CHAPTER CCXXXVI.
CHARITY OF THE DOCTOR IN HIS OPINIONS.—MASON THE POET.—POLITICAL MEDICINE.—SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.—CERVANTES.—STATE PHYSICIANS.—ADVANTAGE TO BE DERIVED FROM, WHETHER TO KING, CABINET, LORDS OR COMMONS.—EXAMPLES.—PHILOSOPHY OF POPULAR EXPRESSIONS.—COTTON MATHER.—CLAUDE PAJON AND BARNABAS OLEY.—TIMOTHY ROGERS AND MELANCHOLY.
Go to! You are a subtile nation, you physicians, And grown the only cabinets in court!
B. JONSON.
The Doctor, who was charitable in all his opinions, used to account and apologize for many of the errors of men, by what he called the original sin of their constitution, using the term not theologically, but in a physico-philosophical sense. What an old French physician said concerning Charles VIII. was in entire accord with his speculations,—_ce corps etoit composé de mauvais pâte, et de matiere cathareuse._ Men of hard hearts and heavy intellect, he said, were made of stony materials. For a drunkard, his qualifying censure was,—“poor fellow! bibulous clay—bibulous clay!” Your light-brained, light-hearted people, who are too giddy ever to be good, had not earth enough, he said, in their composition. Those upon whose ungrateful temper benefits were ill bestowed, and on whom the blessings of fortune were thrown away, he excused by saying that they were made from a sandy soil;—and for Mammon's muckworms,—their mould was taken from the dunghill.
Mason the poet was a man of ill-natured politics, out of humour with his country till the French Revolution startled him and brought him into a better state of feeling. This however was not while the Doctor lived, and till that time he could see nothing but tyranny and injustice in the proceedings of the British Government, and nothing but slavery and ruin to come for the nation. These opinions were the effects of Whiggery[1] acting upon a sour stomach and a saturnine constitution. To think ill of the present and augur worse of the future has long been accounted a proof of patriotism among those who by an illustrious antiphrasis call themselves patriots. “What the Romans scorned to do after the battle of Cannæ,” said Lord Keeper Finch in one of his solid and eloquent speeches, “what the Venetians never did when they had lost all their _terra firma_, that men are now taught to think a virtue and the sign of a wise and good man, _desperare de Republica_: and all this in a time of as much justice and peace at home, as good laws for the security of religion and liberty, as good execution of these laws, as great plenty of trade and commerce abroad, and as likely a conjuncture of affairs for the continuance of these blessings to us, as ever nation prospered under.”
[Footnote 1: See Vol. IV. p. 375.]
The Doctor, when he spoke of this part of Mason's character, explained it by saying that the elements had not been happily tempered in him—“cold and dry, Sir!” and then he shook his head and knit his brow with that sort of compassionate look which came naturally into his countenance when he was questioned concerning a patient whose state was unfavourable.
But though he believed that many of our sins and propensities are bred in the bone, he disputed the other part of the proverb, and maintained that they might be got out of the flesh. And then generalizing with a rapidity worthy of Humboldt himself, he asserted that all political evils in modern ages and civilized states were mainly owing to a neglect of the medical art;—and that there would not, and could not be so many distempers in the body politic, if the _primæ viæ_ were but attended to with proper care; an opinion in which he was fortified by the authority of Sir William Temple.
