THE DOCTOR ON THE STAGE MEDICINE AND MEDICAL MEN IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH DRAMA*

By HERBERT SILVETTE, Ph.D. UNIVERSITY, VA

PART III†

Chapter IV Galen or Avicen; if herbs or drugs. Or minerals have any power to save. Great Men and Quacks Now let thy practice and their sovereign Puisque Hippocrate le dit, il faut le faire. use Moliere Raise thee to wealth and honour. Tourneur, Atheist's Tragedy, v, i. y THE beginning of the seven­ teenth century: They were, as Ben Jonson said, names to conjure with: Compass. The doctor is an ass then, if he The teachings of the Arabian- say so. BGreek authorities had been for And cannot with his conjuring names, centuries and were still held as infallible Hippocrates, dogma. The doctrines of medical science Galen, or Rasis, Avicen, Averroes, were a finished book, just as the authori­ Cure a poor wench’s falling in a swoon; ties of the Church were final—they might Which a poor farthing, changed into rosa be commented, expounded, interpreted soils. Or cinnamon water would. and taught, but not contradicted nor seri­ Magnetic Lady, Hi, ously questioned.^ Here the most learned of poets has The three rocks upon which these listed in true chronological order the medical doctrines were so firmly most famous names of ancient and founded were Hippocrates—the Father medieval medicine. A eulogy of Hip­ of Medicine, the Divine Old Man—, pocrates would be a presumption here. Galen and Avicenna. His sobriquets are sufficient unto them­ To the old physicians this Trinity selves, and when he died in 377 b.c. was hardly less revered than God the the apotheosis of Medicine had reached Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. its peak. Nor did worship of these iatric idols To Galen (130-200 a.d.) Hippoc­ stop with the medical men. Laymen rates and his contemporaries were “the also invoked their names as represent­ ancients”; and this Greek-speaking ing the apogee of the Healing Art. Roman, born in Asia Minor, with his D’Amville. Doctor, behold two patients in “imperious temper and tendency to whose cure self-glorification, ”2 became in turn the Thy skill may purchase an eternal fame. * From the Department of Physiology, University of Virginia Medical School. If thou’st any reading in Hippocrates, •f-Parts I and II appeared in Annals of Medical History, N. S. 8:520 (Nov.), 1936; 9:62 (Jan.), 1937. touchstone to which all medical theory important for the physician than seeing a was applied. The Greek mist does not thousand patients. cling to Galen. In him one can recog­ Rhazes himself, however, does not seem nize a later type of doctor in whom to have lived up to his sage advice, for genius, enthusiasm and ability are tem­ in erudition he was surpassed by both pered with more worldly qualities. Hip­ Avicenna and Averroes, while as a clini­ pocrates has become a myth; but let cian with diagnostic and therapeutic Galen change his terminology and toga skill he stands unsurpassed among his for polysyllabic English and a frock­ fellow-countrymen. coat and he might have been the most He lived, according to a report taken famous and fashionable physician of and transmitted cum grano salis by modern London or New York as he James Atkinson: was in the Rome of Marcus Aurelius’ day. . . . one hundred and twenty years; be­ gan his medical tricks at thirty, turned Pursuivant. Good Mr. Doctor, quack or empiricus for forty years, and a Teach your Apothecary: Galen nor Hippocrates can perswade me from my rational being or physician, for forty duty. more, so that he was eighty years practis­ Love Will Find Out the Way, ii. ing physic, before he came to his senses, his medical senses.® Ferdinand. You are a brace of Quacks, That tie your knowledge unto dayes and The Persian “Prince of Physicians’’ houres was Avicenna (980-1038). He was the Mark’d out for good or ill i’ th’ Almanack. author of the renowned “Canon,” in Your best receipts are candy for a cold; which he expressed the quintessence of And Carduus Benedictus for an ague. Could you give life as Aesculapius Graeco-Arabian medicine in a compre­ Did to unjustly slaine Hippolitus, hensive system, and thereby established You could prescribe no remedy for me. medical thought upon foundations ap­ Goe study Gallen, and Hippocrates, parently immutable.^ But Avicenna And when your rare simplicies have found tinctured his scientific life with an im­ Simples to cure the Lunacy of Love, Compose a potion, and administer’t morality which today would have Unto the Family at Amsterdam. caused a sad clucking of academic Brome, Court Beggar, Hi, i. tongues. During the day he practiced and wrote, but each evening found him The medieval Arabs translated the sampling Bacchus and investigating works of the Greeks into their own lan­ Venus. Eventually wine and women guage and added to Hellenic theory a proved too much for him, and he died. mass of practical knowledge. Their Apparently he had not heard great compendiums were then recast into Latin by twelfth and thirteenth­ . . . wise Clearkes say, that Galen being century translators, and these con­ asked what dyet he used that he lyued so quered Europe as completely as the long, aunswered: I haue dronk no wine, I arms of the Crescent did in part. haue touched no woman, I haue kept my Rhazes (850-923 a.d.) , the Rasis of selfe warme. the poets, is the apocryphal author of Lyly, Euphues His England.’