THE HEALING ART.* EMMY in last year, we noticed in

our columns a very interesting work, entitled Eminent Doctors, written by Mr. Bettany, who is connected with one of our great hospitals as Professor of Botany. In that book, the writer was content to give a biographical record of medicine as it has been practised in our own country. The anonymous author of The Healing Art is more ambitious, and carries the reader back to the physicians of Greece and Arabia, to the Latin school, with which is associated the name of Coleus, and to the physicians of the Middle Ages, who were generally alchemists also. The history of English medicine and of surgery occupies a large portion of the book, and a chapter full of curious information is devoted to "Herbs and Simples." We may say at the outset that this bock, like Mr. Bettany's, is something better than a compilation. The author is, we suspect, familiar with the practice as well as the theory of medicine. Not only are his facts brought forward with dis- crimination and fullness of knowledge, but in the judgment passed upon them there is a definiteness of utterance hardly to be looked for from a layman. The work is fruitful in sug- gestiveness, and will admit of being judged from several stand- points. It will suffice for our purpose to touch on a few of the topics which are likely to be most attractive to the general reader.

It is strange to think how, after centuries of medical study, many of the greatest discoveries in medicine and surgery should have been made almost within living memory. Indeed, as Macaulay has somewhere observed, the poorest man of our day has the advantage of medical skill such as our monarchs could not command a century or two ago. There is no science that seems to have advanced with such slow and uncertain steps as medicine. " Physiology," says the writer, " as everybody knows, is a comparatively recent creation, and in chemistry the greatest achievements have been made within the last hundred years.

We are still in the dark as to some of the most important of the phenomena of cerebral action; the heart still presents mysteries which we have failed to resolve ; even of the remedial agents which we employ our knowledge is vague and imperfect, and the principle of life still eludes our search." But go back for a period which is but brief in the history of the world, and see how striking the advance has been. Harvey's great discovery, which has, we suppose, done more than any other to enlarge medical science, belongs, be it remembered, to the seventeenth century, when it was received at first, as almost all important discoveries have been, with incredulity and contempt. Sydenham, in the eame century, was the first to follow the two main principles of the inductive philo- sophy, observation and experience, " and the direction which he gave to the English practice of Medicine it has ever since followed, to the almost total disuse or exclusion of systematic theory." To the same age belong John Hunter, one of the greatest of anatomists—of whom Sir James Paget has said, that " never before or since was any one a thorough investigator and student in so wide a range of sciences "—and Edward Jenner, who has received the gratitude of the world. "To him," says the author, " should be paid as great a tribute of honour and admiration as that which we so willingly give to the inventors who multiply capital" We venture to say a much larger tribute, for it is impossible to exaggerate the horrors of small-pox when that disease lived and flourished amongst us. Vaccination began on January 21st, 1799, so that there may be persons now living who were born before Jenner's discovery was turned to practical account :-

"The worst and most imperfect vaccination is estimated to be forty-seven times better than none at all, and the beet vaccination is more than thirty times as effective as the worst. Bat of 11,000 cases of small-pox, it has been found that the unvaccinated die at the rate of 37 per cent., while the vaccinated die at the rate of only 6} ; and of these the thoroughly vaccinated, showing four or more cicatrices, represent no more than 0'55."

There is but one discovery since Jenner's time that can vie with it in importance, and it may be questioned whether it has not and will not relieve an even larger amount of human misery,— we allude, of course, to the use of anssathetics in surgery, a

• The Healing Art. 2 vole. London Ward and Downey.

discovery belonging to our own day, and one which is almost as welcome to the operator as to his patient. The use—thanks to Simpson—of anmsthetics in surgical operations, and the anti- septic treatment for which surgery is indebted to Sir Joseph Lister, render possible operations that would have been wholly impracticable half-a.century ago. With these aids, one of our greatest surgeons, Sir Spencer Wells, has achieved his great success in ovariotomy, and has saved hundreds of useful lives. So much, too, is known of which our fathers were ignorant with regard to the laws of health and of disease, that the modern doctor, if he is unable to mire, has at least sense enough not to kill.