“I have observed the fate of _Campania_,” says that eminent statesman, “determine contrary to all appearances, by the caution and conduct of a General, which was attributed by those that knew him, to his age and infirmities, rather than his own true qualities, acknowledged otherwise to have been as great as most men of the age. I have seen the counsels of a noble country grow bold, or timorous, according to the fits of his good or ill-health that managed them, and the pulse of the Government beat high with that of the Governor; and this unequal conduct makes way for great accidents in the world. Nay, I have often reflected upon the counsels and fortunes of the greatest monarchies rising and decaying sensibly with the ages and healths of the Princes and chief officers that governed them. And I remember one great minister that confessed to me, when he fell into one of his usual fits of the gout, he was no longer able to bend his mind or thought to any public business, nor give audiences beyond two or three of his domestics, though it were to save a kingdom; and that this proceeded not from any violence of pain, but from a general languishing and faintness of spirits, which made him in those fits think nothing worth the trouble of one careful or solicitous thought. For the approaches, or lurkings of the Gout, the Spleen, or the Scurvy, nay the very fumes of indigestion, may indispose men to thought and to care, as well as diseases of danger and pain. Thus accidents of health grow to be accidents of State, and public constitutions come to depend in a great measure upon those of particular men; which makes it perhaps seem necessary in the choice of persons for great employments (at least such as require constant application and pains) to consider their bodies as well as their minds, and ages and health as well as their abilities.”
Cervantes according to the Doctor clearly perceived this great truth, and went farther than Sir W. Temple, for he perceived also the practical application, though it was one of those truths which because it might have been dangerous for him to propound them seriously, he was fain to bring forward in a comic guise, leaving it for the wise to discover his meaning, and for posterity to profit by it. He knew—(_Daniel loquitur_) what did not Cervantes know?—that if Philip II. had committed himself to the superintendence of a Physician instead of a Father Confessor, many of the crimes and miseries by which his reign is so infamously distinguished, might have been prevented. A man of his sad spirit and melancholy complection to be dieted upon fish the whole forty days of Lent, two days in the week during the rest of the year, and on the eve of every holiday besides,—what could be expected but atrabilious thoughts, and cold-blooded resolutions? Therefore Cervantes appointed a Physician over Sancho in his Baratarian government: the humour of the scene was for all readers, the application for those who could penetrate beyond the veil, the benefit for happier ages when the art of Government should be better understood, and the science of medicine be raised to its proper station in the state.
Shakespere intended to convey the same political lesson, when he said “take physic pomp!” He used the word pomp instead of power, cautiously, for in those days it was a perilous thing to meddle with matters of state.
When the Philosopher Carneades undertook to confute Zeno the Stoic in public argument, (still reader _Daniel loquitur_) how did he prepare himself for the arduous disputation? by purging his head with hellebore, to the intent that the corrupt humours which ascended thither from the stomach should not disturb the seat of memory and judgment, and obscure his intellectual perception. The theory, Sir, was erroneous, but the principle is good. When we require best music from the instrument, ought we not first to be careful that all its parts are in good order, and if we find a string that jars, use our endeavours for tuning it?
It may have been the jest of a satirist that Dryden considered stewed prunes as the best means of putting his body into a state favourable for heroic composition; but that odd person George Wither tells us of himself that he usually watched and fasted when he composed, that his spirit was lost if at such times he tasted meat or drink, and that if he took a glass of wine he could not write a verse:—no wonder therefore that his verses were for the most part in a weak and watery vein.[2] Father Paul Sarpi had a still more extraordinary custom; it is not to an enemy, but to his friend and admirers that we are indebted for informing us with what care that excellent writer attended to physical circumstance as affecting his intellectual powers. For when he was either reading or writing, alone, “his manner,” says Sir Henry Wotton, “was to sit fenced with a castle of paper about his chair, and over head; for he was of our Lord of St. Alban's opinion _that all air is predatory_, and especially hurtful when the spirits are most employed.”
[Footnote 2: The Greek Proverb, adverted to by Horace in i. Epist. xix., was in the Doctor's thoughts.
_ὓδωρ δὲ πίνων οὐδὲν ἂν τέκοι σοφόν._]
There should be a State Physician to the King, besides his Physicians ordinary and extraordinary,—one whose sole business should be to watch over the royal health as connected with the discharge of the royal functions, a head keeper of the King's health.