^ an aphorism which strikes the keynote But in answer Avicenna could have of medieval medicine: coined Rochefoucauld’s epigram six The study of a thousand books is more hundred years in advance: Preserving the health by too strict a wrights’ mind, even Hippocrates him­ regimen is a wearisome malady. self. Galen’s genius is not to be de­ Averroes (1126-1198) matched his nied, but forces greater even than this predecessor in knowledge—his complete operated to place the halo on his brow. system of medicine, the “Colliget,” His piety, monotheism and all-embrac­ had almost as much authority as the ing teleology appealed to the medieval “Canon”—but hardly in dissipation. Church, and his voluminous works For Averroes was a prodigious worker, were copied by the monks and dissemi­ and spent only two nights of his long nated, not only widely but with the life away from his books and quill. One apostolic blessing. Then, too, Galen was was the night of his father’s death, the not only omniscient, medically speak­ other that of his own wedding day. ing, but dogmatic about it. To a world The dramatists added other names imbued with respect for authority he to the Trinity, but more or less unsys­ offered the ultimate word. His name tematically, according to quaint lean­ sanctioned any medical custom and ings of their own. Richard Brome had sanctified every medical act, as in Dav- a fancy for Dioscorides (40-90 a.d.) , enant’s song: known to the historian as the Father Arise, arisel Your breakfast stays— of Pharmacy. Good water-gruel warm. Doctor. I will warrant Or sugar-sops, which Galen says His speedy cure without the help of Galen, With mace will do no harm. Hippocrates, Avicen, or Dioscorides. And Galen became synonymous with Antipodes, i, 6. Gospel: Strangelove. But let me tell you first, the Master Coursey. I like this notion. most learned Authors, that I can turn And it hath my consent, because my wife over, as Dioscorides, Avicen, Galen, Is sore infected and heart-sick with hate; and Hippocrates are much discrepant And I have sought the Galen of advice. in their opinions concerning the rem­ Which only tells me this same potion edies for his disease. To be most sovereign for her sickness’ cure. Court Beggar, Hi, i. Porter, Two Angry Women, ii, 4. Ben Jonson in another play turns It appears that at least one of the again to Rhazes in an illustration of poets had more than a nodding ac how deeply the legend of the famous quaintance with the Prince of Physi­ Arabs sank into even the inarticulate cians. John Shirley in “The Witty Fair life of the times: One” wrote {Hi, 4) : Clench. My god-phere was a Rabian or a Fowler, as if sick, upon a couch; and Jew, (You can tell, D’oge) they call’d Manly disguised as a Physician at­ un doctor Rasi. tending him: phials, etc., on a table. Scriben. One Rasis was a great Arabian Manly. For I observed, so soon as his doctor. searching eyes had fastened upon her, Clench. He was king Harry’s doctor, and his labouring pulse, that, through his my god-phere. Tale of a Tub, iv, 2. fever, did before stick hard, and fre­ quent, now exceeds in both these dif­ But it was “the huge, overshadowing ferences; and this Galen himself figure of Galen” which eclipsed every found true upon a woman that had other medical luminary in the play­ doted upon a fencer. This scene represents the ancient lit­ Modern physicians should approve erary device of a lover feigning illness Galen’s “control observations.” And while a confederate plays the doctor. psychiatrists can claim the now helpless The coy or unwilling inamorata never Galen as one of the first luminaries of penetrates the stratagem or the dis­ their art. guise, or perhaps she merely pretends Until the Renaissance Galen re­ not to. The physician has thus played mained the dictator of medicine and the pander in many a seventeenth-cen­ no physician dared oppose even the tury romance. memory of this autocrat of the Healing Galen’s case to which the pretended Art. As late as 1559 in England a cer­ doctor refers illustrates the ingenuity tain Doctor Gaynes was haled before and penetration of a first-rate physician. the College of Physicians for impugn­ Galen, as he tells in his book “On ing the infallibility of Galen, and only by Prognosis,” had been called in “to see acknowledgment of error and humble a tvoman who was stated to be sleep­ recantation was he readmitted to stand­ less at night and to lie tossing about ing.'^ Nevertheless thirty years before from one position into another . . .” Doctor Gayne’s heterodoxy, a Swiss megalomaniac was vociferously and After I had diagnosed that there was no pugnaciously engaged in sawing planks bodily trouble, and that the woman was suffering from some mental uneasiness, it for Galen’s coffin, and forging nails happened that, at the very time I was with which his followers were to fasten examining her, this was confirmed. Some­ them together. His name was Theo­ body came from the theater and said he phrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, had seen Pylades dancing. Then both her called Paracelsus by history, quacksal­ expression and the colour of her face ver by his enemies, and messiah by his changed. Seeing this, I applied my hand disciples and friends. to her wrist, and noticed that her pulse Modern commentators have suc­ had suddenly become extremely irregu­ ceeded in deciphering enough of Para­ lar. This kind of pulse indicates that the celsus’ polyphonic German to secure mind is disturbed; thus it occurs also in him a high place in the annals of medi­ people who are disputing over any sub­ cine and chemistry. We are not here, ject. So on the next day I said to one of however, particularly concerned with my followers, that, when I paid my visit his position in Science, but rather with to the woman, he was to come a little later his standing among the seventeenth­ and announce to me, “Morphus is danc­ century dramatists. To them Paracelsus ing today.” When he said this, I found was the arch opponent of Galen, and the pulse was unaffected. Similarly on the Paracelsian the antonym of Galenical. next day, when I had an announcement Again Ben Jonson speaks for the cen­ made about the third member of the tury’s attitude: troupe, the pulse remained unchanged as before. On the fourth evening I kept very Mammon. No, he’s a rare physician, do him careful watch when it was announced that right. Pylades was dancing, and I noticed that An excellent Paracelsian, and has done the pulse was very much disturbed. Thus Strange cures with mineral physic. He deals all I found out that the woman was in love With spirits, he; he will not hear of with Pylades, and by careful watch on the word succeeding days my discovery was con­ Of Galen; or his tedious recipes. firmed.