent on going to the polls, it will set your mind better at ease to go. It’s a fine sunny afternoon. The ride will do you good. So, bedad, I’ll take you along in my chariot.”

Weatherly was delighted with the doctor’s urbanity, resumed his coat, went to the election, and voted for Sir George, rode back in the chariot, and died two hours afterwards, amidst the reproaches of his amiable spouse.

“Called away from a dinner table, where he was eating, laughing, and drinking deeply, Dr. B. was found dead in the coach from apoplexy, on the arrival at the place of destination.”