Part 8

It is suggested by Mr. John Noake, however, that these mountebanks were riders or posturers, and that the amount was the charge made for the permission accorded them to perform in the city. Later in the century, the eccentric Earl of Rochester, on one occasion, played the mountebank on Tower Hill, and the example was followed by more than one comedian of the next century. Leveridge and Penkethman, actors well known at Bartholomew Fair for many years, appeared at country fairs as "Doctor Leverigo and his Jack-Pudding Pinkanello," as also did Haines as "Watho Van Claturbank, High German Doctor." The discourse of the latter was published as a broadside, headed with an engraving representing him addressing a crowd from a stage, with a bottle of medicine in his right hand. Beside him stands a Harlequin, and in the rear a man with a plumed hat blows a trumpet. A gouty patient occupies a high-backed arm-chair, and an array of boxes and bottles is seen at the back of the stage.

"Having studied Galen, Hypocrates, Albumazar, and Paracelsus," says the discourse thus headed, "I am now become the Esculapius of the age; having been educated at twelve universities, and travelled through fifty-two kingdoms, and been counsellor to the counsellors of several monarchs. By the earnest prayers and entreaties of several lords, earls, dukes, and honourable personages, I have been at last prevailed upon to oblige the world with this notice, that all persons, young or old, blind or lame, deaf and dumb, curable or incurable, may know where to repair for cure, in all cephalalgias, paralytic paroxysms, palpitations of the pericardium, empyemas, syncopes, and nasieties; arising either from a plethory or a cachochymy, vertiginous vapours, hydrocephalus dysenteries, odontalgic or podagrical inflammations, and the entire legion of lethiferous distempers.... This is Nature's palladium, health's magazine; it works seven manner of ways, as Nature requires, for it scorns to be confined to any particular mode of operation; so that it affecteth the cure either hypnotically, hydrotically, cathartically, poppismatically, pneumatically, or synedochically; it mundifies the hypogastrium, extinguishes all supernatural fermentations and ebullitions, and, in fine, annihilates all nosotrophical morbific ideas of the whole corporeal compages. A drachm of it is worth a bushel of March dust; for, if a man chance to have his brains beat out, or his head dropped off, two drops--I say two drops! gentlemen--seasonably applied, will recall the fleeting spirit, re-enthrone the deposed archeus, cement the discontinuity of the parts, and in six minutes restore the lifeless trunk to all its pristine functions, vital, natural, and animal; so that this, believe me, gentlemen, is the only sovereign remedy in the world. _Venienti occurite morbo._--Down with your dust. _Principiis obsta._--No cure no money. _Quaerendo pecunia primum._--Be not sick too late."

The mountebanking quack flourished in great state in the first half of the last century. "A Tour through England," published in 1723, gives the following account of one whom the author saw at Winchester:--"As I was sitting at the George Inn, I saw a coach with six bay horses, a calash and four, a chaise and four, enter the inn, in a yellow livery, turned up with red; four gentlemen on horseback, in blue, trimmed with silver: and as yellow is the colour given by the dukes in England, I went out to see what duke it was; but there was no coronet on the coach, only a plain coat-of-arms on each, with this motto: ARGENTO LABORAT FABER. Upon enquiry, I found this great equipage belonged to a mountebank, and that his name being Smith, the motto was a pun upon his name. The footmen in yellow were his tumblers and trumpeters, and those in blue his merry-andrew, his apothecary, and his spokesman. He was dressed in black velvet, and had in his coach a woman that danced on the ropes. He cures all diseases, and sells his packets for sixpence a-piece. He erected stages in all the market towns twenty miles round; and it is a prodigy how so wise a people as the English are gulled by such pickpockets. But his amusements on the stage are worth the sixpence, without the pills. In the morning he is dressed up in a fine brocade night-gown, for his chamber practice, when he gives advice, and gets large fees."

A passage in a letter written by the second Lord Lyttelton, about the year 1774, shows that this style of travelling was then still kept up by mountebanks. He says:--"As a family party of us were crossing the road on the side of Hagley Park, a chaise passed along, followed by a couple of attendants with French horns. Who can that be, said my father? Some itinerant mountebank, replied I, if one may judge from his musical followers. I really spoke with all the indifference of an innocent mind: nor did it occur to me that the Right Reverend Father in God, my uncle, had sometimes been pleased to travel with servants similarly accoutred." Nearly twenty years later, the famous quack, Katerfelto, travelled through Durham in a carriage, with a pair of horses, and attended by two negro servants in green liveries, with red collars. In the towns he visited these men were sent round to announce his lectures on electricity and the microscope, blowing trumpets, and distributing hand-bills.