® Alchemist, ii, i. It followed that the disciples of the substance which will maintain or re­ two men formed sharply antagonistic store health, whether animal, vegetable schools until the eighteenth-century or mineral in nature. It is fortunate, theorists and system-makers substituted therefore, that not all galenicals were their own ephemeral brain-children for swept away by Paracelsus’ impatient those of the infinitely greater Greek hand, to be enthusiastically replaced by and Swiss. In a neat couplet, mineral spirits of perhaps as doubtful The Galenist and Paracelsian, therapeutic value. Theophrastus’ great­ Condemn the way each other deals in. est contribution lay in affirming that Hudibras, Hi, several hundred years of traditional Nevertheless the public held the abili­ use were in themselves powerless to ties of each in equal esteem: lend efficacy to a worthless drug, and that the patient and not the pharma­ Senilis. Nor Galenist nor Paracelsian copeia was the only valid court of ap­ Shall ere read physic lecture out of me: I’ll be no subject for anatomy. peal. Pharmacopolis. They are two good artists, A recent medical dictionary defines sir. Galenicals as: Senilis. All that I know: What the Creator did, they in part do: Medicines prepared according to the A true physician’s a man-maker too. formulas of Galen. The term is now used Day, Parliament of Bees, Charact. ix. to denote standard preparations contain­ ing one or several organic ingredients, as Though Paracelsus was not the origi­ contrasted with pure chemical substances. nator of all chemical remedies—“min­ eral physic”—he invented many and In justice to Theophrastus these pure popularized still more. He introduced chemical substances should be called into the pharmacopeia mercury, lead, Paracelsicals, for it was he who first sulphur, iron, arsenic, copper sulphate, turned chemistry uncompromisingly to potassium sulphate and laudanum, and the service of Medicine, a detour very did his best to expunge from that list distasteful to those seventeenth-century y empirical mixtures containing two-score alchemical adepts who, like Aubrey’s animal and vegetable ingredients. Ap­ friend Mr. Lloyd, considered the search parently, however, he was not alto­ for the philosopher’s stone a higher and gether consistent in his purging. He holier purpose: was responsible for Zehethum occiden- Meredith Lloyd tells me that, three or tale, as the reader will recall, and for a 400 yeares ago chymistry was in a greater “weapon ointment” consisting of moss perfection, much, then now; their proces from a human skull, human fat and was then more seraphique and universall: blood, mummy, oil of roses, bole ar- now they looke only after medicines. meniac and linseed oil, which was the Brief Lives, i, 24^. precursor of Digby’s “powder of sym­ pathy.” But in spite of these occasional Paracelsus felt differently: defections Paracelsus bent his indomi­ Many have said of alchemy that it is for table will, courage and vocabulary to making gold and silver. But here such is the task of reforming therapeutics. Such not the aim, but to consider only what reform, however, is not achieved simply virtue and power may lie in medicines. by admitting one class of remedies and . . . The purpose is to make arcana and expunging another. A remedy is any direct them against diseases.® By “arcana” Paracelsus meant the vital Not content with purging the phar­ essence of a medicine, its curative macopeia, Paracelsus attacked the power. When Ben Jonson wrote, “He Faculty on a wider medical front. He deals all with spirits,” he was thinking insisted upon the study of patients of arcana. rather than books, lectured in German Thus at one stroke Paracelsus antag­ instead of the traditional Latin, and as onized both the alchemists and the doc­ a gesture of supreme bravery as well tors. To the alchemist the sole aim of as contempt, threw the revered “Canon” the Black Art was to produce the phi­ of Avicenna, that epitome of Galenism, losopher’s stone with which trans­ into a students’ bonfire. The respecta­ mutation might be effected and immor­ ble physicians of Basle, in which uni­ tality achieved; while to the traditional versity Paracelsus was professor of medi­ physicians—and Doctor Sangrado was cine, were appalled, and barely re­ one—Paracelsus and his disciples were strained themselves from hiring an “medical baboons . . . dipping their assassin to rid the world of this Luther paws into chemistry.” The Hippoc­ of Physicians. But they contented them­ rates of Valladolid was no more bitter selves with tacking scurrilous Latin against the iatrochemists than were his verses to the university doors, and flesh-and-blood colleagues: waited for the celebrated case of Canon Why, sir, there are fellows in this town, Lichtenfels to free the city from its calling themselves physicians, who drag shame. their degraded persons at the currus tri- The Canon Lichtenfels was a promi­ umphalis antimonii, or as it should prop­ nent and wealthy citizen of Basle who erly be translated, the cart’s tail of anti­ was obstinately ill. He offered a hun­ mony. Apostates from the faith of Para­ dred gulden for his cure, and Paracelsus celsus, idolaters of filthy kermes, healers succeeded where his enemies the Galen- at haphazard, who make all the science of ists failed. He demanded his fee, but medicine to consist in the preparation and once relieved of his pain the Canon prescription of drugs. came quickly to his thrifty senses and Gil Blas, Bk. lo, Ch. i. offered Paracelsus six gulden and a Nowadays we are plagued with an­ written testimonial. The physician then other sort of animal, with “chemical sued for the full amount, lost his case baboons dipping their paws into Medi­ in the courts, and expressed his opin­ cine.” And Doctor Sangrado's elo­ ion of His Honour in such terms that quence is not too splenetic to describe he was forced to flee from the outraged these scientists to whom the body is Law. merely a glorified test-tube into which Had Paracelsus paid more attention they incontinently pour ten drops of to his books, and less to his patients, he every new chemical compound; these might have remembered the sage advice apostates from the faith of Hippocrates of old Isaac Judaeus in his “Guide to who forget that the body is neither a Physicians”: living anatomy, a physiological model nor a chemical laboratory, but a sick Demand thy fee of the patient when his and suffering patient. They too are illness is increasing or at its height; when he is healed he forgets what thou hast healers at haphazard, inverting their done for him.