A celebrated physician, who lived in the days when the lancet and calomel were in constant use, is reported to have said he did not know whether he had done more good than harm by the exercise of his profession, and the wits have always made free with the killing powers of the Faculty. " I died last night of my physician," sang Prior ; and here is an epigram similar in suggestion upon three physicians of George III. :— " The King employed three doctors daily, Willis, Heberden, and Baillie; All exceedingly clever men, Baillie, Willis, Heberden ; But doubtful which most sore to kill is, Baillie, Heberden, or Willis."

The author quotes a rather brutal epigram addressed to the fat Dr. Cheyne, which ends as follows :—

" Doctor, one more prescription try (A friend's advice forgive) Eat grass, reduce thyself, and die ;— Thy patients then may live."

Such effusions directed against " medicine men" have lost their point in our day, or, if we still laugh at a jest against them, it is with no lurking suspicion that the half of it may be true.

The art of medicine is to a large extent empirical still, but the symptoms of disease and the remedies to be applied are far better understood, while the modern Pharmacopoeia includes invaluable drugs, such as quinine and ipecacuanha, which were unknown to the ancients. The modern physician has so in- creased the extent of his knowledge, that he is the more conscious of his ignorance, and, as far as he can do so, waits on Nature, trusting to her help, and moving obstacles out of her way. The story of the art of healing shows that this attitude was not recog- nised in former days, and that for long ages doctor and patient were equally credulous, and in some respects almost equally ignorant. To prove this, we need not go back to the days of Hippocrates or Galen. Possibly, as the author suggests, the old amulets and talismans, in which so much reliance was placed in the early ages of Christianity, were no greater proof of credulity than the belief in patent medicines is in ours ; but this and similar beliefs are, one may hope, now confined to the vulgar, while through the Middle Ages, and up to a recent period, they were shared with the learned.

The gift of healing scrofula and similar diseases, claimed for centuries by our Kings, lasted, as we know, to the age of Queen Anne, and the service used on the occasion can be read in the Common Prayer-Book printed in her reign. That very sacred King, Charles IL—if we may believe an eye-witness, one of his own surgeons—performed many hundreds of cares, and is said to have touched in twenty-one years upwards of 92,000 sufferers. " God give you better health and more sense," was the benedic- tion of William III over the only person he could be persuaded to touch. The writer observes that though the belief in the virtue of the Royal touch was a silly superstition, it was not, as Macaulay terms it, an imposture, since patients were often cured by the impression produced on the nervous system, the excitement caused by the Royal touch in cases of scrofula cawing a freer flow of blood to the part affected.

The remedies given by a physician in former days appeared to be often founded on conjecture, and were sometimes worse than the disease. Carden, a man of great genius, and as much renowned for mathematics as for medical skill, wrote a prescrip- tion composed of pearls, gems, and the bone of a unicorn ; and when troubled with sleeplessness, he relates that he applied bear's grease to seventeen places on the body. Carden, who, by- the-way, was summoned in the last illness of Edward VI., was very superstitious. His son had been executed for poisoning his wife, and the father, in a dream, heard a voice telling him to put into his month the emerald he wore round his neck, and that would enable him to forget his son. He did so, he says, with such good results' that he was always oppressed when he could not have the stone between his lips.

