Doctors out of practice / by J. Cordy Jeaffreson.

  • Jeaffreson, John Cordy, 1831-1901.
Date:
[1884]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Doctors out of practice / by J. Cordy Jeaffreson. 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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    Never doubting' that the Miss Boydell of the news- paper was his Miss Boydell, the young apothe- cary sold his shop and fixtures, and fled from the city of heartless womankind, vowing he would pass the remainder of his days in communion with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Mr. John Elliot having gone off in this way, hard things were said of him by the deserted Mary, and still harder things by her uncle. Twelve years later, having grown weary of living with the beasts and birds of rural haunts, Mr. Elliot returned to London, took another shop, and was doing well in business, when who but Miss Mary Boydell—ever a maiden, never a wife, all inno- cent of the faithlessness imputed to her—should appear at his counter, cry aloud, “ Mr. Elliot! Mr. Elliot! ” and fall into a swoon. After mutual and satisfactory explanations—explanations rendering it clear even to the meanest understanding that Miss Mary Boydell and the Miss Boydell of the newspaper were two different Misses Boydell —the re-united couple were soon a re-engaged couple. But again malicious fate separated the lovers. Their wedding day had been fixed and their wedding clothes provided, when Miss Mary Boydell jilted Mr. Elliot, in order that she might render Mr. Nicols, an opulent bookseller, the happiest of men. In vengeance and despair the injured Mr. Elliot loaded a brace of pistols with powder and ball, and a second brace with powder and wadding, intending to frighten Miss Boydell excessively with the leadless pair, before putting a bullet into his own head. The reader may be left to imagine how this pretty plan miscarried in Princes Street after the lady had been properly frightened; how Mr. Elliot was tried at the Old Bailey for attempting to murder Miss Boydell; how, after being acquitted of this capital charge, he was remanded to prison to take his trial for a common assault; and how, whilst awaiting his trial on this minor charge, he died of a broken heart and gaol fever in Newgate on 22nd July, 1787, just eight months after Sir John Elliot,m.d., closed a very different and curiously successful career in the softest feather bed and courtliest quarter of the town. Making a deep impression on the popular mind, the equally mournful and ludicrous “ Nar- rative of the Life and Death of John Elliot, m.d.,” was fruitful of numerous ballads and chap- book stories based on its most thrilling incidents. It was also accountable for what is most piquant and absurd in “ Giles Bolus the Knave and Brown Sally Green,” the burlesque ballad com- posed in ridicule of Monk Lewis’s “Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.” In these days of literary and artistic revivalism it is conceivable that the mournful “ Narrative,” which has appeared in so many forms and with so many variations, may be called back to popular favour by some expert reproducer of old literary material. At the close of an essay dealing chiefly with medical love and womankind reference may be made appropriately to the strange story of Dr. James Barry, whose name appeared so recently as 1865 in Hart’s “Annual Army List” at the head of the list of Inspectors-Gcneral of Hospitals, a personage not to be confounded, as he has been in certain places, with Dr. Martin Barry, f.r.s., who predeceased Dr. James of the same surname by just ten years. Entering the medical service of the army at a time when young men were often made army surgeons without having passed any severe or regular medical education, and at am age when the smoothness of his lips and chin was- less remarkable than it became a few years later, young James Barry had scarcely joined the first', regiment to which he was appointed when he. distinguished himself by fighting a duel under re markable circumstances. “ Barry, you have a very peculiar voice for a man. I declare it might be mistaken for a woman’ss voice by any one hearing it for the first time without at the same moment seeing you,” am officer remarked to the young surgeon at theii common mess-table on a foreign station. You are right,” Barry replied, in a tone ol peculiar significance that was the more curious be- cause it was not expressive of anger or any other strong feeling. “ I have a peculiar voice, which: as you say, might be mistaken for a woman’s. But it is the only womanly thing you will ever dis^ cover in me.” The next morning the young officer who hat called attention to the young surgeon’s voice re ceived a challenge from the gentleman who hat declared wi^h so curious a composure that hi voice would be found his only feminine charac. teristic. In the days of duelling such an invitai tion could not be declined, although the offem sive speech had been uttered without offensive intention. An explanation to that effect could b> made after the meeting, but no sooner. So th. young men met to exchange shots, and exchange them. It was a meeting from which only one them returned. Dr. James Barry remained in th sen-ice for more than fifty years without hearin another reference to the feminine pitch a: quality of his voice. The sixth Earl of Albemarle, who met Dr. Jamo Barry at the Cape in 1819, when the latter wr acting there as staff-surgeon to the garrison an the governor’s medical adviser, had heard enou of the doctor’s eccentricities to be curious abot him, and in his curiosity to gather together son; particulars about him, that may be found in h lordship’s entertaining “ Fifty Years of My Life A beardless lad with reddish hair, high chet bones, and an unmistakably Scotch type of co; tenance, the doctor looked no older than his oM server and eventual commemorator, but as the ea was bom no further back than the last year of tl last century, Dr. James Barry must in 1819 ha-, been something older than he looked. “ VVhi at the Cape,” says Lord Albemarle, “ he fought duel, and was considered to be of a most quarre some disposition. He was frequently guilty flagrant breaches of discipline, and on more occasion was sent home under arrest, b 1 b< one somehow or other his offences were always co j doned at headquarters.” At the same time was so capricious and quick to take offence th he had recently turned away in dudgeon from t i governor (Lord Charles Somerset) and left h