® patients into laboratory animals and exalting a novel experiment into a cure. Not that it was necessary to go all the way back to the tenth century to find Galen might goe shooe the Gander for wisdom: Paracelsus’ own contemporary, any good he could doo, his Sectaries had Euricus Cordus, had this to say: so long called him Divine, that now he had lost all his vertue upon earth. Hippoc­ Three faces wears the doctor: when first rates might well helpe Almanacke- sought. makers, but here he had not a word to An angel’s—and a God’s, the cure half­ say: a man might sooner catch the sweate wrought; with plodding over him to no end, than But, when that cure complete, he seeks his cure the sweate with anie of his impotent fee principles. Paracelsus with his Spirite of The Devil looks then less terrible than hed® the Butterie and his spirites of Minerails, All this took place in 1528. Paracelsus could not so much as saye, God amend then roamed over Europe until the day him to the matter. of his death (said to have occurred, like Nashe, Unfortunate Traveller, p. 282. Marlowe’s, in a tavern brawl), squab­ Crasy. My name is Pulse-feel: A poor bling, writing, curing and drinking with Doctor of Physick, that wears three- Protestant fervor and megalomaniac pile velvet in his cap; has paid a quar­ zeal. ters rent of his house afore-hand; and as meanly as he stands here was made I am Theophrastus and greater than Doctor beyond the Seas . . . paugh, those to whom you liken me. I am Theo­ Gallen was a Goose, and Paracelsus a phrastus, and am moreover Monarch of Patch to Doctor Pulse-feel. Physicians . . Brome, City Wit, ii, 2. Doctor: If he grows to his fit again, By 1600 Paracelsus was a legend. The I’ll go a nearer way to work with him events of his turbulent life needed no Than ever Paracelsus dream’d of: if embroidery to lend them popular ap­ They’ll give me leave. I’ll buffet his mad­ peal. His reputation as a healer, meas­ ness out of him. ured by the number of people he actu­ Duchess of Malfi, v, 2. ally cured, was immense; and it was Scaramouch. . . . and tho you have no natural for the dramatists to bracket Cognisance of me, your humble with the greatest physician of antiquity Servant,—yet I have of you,—you being so gravely fam’d for your ad­ the greatest physician of the Renais­ mirable Skill both in Galenical and sance. Paracelsian Phaenomena's, and other In “The Tragical History of Dr. approv’d Felicities in Vulnerary Faustus,’’ first produced in 1588, Para­ Emeticks, and purgative Experiences. celsus may even have appeared on the Mrs. Behn, Emperor of the Moon, stage. Faust welcomes “German Valdes Hi, I. and Cornelius [Agrippa],’’ and literary In popular belief: authorities have advanced the sugges­ Bumbastus kept a devil’s bird tion that by Valdes Theophrastus was Shut in the pommel of his sword. meant. There is no confusion, however, That taught him all the cunning pranks in later plays, for although Paracelsus Of past and future mountebanks. never again trod the boards, the drama­ Hudibras, ii, 62y-6^o. tists had for their genius in improvising This weapon of Paracelsus was famous variations a contrapuntal theme. Here for a hundred years after his death. are some of the melodies they com­ The zany. Nano, who supports Vol- posed: pone’s masquerade as a quack, sings: Had old Hippocrates or Galen, He was not to the poets a mere legend­ That to their books put med’cines all in, ary character, as were Galen and even But known this secret, they had never Paracelsus, but an actual personage (Of which they will be guilty ever) Been murderers of so much paper. whose checkered career an English­ Or wasted many a hurtless taper; man could follow with attentive inter­ No Indian drug had e’er been famed. est. Kelley was known variously and Tobacco, sassafrass not named; functioned vicariously as an apothecary, Ne yet, of guiacum one small stick, sir. notary, forger, counterfeiter, necro­ Nor Raymund Lully’s great elixir. mancer, quack, charlatan, crystal-gazer, Ne had been known the Danish Gonswart, Or Paracelsus, with his long sword. medium, adulterer and transmuter of Volpone, ii, /. base metal into gold. In 1583 he left England and was soon established at the And Webster speaks of a “rare Physi- court of Rudolph ii of Bavaria, the “em­ tian” in this manner: peror” of the dramatists, a hotbed, Host. Why I’ll tell you, were Paracelsus under the aegis of the king, of sixteenth­ the German now living, he’d take up century alchemy. There is reliable con­ his single rapier against his terrible temporary evidence that Kelley reached long sword—he makes it a matter of the alchemist’s goal and achieved pro­ nothing to cure the gout, sore eyes he jection, for he transmuted part of an takes out as familiarly, washes them, iron skillet into silver by means of his and puts them in again, as you’d elixir and sent the result to Queen Eliz­ blanch almonds. Fair Maid of the Inn, iv. 2. abeth. This annoyed Rudolph consid­ erably, and the next time Kelley ven­ It is a singularly interesting coinci­ tured into Bohemia he was imprisoned, dence that the doctor in “The Fair the price of his freedom being the Great Maid of the Inn” and the alchemist in Secret. Needless to say, neither pro­ the play of that name were both, in the tagonist consummated his desire: the words of their respective creators, “rare Emperor’s kitchen utensils remained physicians” and Paracelsians. Ben Jon­ iron and copper, and Kelley was slain son’s alchemist was trying to escape. A man, the emperor Has courted above Kelly; sent his medals An alchemist has taken us to the And chains to invite him. shadowy borders of the medical art, but iv, 1 (Mammon). there is no virtue in listing