There seems to be good ground for believing that among what may be called the amateur mountebanks, such as Rochester, we must count the author of "Tristram Shandy." Dr. Dibdin found in the possession of Mr. James Atkinson, a medical practitioner at York, a rather roughly executed picture, in oil colours, representing a mountebank and his zany on a stage, surrounded by a crowd. An inscription described the former as Mr. T. Brydges, and the latter as the Rev. Laurence Sterne. Mr. Atkinson, who was an octogenarian, told Dr. Dibdin that his father had been acquainted with Sterne, who was a good amateur draughtsman, and that he and Brydges each painted the other's portrait in the picture. The story is a strange one, but before it is dismissed as unworthy of belief, it must be remembered that the clerical story-writer was a droll and whimsical character, and at no time much influenced by his priestly vocation. It is quite conceivable, therefore, that he may have indulged in such a freak on some occasion during the period of his life in which he developed his worst moral deficiencies.

In the early years of the present century, a German quack, named Bossy, used to mount a stage on Tower Hill and Covent Garden Market alternately, in order, as he said, that both ends of London might profit by his experience and skill. It is said that on one of these occasions, when he had induced an old woman to mount his stage in the latter place, and relate the wonderful cures the doctor had performed upon her, a parrot that had learned some coarse language from the porters and costermongers frequenting the market, and sometimes used it in a manner that seemed very apt to the occasion, exclaimed, "Lying old ----!" when the old woman concluded her narrative. The roar of laughter with which this criticism was received by the rough audience disconcerted Bossy for a moment; but quickly recovering his presence of mind, he stepped forward, with his hand on his heart, and gravely replied, "It is no lie, you wicked bird!--it is all true as is de Gospel!" Bossy attained considerable reputation, and ended his days with a fair competence.

The mountebank has long fallen from his former high estate. The quack may still be found vending his pills in the open-air markets of Yorkshire and Lancashire; but he does not mount a stage, and resembles his predecessors of the last century only in the fluency and volubility of his discourse on the virtues of his potions, pills, and plasters. The author of the paper on mountebanks in the "Book of Days" (edited by Robert Chambers), states that he saw one at York about 1860, who "sold medicines on a stage in the old style, but without the Merry Andrew or the music," and adds that "he presented himself in shabby black clothes, with a dirty white neck-cloth." Even the name had long before that time ceased to be connected with the vending of medicines, and had come to be applied to those itinerant circus companies who gave gratuitous performances in the open air, making their gains by the sale of lottery tickets. The present writer remembers seeing the circus company of John Clarke performing on a piece of waste ground at Lower Norwood, when the clown of the show went among the spectators selling tickets at a shilling each, entitling the holder to participate in a drawing, the prizes in which were Britannia metal tea pots and milk ewers, papier mache tea trays, cotton gown pieces, etc. That must have been about 1835, or within a year or two of that time.

Only a few years later, a lottery in sixpenny shares was similarly conducted at Alfreton, in Derbyshire, and probably in many other places, though contrary to the provisions of the Lottery Act.

The mountebank doctor of former times, with his carriage, his zany, and his musicians, can now only be met with in the provincial towns of France and Italy, and even there but seldom. Thirty or forty years ago, there was a man who, in a carriage drawn up behind the Louvre, used to practise dentistry and advertise his father, who had a flourishing dentist's practice in one of the narrow streets near the cathedral of Notre Dame. Another of this fraternity was seen at Marseilles by an English tourist a few years later, and in this instance some musicians accompanied the mountebank's phaeton, and drowned the cries of the suffering patients with the crash of a march. But these survivals remind us rather of _Belphegor_, in the pathetic drama of that name, than of _Dulcamara_ in the opera of _L'Elisor d'Amore_, with his gorgeous equipage and his musical attendants, as old play-goers remember the personation of the character by the famous Lablache.

The Strange Story of the Fight with the Small-Pox.

BY THOMAS FROST.