The ingredients of some recipes must have perplexed the com- pounder. Paracelsus advised a sick person to take a magnet impregnated with mummy and mixed with earth, and to sow seeds in the earth that had a congruity with the disease, so that it might be transferred from the body to the seed ; and his pre- seription for the famous weapon-salve was compounded of moss from the head of a thief who has been hanged and left in the air; of real mummy and human blood, one ounce each, of human suet, two ounces, and of other ingredients more easily obtained. "The sword, after being dipped in the blood from the wound, was to be carefully anointed with this precious mixture and laid by in a cool place." Flndd, who received his doctor's degree from Oxford, applied this quack remedy with great success, not forgetting, however, to cleanse and bandage his patients' wounds. The weapon-salve is referred to by several of our dramatists, and, like Sir Kenelm Digby's " sympathetic powder," was supposed to heal at a distance. It was often thought that a medicine, to be efficacious, must necessarily be disgusting, and assuredly the doctors in years gone by were not nice in their prescriptions. A regimen which was to ensure old age consisted of chickens that were to be fattened for two months on a broth made of serpents and vinegar thickened with wheat and bran, and Baxter writes that he was once restored from illness "by the mercy of God, and the help of Dr. Bates, and the moss of a dead man's skull which I had from Dr. Micklethewait." In the eighteenth century, a Scotch doctor named John Brown won a great reputation by recommending a more agreeable regime than that generally in vogue, of which the following illustration is given in The Healing Art. The prescription was for a hypo- chondriacal patient :- " For breakfast, toast and rich soup made on a slow fire, a walk before breakfast, and a good deal after it ; a glass of wine in the fore- noon from time to time ; good broth or soup to dinner, with meat of any kind he likes, but always the most nourishing ; several glasses of port or punch, to be taken after dinner till some enlivening effect is per- ceived from them, and a dram after everything heavy ; one hour and a half after dinner, another walk ; between tea-time and supper, a game with cheerful company at cards or any other play, never too pro- longed ; a little light reading ; jocose, humonrous company, avoiding that of popular Presbyterian ministers and their admirers, and all hypocrites and thieves of any description. Lastly, the company of amiable, handsome, and delightful young women, and an enlivening glass."

"One cannot read," adds the writer, "this remarkable formula without a suspicion that Brown was laughing in his sleeve at his patient or the public when he enunciated it."

Of quacks and enthusiasts who have dabbled successfully in medicine, the writer has much to tell that is full of interest. The influence of the imagination in a large class of diseases is not to be questioned, and to this is due the cures achieved by men like Mesmer and Valentine Greatrakes. Whatever mysterious virtue there may be in animal magnetism, there can be no doubt that Mesmer was himself an arrant impostor. He declared that he had magnetised the sun, and when sent for to M. Campan, who was suffering from inflammation, he assured Madame Campan that the only way to restore her husband to health was to place in his bed a brown young woman, a black hen, or a black bottle. " Madame Campan preferred very naturally the use of the black bottle. It was tried, but without effect, and M. Campan's illness became more serious. In great anxiety his wife left the sick-room, and during her absence Mesmer bled and blistered his patient with good effect. How- ever, when he recovered, Mesmer demanded and obtained from him a certificate that he had been cured by Mesmerism." Greatrakes, a man of exemplary moral con- duct, was more of a fanatic than an impostor. He believed that every disease was due to the presence of a devil, which had to be expelled before the patient could recover. Much that he effected seems to have been due to rubbing, a popular modern remedy ; but " occasionally a few wild passes were sufficient, or the demon would retreat at the physician's command, or would be terrified into flight by a glance from his expressive eyes." The common people regarded him as a prophet, and his gift of healing as miraculous, and such numbers crowded to be cured, that at one time he had no leisure to attend to his private business or to see his friends. And the faith in him and the demand upon his services were all the greater as he refused payment for his labours. One cure effected by Greatrakes is attested by Andrew Marvell and Thomas Ellwood, the well- known friends of Milton. He outlived his wonderful popularity, which did not last long, and many were the jests written or uttered at his expense. Readers familiar with the literature published by the " spiritualists" of our time will probably be

of opinion that men and women of all ranks are as ready to be deceived as their forefathers. We no longer believe in witch- craft. We do not use metallic tractors or sympathetic powder, and the tongues that perplexed the soul of Irving are no longer heard. In other ways, however, superstition ie still rife ; it is the form only that is changed.

There are chapters in The Healing Art to which we must be content to direct the reader's attention. One on "Medicine and Literature" is very pleasantly written, and if the chapter about "Great Epidemics" treats of a familiar theme, it is none the less worthy of perusal. A few slight errors and misprints will no doubt be corrected should the book reach a second edition.