here the allusions to famous ancients only tenu­ And of John Webster’s Doctor (iv, 2) : ously connected with Medicine. Plato, Taylor. They say he can make gold. Aristotle, Pliny, Ptolemy, Albertus Host. I, I, he learnt it of Kelly in Ger­ Magnus, Copernicus and Galileo and many. There’s not a Chymist in other notable names appear here and christendom can go beyond him for there in the plays, but none of them multiplying. has an immediate interest for the com­ With Edward Kelley we come to a mentator and could have had but little figure very nearly contemporary with more to the average seventeenth-cen­ the Elizabethan dramatists. Both Jon­ tury playgoer. son and Webster were born in the Parenthetical mention may be made, eighth decade of the sixteenth century, however, to the “Problems” of Aristotle, while Kelley did not die until 1595. a book of quasi-medical and natural his­ torical questions and answers popular containing the foregoing reference with the curious of the day?® The could not have been written before “Problems” have now given way to “Be­ 1671 when the author had reached the lieve It or Not” and “Strange as It advanced age of thirty-one. This im­ May Seem,” modern sops to the credu­ portant conclusion has already been lous lovers of Nature’s mysteries. reached by other critics from a consid­ In 1602 a nurse boasted of her eration of similar anachronisms in the knowledge: text, but I am glad of even this corrob­ Nutrice. I would you should know it: as orative opportunity to demonstrate that few teeth as I have in my head, I medical historians sometime perform have read Aristotle’s Problems, which useful tasks. saith, that woman receiveth perfec­ This “Culpepper” Wycherley men­ tion by the man, tions was old Nicholas Culpeper Marston, Antonio’s Revenge, Hi, 2. (1616-54), another engaging if not al­ together respectable character. Like all The book was known to another char­ men who arouse extraordinary interest, acter as well: Nic. was something of a quack. As a Viola. —I ha’ such a tickling within me— corollary he fell into disrepute in 1649 such a strange longing; nay, verily I by translating (“very filthily,” it was do long, said) the “Pharmacopoeia Londinen- Fustigo. Then you’re with child, sister, by sis” into English with inappropriately all signs and tokens; nay, I am partly a physician and partly something else, scurrilous comments regarding the I ha’ read Albertus Magnus and Aris­ medical profession. This scandalous act totle’s Problems, led to his characterization as a “frowsy- Dekker, i. Honest Whore, i, 2. headed coxcomb” who Now comes one of those minor con­ ... by two years drunken labour hath fusions the elucidation of which is so gallimawfred the Apothecaries’ Book into dear to a commentator’s heart (and nonsense mixing every receipt therein which takes up more space than the with some samples, at least, of rebellion whole business is worth). A bookseller’s or atheisme, besides the danger of poy- soning men’s bodies. And (to supply his boy in “The Plain Dealer” asks {iii, z), drunkenness and leachery with a thirty­ Will you see Culpepper, mistress? shillings reward), endeavoured to bring “Aristotle’s Problems?” “The Complete into obloquy the famous societies of Midwife?” Apothecaries and Chyrurgions.^^ According to Wycherley’s own state­ He also wrote “The English Physi­ ment made in his old age this play was cian” in 1653 (very likely the “Cul­ written when he was twenty-five years pepper” the bookseller’s boy had in old, i,e., in the year 1665-66. It was not mind), a very popular book which took staged, however, before 1674 nor several slices of bread from the mouths printed until 1677. Now a book entitled of the licensed practitioners, although “The Compleat Midwife’s Compan­ the author himself probably realized ion” by one “Jane Sharp” was published only another guinea or two. It was the in London in 1671. One is therefore publishers, of course, who made the driven to conclude that Wycherley’s money, for “The English Physician” senile memory had been playing him entered many a home which poverty or tricks, and that “The Plain Dealer” prejudice barred to the English physi­ cians. The esteem in which such books The doctors Chamberlen were a of household medicine were held must family of Huguenot refugees practic­ have been an added insult to the dig­ ing surgery and midwifery in England nity of the profession. from 1569 to 1728. An early Chamber­ Now comes the sage Matron Experi­ len had invented the obstetrical forceps ence, saying that she hath learnt a secret and held the device as a trade secret. from a prudent Doctor that’s worth its At the time Clelia was in her delicate weight in Gold, nor can the vertue thereof condition, Dr. Hugh Chamberlen, 1664- be too much commended. And she hath 1728) was helping London babies into already communicated it unto several per­ the world with the aid of the family sons; but there are none that tried it that “instruments of iron.” All the Chamber­ do not praise it to be incomparable: there­ lens practiced with great success and fore she hath been very vigilant to note it most of them attended the Queens of down in S. John Pain, and Nic-Culpep- the time. There is no doubt but that pers Works; to the end that her posterity Richmore's allusion would have been may not only make use of it, but partici­ immediately understood and heartily pate it to others: This is. Lapis Cala- minaris prepared, mingled with a small appreciated by the wits and blushing quantity of May-butter, and then temper ladies in the audience. them together with the point of a knife In the seventeenth century the mid­ upon an earthen plate, just as the Picture wives had almost a monopoly of the par­ Drawers do their Colours upon their Pal­ turient trade. Male midwives or ob­ let, which will bring it to be a delicate stetricians were rare exceptions, faintly salve; and it is also very soft and supple comic and rather immoral. A contempo­ for the chops of the nipples; nay, though rary opinion of such a doctor is found the child should suck it in, yet it doth no in “The Ten Pleasures of