For the same reason there ought to be a Physician for the Cabinet, a Physician for the Privy Council, a Physician for the Bench of Bishops, a Physician for the twelve Judges, two for the House of Lords, four for the House of Commons, one for the Admiralty, one for the War Office, one for the Directors of the East India Company, (there was no Board of Controul in the Doctor's days, or he would certainly have advised that a Physician should be placed upon that Establishment also): one for the Lord Mayor, two for the Common Council, four for the Livery. (He was speaking in the days of Wilkes and Liberty). How much mischief, said he, might have been prevented by cupping the Lord Mayor, blistering a few of the Aldermen, administering salts and manna to lower the pulse of civic patriotism, and keeping the city orators upon a low regimen for a week before every public meeting.
Then in the Cabinet what evils might be averted by administering laxatives or corroborants as the case required.
In the Lords and Commons, by clearing away bile, evacuating ill humours and occasionally by cutting for the simples.[3]
[Footnote 3: The probable origin of this Proverb is given in Grose's Dictionary of the vulgar tongue.]
While men are what they are, weak, frail, inconstant, fallible, peccable, sinful creatures,—it is in vain to hope that Peers and Commoners will prepare themselves for the solemn exercise of their legislative functions by fasting and prayer,—that so they may be better fitted for retiring into themselves, and consulting upon momentous questions the Urim and Thummim which God hath placed in the breast of every man. But even as Laws are necessary for keeping men within the limits of their duty when conscience fails, so in this case it should be part of the law of Parliament that what its Members will not do for themselves, the Physician should do for them. They should go through a preparatory course of medicine before every session, and be carefully attended as long as Parliament was sitting.
Traces of such a practice, as of many important and primeval truths, are found among savages, from whom the Doctor was of opinion that much might be learnt, if their customs were diligently observed and their traditions carefully studied. In one of the bravest nations upon the Mississippi, the warriors before they set out upon an expedition always prepared themselves by taking the Medicine of War, which was an emetic, about a gallon in quantity for each man, and to be swallowed at one draught. There are other tribes in which the Beloved Women prepare a beverage at the Physic Dance, and it is taken to wash away sin.
Here said the Doctor are vestiges of early wisdom, probably patriarchal and if so, revealed,—for he held that all needful knowledge was imparted to man at his creation. And the truth of the principle is shown in common language. There is often a philosophy in popular expressions and forms of speech, which escapes notice, because words are taken as they are uttered, at their current value and we rest satisfied with their trivial acceptation. We take them in the husk and the shell, but sometimes it is worth while to look for the kernel. Do we not speak of _sound_ and orthodox opinions,—_sound_ principles, _sound_ learning? _mens sana in corpore sano._ A sound mind is connected with a sound body, and sound and orthodox opinions result from the sanity of both. Unsound opinions are diseased ones, and therefore the factious, the heretical and the schismatic, ought to be put under the care of a physician.
“I have read of a gentleman,” says Cotton Mather, “who had an humour of making singular and fanciful expositions of scripture; but one Doctor Sim gave him a dose of physic, which when it had wrought, the gentleman became orthodox immediately and expounded at the old rate no more.”
Thus as the accurate and moderate and erudite Mosheim informs us, the French theologian Claude Pajon was of opinion that in order to produce that amendment of the heart which is called regeneration, nothing more is requisite than to put the body, if its habit is bad, into a sound state by the power of physic, and having done this, than to set truth and falsehood before the understanding, and virtue and vice before the will, clearly and distinctly in their genuine colours, so as that their nature and their properties may be fully apprehended. But the Doctor thought that Pajon carried his theory too far, and ought to have been physicked himself.
