Infallible physic / [Charles Dickens].

  • Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Date:
[1860]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Infallible physic / [Charles Dickens]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    he landed, with yells and hootings, surrounding the carriage like so many dusky demons, and heaping all kinds of contumely on fallen royalty until it gained the shelter of the Date-Tree Inn, when the banished lords took a lodging imme- diately opposite, and held a dignity ball that night in token of derision and indignation. Date-Tree Inn was the only place of refuge which fallen royalty could find; for Mrs. Seacole’s sister, who keeps an hotel in Jamaica, where she is tenderly patriotic in beefsteaks and porter, would not so far demean herself or her house as to give his sable majesty a refuge. He had been em- peror twelve years, but Mrs. Seacole’s sister had not learnt to believe in his regality for all that. After Soulouque’s fall and expulsion, Eebre Geffrard was chosen President: a kind, just man, full of good intentions, and singularly merciful in disposition, a pure African by blood, but with all the upright feelings and noble in- stincts of the most civilised Caucasian. But Eabre Geffrard is not acceptable to the whole of his quasi-subjects. A large section still regrets the author of the Haitian coup d’etat, and this section determined, the other day, to get rid of Eabre and his gentle rule. A party of five, composed chiefiy of men of rank and condition, and headed by Zamors and Chochotti, two men of birth, surrounded the President’s house; and, on his young daughter, Madame Blanfort, appearing, a man named Sanon shot her down as she stood, intending to seize the President in the confusion, and make short work with him. It was a ruthless assassination. Not many weeks married, much and tenderly beloved, there was everything, both in her character and condition, that ought to have pleaded for her exemption from harm. Yet she was the one marked out for destruction, simply with the hope that her death would create such consternation that tlie plot could be carried into effect without trouble or hindrance. It was a heinous crime; an un- pardonable crime, but the revenge taken was severe enough even for the vengeful. Twenty men were condemned to death, not all of whom were guilty of even knowledge of the assassina- tion. Yet sixteen were actually executed, four saving themselves by flight. Eabre Geffrard could with difficulty be brought to consent to this wholesale manner of retribution, but his ministers and_the army took the matter out of his hands, and the trial was pressed forward with all the ardour and passion of the South, passing from accusation to conviction, and from conviction to execution with very little interval or respite in between. The condemned bore themselves with the courage of heroes. When drawn out to be shot, they stood in a row, chatting gaily among each other, and smoking as calmly as if on parade—like all men who have committed a great public crime, cheating themselves into the belief that they had medit^ated a great public virtue. The soldiers told off for the execution were unmanned. Though there were forty-six to do the work, it took three-quarters of an hour before the last man was killed. It was a perfect butchery, and tnfe popular feeling, which had been^ strong on th® side of the murdered girl ai^agaiu^ thu conspirators, was all now draw^o the yi5fe«f(s of what seemed to be an inhuman slaug^r. It yill be long before Haii. forgets t^ day when she wetted her feet in the |blood of/' her son^ and trailed her royal robeh knee-;Jeep thro/i^ the crimson sta>a. It might Lave been a^jnst sentence, b;ut at the best it was notlrempfired with mercy,/and, un|ler all the circumstances of the execration, even the justice became problematical. INEALLIBLE PHYSIC. “ There is always,” observed ah ^u^KrTwo centuries ago, ‘'some one arch quack^^-that carries the bell in England. If it is^ ..not tar water, it is something else.” It is calculated that at least half a million of pounds sterling is expended annually by the English public on advertised drugs and nostrums. Upwards of forty thousand pounds are paid annually to the revenue for stamps on quack medicines. One patent medicine-vendor, it is affirmed, spends no less a sum than twenty thousand pounds yearly in advertising his drugs. One of the most notable impostors on public credulity was St. Jolm Long, a painter from Cork, who took up doctoring on his own au- thority. He settled in London, took a fine house, and enunciated a mystic doctrine about morbific matter. All his remedies were applied externally, kept strictly secret, and vaunted as the great discovery of the age. He soon got abundance of patients, and it is said gained one liundred thousand pounds out of the pockets of the credulous public in London. Yet Dr. Sleigh, an eminent physician to whom Long was in- duced to apply for instruction after his first trial for manslaughter, asserted that, even for a layman and unprofessional man, he found him utterly and strangely ignorant on everything whatever, however elementary, relating to the structure, functions, and diseases of the body. Nevertheless, at his two trials numerous wit- nesses, among whom were noblemen, clergymen, and generals, stood forward to swear to his great medical knowledge. One of these wit- nesses (Lord Ingestre) swore that he saw St. John Long draw several pounds of a liquid like mercury from a patient’s brain! In the early part of the present century, a person called Perkins sold in great numbers, and at exorbitant prices, two small tapering pieces of metal called Tractors, which were stated to be perfectly efficacious in the removal of “ acute and chronic rheumatism, gout, sprains, erysi- pelas, epileptic fits, pleurisy,” and numerous other ailments, and they were further alleged to be equally successful in all analogous diseases of horses or other animals. The small pieces of metal were made of zinc and copper, which would cost at the most but a few pence, yet they were sold in great numbers at six guineas a set, and persons of high repute and station bore testimony to the truth of this “safe, speedy, and