Marriage” harm; and it doth not alone cure them, (p. 102) : but prevents the coming of any more. Ten Pleasures of Marriage, p. pi. In our Parish there is a married woman brought to bed, but she was so miserably The reader has undoubtedly re­ handled by the Midwife, that no tongue marked by this time that most of the can express it. Insomuch that Master great men of science immortalized in Peepin the Man Midwife, was fain to be the plays had been long dead before fetcht, to assist with his Instrument; it their appearance on the stage. Even was a very great wonder that the woman Culpeper, the quack, had succumbed ever escaped it; and too sad indeed to be before his fame bridged the gap be­ placed by me among the Pleasures of tween the bookseller and the boards. Marriage. In few cases of which I am aware was a It is not too far-fetched an assumption contemporary practitioner of the medi­ to identify Master Peepin and his In­ cal art alive to hear his name spoken in strument with Doctor Chamberlen and a play. In Farquhar’s “The Twin his obstetrical forceps. Rivals,” Richmore refers to Clelia, who In all this there is an interesting side­ discovers herself with child, in these light on comparative immorality. Un­ significant words (i, : til perhaps the last decade or so, we con­ Does the silly creature imagine that any sidered the seventeenth-century play­ man would come near her in those cir­ wrights among the most amoral and im­ cumstances unless it were Doctor Cham­ moral creatures who ever wielded pens, berlain? and it was usually customary for the timid scholar to introduce a volume of Sganarelle. Hippocrate dit . . . que nous Restoration plays with some such sen­ nous couvrions tous deux. Geronte. Hippocrate dit cela? tence: “Yet I venture to assert that, Sganarelle. Oui. in spite of their licentiousness, these Geronte. Dans quel chapitre, s’il vous comedies possess claims to recognition plait? not lightly to be ignored.” The plays Sganarelle. Dans son chapitre . . . des were Wycherley’s; the author of the chapeaux. critical line shall remain anonymous in Geronte. Puisque Hippocrate le dit, il his shame. Turning the pages of this faut le faire. volume at random one comes across this Le Medecin Malgre Lui, ii, choice bit of smut from Lady Fidget's Sad to relate, Shakespeare cast a lascivious lips: shadow on one fair name, that of the I thought his very name obscenity; and learned physician, humanist, antiquary, I would as soon have lain with him as scholar and founder of Gaius College, have named him. John Kaye. The author of “Lives of British Physicians” thought it I do not have to point out wherein Wycherley’s “immorality” lay. But . . . strange that Shakspeare should have selected his name for the ridiculous Wycherley and Lady Fidget would have French Doctor, in the comedy of the been fully as shocked to learn that a “Merry Wives of Windsor.” From his man midwife, and whole classes of medi­ celebrity, he might have used it as the cal students as well, routinely grope the generic name of a physician. But Shak­ pudenda of the twentieth-century fair speare was little acquainted with literary sex. history, and might possibly wish to treat In France too we find a reference to him as a foreign quack, because the doc­ a famous seventeenth-century scientist. tor was handed down as a kind of Rosi­ Moliere has a fling at French virtuosity crucian, and, it is said, left behind him in “Les Femmes Savantes” (Hi, 2) : some secret writings, which tended to confirm that opinion. The great dramatist Belisse. Je m’accomode assez, pour moi, des is very hard upon the physician, calls him petits corps, bullystale, urinal and muck-water, reflect­ Mais le vide a souffrir me semble difficile. ing upon that particular inspection which Et je go^te bien mieux la matiere subtile. made a considerable part of practical Trissotin. Descartes, par I’aimant, donne fort dans mon sens. physic at that time.^^ Armande. J’aime ses tourbillons. As President of the College of Physi­ Philamente. Moi, ses mondes tombants. cians Gaius was a zealous defender of For^ the rest, Moliere calls in the the rights of his order, and Mr. Jeaf- same medical authorities as his con­ freson suggested that Shakespeare’s temporaries in England. The fame of “Doctor Gaius” “was produced in re­ Hippocrates and Galen recognized no sentment towards the president, for geographical frontiers. his excessive fervor against the sur- Sganarelle. Hippocrate dit, et Galien, par geons. “ vives raisons, persuade qu’une per- It is difficult to see, however, why sonne ne se porte pas bien quand elle Shakespeare should feel constrained to est malade. take up the cudgels in defense of sur­ Le Medecin Volant^ i^ gery, unless, as I temerariously suggest in a later chapter, the dramatist owed the Sun that were more noble than Salva­ his nose to a surgeon’s skill. tor Winter’s Salve, for that cures im­ There is a curious story told of Doc­ mediately: And you can have nothing tor Caius which fortunately for later better. Ten Pleasures of Marriage, p. pz. fastidiousness Shakespeare did not re­ peat. Before his death the physician was A famous astrologer of the time was reduced to a state of great bodily weak­ William Lilly (1602-1681), unmerci­ ness, and was kept alive only by woman’s fully satirized as Sidrophel in Butler’s milk. “Hudibras,” (Part ii. Canto 3), and What made Dr. Caius in his last sick­ again in “An Heroical Epistle of Hudi­ ness so peevish and full of frets at Cam­ bras to Sidrophel.” I can do no more bridge, when he sucked one woman than heartily recommend a reading of (whom I spare to name), froward of con­ these lines to those individuals who ditions and of bad diet; and contrariwise, desire to be entertained by the lam­ so quiet and well, when he sucked an­ pooning of folly and vice. For a less other of contrary dispositions? Verily, the amusing estimate of Lilly we may turn diversity of their milks and conditions, to Pepys: which, being contrary one to the other, wrought also in him that sucked them Mr. Booker . . . did tell me a great contrary effects. many fooleries, which may be done by