That learned and good man Barnabas Oley, the friend and biographer of the saintly Herbert, kept within the bounds of discretion, when he delivered an opinion of the same tendency. After showing what power is exercised by art over nature, 1st. in inanimate materials, 2dly. in vegetables, and 3dly. the largeness or latitude of its power over the memory, the imagination and locomotive faculties of sensitive creatures, he proceeds to the fourth rank, the rational, “which adds a diadem of excellency to the three degrees above mentioned, being an approach unto the nature angelical and divine.” “Now,” says he, “1st. in as much as the human body partly agrees with the first rank of materials inanimate, so can Art partly use it, as it uses them, to frame (rather to modify the frame of) it into great variety; the head thus, the nose so; and other ductile parts, as is seen and read, after other fashions. 2. Art can do something to the Body answerable to what Gardeners do to plants. If our Blessed Saviour's words (Matthew VI. 27.) deny all possibility of adding procerity or tallness to the stature, yet as the Lord Verulam notes to make the Body dwarfish, crook-shouldered (as some Persians did) to recover straightness, or procure slenderness, is in the power of Art. But, 3. much more considerable authority has it over the humours, either so to impel and enrage them, that like furious streams they shall dash the Body (that bottom wherein the precious Soul is embarked) against dangerous rocks, or run it upon desperate sands; or so to attemper and tune them, that they shall become like calm waters or harmonious instruments for virtuous habits, introduced by wholesome moral precepts, to practise upon. It is scarce credible what services the _Noble Science of Physic_ may do unto Moral, (_yea to Grace and Christian_) virtue, by prescribing diet to prevent, or medicine to allay the fervors and eruptions of humours, of blood, and of that _irriguum concupiscentiæ_, or _ὁ τροχὸς τῆς γενέσεως_, especially if these jewels, their recipes, light into obedient ears. These helps of bettering nature, are within her lowest and middle region of Diet and Medicine.”
A sensible woman of the Doctor's acquaintance, (the mother of a young family) entered so far into his views upon this subject, that she taught her children from their earliest childhood to consider ill-humour as a disorder which was to be cured by physic. Accordingly she had always small doses ready, and the little patients whenever it was thought needful took rhubarb _for the crossness_. No punishment was required. Peevishness or ill-temper and rhubarb were associated in their minds always as cause and effect.
There are Divines who have thought that melancholy may with advantage be treated in age, as fretfulness in this family was in childhood. Timothy Rogers, who having been long afflicted with Trouble of Mind and the Disease of Melancholy, wrote a discourse concerning both for the use of his fellow sufferers, says of Melancholy, that “it does generally indeed first begin at the body, and then conveys its venom to the mind; and if any thing could be found that might keep the blood and spirits in their due temper and motion, this would obstruct its further progress, and in a great measure keep the soul clear. I pretend not (he continues) to tell you what medicines are proper to remove it, and I know of none, I leave you to advise with such as are learned in the profession of Physic.” And then he quotes a passage from “old Mr. Greenham's Comfort for afflicted Consciences.” “If a Man,” saith old Mr. Greenham, “that is troubled in conscience come to a Minister, it may be he will look all to the Soul and nothing to the Body: if he come to a Physician he considereth the Body and neglecteth the Soul. For my part, I would never have the Physician's counsel despised, nor the labour of the Minister neglected: because the Soul and Body dwelling together,—it is convenient, that as the Soul should be cured by the Word, by Prayer, by Fasting, or by Comforting, so the Body must be brought into some temperature by physic, and diet, by harmless diversions and such like ways; providing always that it be so done in the fear of God, as not to think by these ordinary means quite to smother or evade our troubles, but to use them as preparatives, whereby our Souls may be made more capable of the spiritual methods which are to follow afterwards.”
But Timothy Bright, Doctor of Physic, is the person who had the most profound reverence for the medical art. “No one,” he said, “should touch so holy a thing that hath not passed the whole discipline of liberal sciences, and washed himself pure and clean in the waters of wisdom and understanding.” “O Timothy Bright, Timothy Bright,” said the Doctor, “rightly wert thou called Timothy Bright, for thou wert a Bright Timothy!” Nor art thou less deserving of praise, O Timothy Bright, say I, for having published an abridgement of the Book of Acts and Monuments of the Church, written by that Reverend Father Master John Fox, and by thee thus reduced into a more accessible form,—for such as either through want of leisure or ability, have not the use of so necessary a history.