nativities, and blaming Mr. Lilly for writ­ The passage is from Dr. Thomas Muf- ing to please his friends and to keep in fet’s “Health’s Improvement; or Rules with the times (as he formerly did to his concerning Food’’ (London, 1655) . See own dishonor), and not according to the also Pepys’ “Diary,” November 21, rules of art, by which he could not well 1667. err, as he had done. A genuine quack appears in Shad­ Diary, October 24, 1660. well’s “The Sullen Lovers,” produced During the Protectorate Lilly backed in 1668. Emilia says (iii, 1} : the wrong horses on several occasions, And your plays are below the dignity as Pepys implied, although he did pre­ of a mountebank’s stage. Salvator Winter dict the defeat of Charles i at Naseby, would have refused them. and after the Restoration was forced to This gentleman was a Neapolitan quack swallow his prognostications. With that who operated near Covent Garden and his reputation dwindled, to the great sold a remarkable compound called joy of the loyalists. Divine Astrea, a lov­ “Elixir vitae,” good for anything from ing friend of all true Cavaliers, pricked catarrh to consumption and the French him—or rather his ghost—with her pen pox.^”^ It contained sixty-two ingredi­ when hiatuses in her verse permitted. ents, one correcting the other, and was Thus in the “Round-Heads,” staged perhaps the inspiration for “Specimen the year following Lilly’s death: vitae” sold by Otway’s chemist-quack.^® Gilliflower. Call up your Courage, Apparently Salvator purveyed other Madam, do not let these things scoff remedies also, for in a discussion about you—you may be yet a Queen: Re­ sore nipples, member what Lilly told you. Madam. . . . Mistris Know-all saith . . . that Lady Lambert. Damn Lilly, who with ly­ she hath tried above an hundred other ing Prophecies has rais’d me to the things, that were approved to be good; yet hopes of Majesty: a Legion of his of all things never found nothing under Devils take him for’t. And, in Act v: In spite of the numerous allusions Corporal Right. What say you now, Lads, to men of science and pseudo-science in is not my Prophecy truer than the old plays, strikingly few of them re­ Lilly’s^ I told you the Rump would ferred to persons who were actually fall to our handling and drinking living at the time the dramas were pro­ for: the King’s proclaimed. Rogues. duced. Only Doctor Chamberlen, Sal­ Captain. Ay, ay, Lilly, a Plague on him, vator Winter and William Lilly, in my he prophecied Lambert should be experience, might have heard their uppermost. names spoken from the stage. Winter Corporal. Yes, he meant perhaps on West­ was a simple mountebank, Lilly a much minster Pinacle: where’s Lilly now, more pretentious quack, and Cham­ with all his Prophecies against the berlen with his secret instrument of Royal Family? iron certainly lays himself open to the Captain. In one of his Twelve Houses. charge of charlatanism. For the more It should be mentioned that “The respectable worthies mentioned by the Round-Heads” was based on John Tat- dramatists a long gap exists between ham’s comedy “The Rump,” produced the date of their death and the time of in 1660 when Lilly was very much their rebirth in a dramatic allusion. alive. In this play the astrologer ap­ This lag is one of the most significant pears on the stage in person and is thor­ features of seventeenth-century refer­ oughly taken down. ences to scientists. Quacks, one con­ In another of Mrs. Behn’s plays, also cludes, insinuate themselves into popu­ performed in 1682, Wilding jeers at the lar literature infinitely more rapidly astrologer and one of his own satellites than their more sober and scientific fel­ in one breath: lows, nor is the reason for this far to seek. A charlatan must have an arrest­ . . . thou art out at Elbows; and when 1 thrive, you show it i’ th’ Pit, behind the ing if not engaging personality to make Scenes, and at Coffee-houses. Thy up for his deficiency of knowledge; Breeches give a better account of my For­ while most of our learned scientists, tune, than Lilly with all his Schemes and ancient and modern, are content to Stars. substitute erudition for charm. City Heiress, ii, 2. John Lyly, for one, remarked the inept drabness of the scholar: Lilly’s notoriety had, however, brought his name on the stage several Melippus. Well, thoght I, seeing bookish years before Mrs. Behn dropped her men are so blockish, and so great bouquet of praises on his grave. Thomas clarkes such simple courtiers . . . Duffett in “Psyche Debauch’d,” a Campaspe, i, clever and amusing burlesque of Shad­ And one of these “bookish men” am­ well’s “Psyche,” contains an elaborate plifies: parody of the oracle scene in the lat­ Molus. . . . wee silly soules are only ter play. After a dance, we have: plodders at Ergo, whose wittes are The Invocation claspt vppe with our bookes, and so 2 Priest. Hocus-pocus, Don Quixot, Jack full of learning are we at home, that Adams, Mary Ambry, Frier Bungey, we scarce know good manners when William Lilly. wee come abroad. Cunning in noth­ Answer. Help our Opera, because ’tis very ing but in making small things great silly. by figures, pulling on with the sweate of our studies a gieat shooe vpon a sine qua non of antemortem notoriety, little foote, burning out one cadle in if not of posthumous fame. Just as the seeking for an other, raw worldlings caricaturist seizes on an unusual fea­ in matter of substaunce, passing ture, the satirist pounces on an uncon­ wranglers about shadowes. ventional attitude or way of life. Doc­ Sapho and Phao, i, tor Sydenham, “English Hippocrates” Sir Francis Bacon was also disgusted though he may have been, had abso­ with the antics of scholars outside their lutely no dramatic interest, and the study walls?® lapse of many years was necessary be­ On the other hand, James Atkinson fore he could have a historical one. cheerfully admitted that “Quackery is But Doctor Chamberlen, who manipu­ so pleasing, so natural, and recondite a lated his secret instrument under the passion, that we may sometimes excuse cover of an obstetrical sheet and brought it”; and later he slyly defines a Charla­ forth an infant before the curious eyes tan in Medicine as: of the populace, was the type of man A half concocted man; who, by puffing, made to order for a dramatic allusion. advertising, false pretenses, undue appli­ Thus if today Sydenham has a page in cations for business, impudence and false­ the history of medicine while Cham­ hood, attempts unduly to cut the grass berlen has only a phrase, Chamberlen under the feet of his colleagues. Have you at least had his day of dramatic noto­ seen such an one? Yes. What, in your riety, and no doubt he is still the more town? Yes. Quacks in all towns. interesting figure to those who prefer A touch of quackery still remains the the manner to the matter of life. Notes to Chapter IV 1. Stillman, J. M. Paracelsus. Chicago, sentiment (Jeaffreson, J. C. A Book 1920, p. 45. about Doctors. N. Y., 1861, p. 73): 2. Brock, A. J. Greek Medicine, Being Ab­ God and the doctor we alike adore. stracts Illustrative of Medical Writers But only when in danger, not before; from Hippocrates to Galen. Lond., The danger o’er, both are alike requited, God is forgotten, and the doctor is slighted. 1929, p. 24. 3. Ruhrah, J. Ann. Med. Hist., 6:212, 1924. 11. Stillman, J. M. Paracelsus. Chicago, 4. An excellent account of Arabian medi­ 1920, p. 74. cine and medical men may be found Before taking leave of Paracelsus it will be interesting to have the sketch of his in Neuberger, M.: History of Medi­ life by another hand. Here it is ac­ cine. Trans, by E. Playfair, Lond., cording to the famous Boerhaave: 1910, vol. 1. 5. Lyly, J. The Complete Works of. Ed. Paracelsus was the son of William Hohenheim, a trifling licentiate of physick, and bastard son of by R. W. Bond. Oxford, 1902, 2:55. the master of the Teutonic order, who had a 6. Brock, A. J. Greek Medicine, etc. Lond., rich library, born at Einsidlen (which signifies 1929, p. 213. a desart) in Switzerland', he was call’d from 7. Stillman, J. M. Paracelsus. Chicago, his town, an Eremite, by Erasmus', he was said to have been an eunuch: he was taught by his 1920, p. 66. father, Trithemius, and Sigismund Fugger, where 8. Stillman, Paracelsus. Chicago, 1920. he owns he learn’d his chymistry; he studied the p. 102. adept philosophy under the best masters, who 9. Neuberger, M. History of Medicine. conceal’d nothing from him; then he travell’d Trans, by E. Playfair, Lond., 1910, thro’ Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, &c. and learn’d every where arcana', he 1:366. learnt from Basil Valentine, tho’ he conceal’d 10. Ann. Med. Hist., 1:53, 1917. his name, the three principles of Salt, Sulphur, In later days Pope expressed the same and Mercury; he travell’d into Russia, was taken by the Cham of Tartary, sent to Constantinople, 13. This book was translated into English and was said at his 28th year to have the philos­ before 1600 (“The Problemes of Aris­ opher’s stone; he serv’d as surgeon and physi­ cian at sieges and battels; he admir’d Hippoc­ totle, with other Philosophers and rates, hated the school jargon and the Arabians', Phisitions, . . . touching the estate of he admir’d Opium and Mercury, and cur’d man’s bodie,” London, 1595, 1597, great distempers, which others could not: he etc.). By 1710 it had reached the became famous and bold; he cur’d Frobenius twenty-fifth edition. The “Problems” at Basil, was invited thither, and taught philo­ sophical physick in Latin and German', he was were obstetrical rather than porno­ known to Erasmus', he expounded his own graphic, as an example shows: “Why books on Compositions, Degrees, and Tartar, have some women greater grief than where he talks much, according to Helmont, to others in childbirth? For three reasons; little purpose; burnt Galen and Avicen, and said, if God pleas’d, he would consult the devil; first, for the largeness of the child; he had many scholars, some of whom he main­ secondly, the midwife being unskillful; tain’d, who us’d him ill; he cur’d the canon and, thirdly, because the child is dead, Liechtenfels, who instead of rewarding him, as and cannot be bowed. For the con­ he promis’d, jeer’d him, and said he had given him only three mouse-turds (Laudanum) ; he trary causes some have less pain.” The sued, and the judges allotted him so little, that dramatists objected strongly to this he call’d them unjust blockheads, for which he sort of knowledge being made available was forc’d to leave the town; he left Oporinus to modest virgins. There are animad­ his laboratory, and was as happy in curing as versions in Leanard’s “The Rambling he was dissolute, as Borrichius tell us; he al­ Justice,” iv, 6 (^Sir Geoffrey Jolt) ; lured the learned Oporinus along with him, in hopes of diving into his secrets, but in vain, Ravenscroft’s “The London Cuckolds,” for he return’d to his family in Basil', the cause i (Aiderman Wiseacres) ; and Otway’s of Oporinus’s leaving him was this, he was “The Soldier’s Fortune,” v (^Sir Jolly), call’d to a countryman, but wou’d not leave his among other plays. liquor till morning, he then went and ask’d 14. Chance, B. Nicholas Culpeper, Gent: if the fellow had taken any thing, they said, student in physick and astrologie. Ann, only the sacrament; Then, said he, if he has apply’d to another physician, he wants not my Med. Hist., n. s. 3:394, 1931. help: he had forgot his Latin, wander’d about, 15. Lives of British Physicians. Lond., 1830, drank unmercifully, grew dirty, and dy’d at p. 26. Salisburg, in an inn, the 24th of Sept. 1541, 16. Jeaffreson, J. C. A Book About Doc­ aged 47, altho’ he promis’d himself long life tors. N. Y., 1861, p. 26. by his elixir: he wrote some works. (Dr. Boer- 17. Thompson, C. J. S. Quacks of Old Lon­ haave’s Elements of Chy mis try. Faithfully Abridg’d from the late Genuine Edition . . . don. Phila., 1929, p. 94. By Edward Strother, M.D. ed. 2, London, 1737, 18. The Atheist, act v. p. 8 ff.) 19. See “The Advancement of Learning,” 12. Pettigrew, T. J. Superstitions Connected Book I, Chap, iii, par. 8. with the History and Practice of Medi­ 20. Ruhrah, J. Ann. Med. Hist., 6:217, cine and Surgery, Phila., 1844, p. 30. 1924.