When, at the present day, we hear of an epidemic of small-pox in some town where the practice of vaccine inoculation has been neglected, it is both instructive and consolatory to turn our thoughts back to the time, before the introduction of that practice, when that horrible disease caused ten per cent, of all the deaths in excess of those occurring in the ordinary course of nature. This statement, startling as it may seem to the present generation, may be verified by reference to the annual bills of mortality of the city of London. This fearful state of things had prevailed in England from the time of the Plantagenets, when, in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, a gleam of light was flashed upon the medical darkness of western Europe from the east. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing from Adrianople to a lady friend in the spring of 1717, flashed that light in the concluding portion of her letter, as follows:--

"Apropos of distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that will make you wish yourself here. The small-pox, so fatal and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention of _ingrafting_, which is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn, in the month of September, when the great heat is abated. People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox; they make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together), the old woman comes with a nut-shell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle, and after that binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell, and in this manner opens four or five veins.

... Every year thousands undergo this operation; and the French ambassador says pleasantly, that they take the small-pox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any one that has died in it; and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it on my own little son."

This intention she carried into practice, and on her return to England made great exertions to introduce inoculation into general use. The medical profession opposed it so strongly, however, that for many years the horrible distemper continued to rage unchecked. Such announcements as the following were, in consequence, not unfrequent in the newspapers:--

"WHEREAS the TOWN of BURY ST. EDMUND'S, where the GENERAL QUARTER SESSIONS of the PEACE of that Division are usually held, is now afflicted with the Small-Pox, for which reason it might be of exceeding ill consequence to the Country in General to hold the Sessions there; This is, therefore, to acquaint the PUBLIC that the next GENERAL QUARTER SESSIONS of the Peace will be held at the sign of the PICKEREL in IXWORTH, on Monday next.

"COCKSEDGE, Clerk of the Peace."

Later on in the same year (1744) an advertisement appeared, signed by the clergy, churchwardens, and medical practitioners of the town, stating that "there were only twenty-one persons then lying ill of the small-pox." Scarcely a week passed, in those days, without advertisements appearing of the number of cases of the disease in certain towns. Careful study of a large number of these announcements shows, however, that it was only thought desirable to advertise when the epidemic was thought to be abating, or when it had abated. Take the following, for instance:--

"Nov. 4, 1755.

"Upon the strictest Inquiry made of the present state of the SMALL-POX in BECCLES, it appears to be in eleven houses, and no more, and that the truth may be constantly known, the same will be weekly advertised alternately in the Ipswich and Norwich papers by us,

"THO. PAGE, Rector. "OSM. CLARKE and IS. BLOWERS, Churchwardens."

In the following year we find it announced that, "upon a strict inquiry made by the clerks through their respective parishes, delivered to us, and attested by them, there is but six persons now afflicted with the small-pox in this town,"--to wit, Colchester--and this statement is signed by three ministers and six medical practitioners. In the _Ipswich Journal_ of Jan. 22nd, 1757, the following appeared:--"There will be no fair this year at Bildestone on Ash Wednesday, as usual, by reason of the small-pox being in several parishes not far off."

The practice of inoculation, though still frowned upon by a large proportion of the medical profession, was growing at this time, as appears from the following advertisement:--

"COLCHESTER, May 12, 1762.

"The Practice of bringing people out of the country into this town to be inoculated for the Small-pox being very prejudicial to the town in many respects, but especially to the Trade thereof, and as by this practice the distemper may be continued much longer in the town than it otherwise would, in all probability, it is thought proper by some of the principal inhabitants and traders in the town, that this public notice should be given that they are determined to prosecute any person or persons whomsoever, that shall hereafter bring into this town, or who shall receive into their houses in the town as lodgers, any person or persons for that purpose, with the utmost severity that the law will permit.... But that they might not be thought discouragers of a practice so salutary and beneficial to mankind, as inoculation is found to be, which encourages great numbers to go into the practice, the persons who have caused this public notice to be given have no objection to surgeons carrying on the practice in houses properly situated for the purpose."

The "great numbers" of persons referred to in this notice as having "gone into the practice" of inoculation for the small-pox appear to have been chiefly old women, as in Turkey, and by some of these it was carried on until the passing of the Vaccination Act in 1840. Five guineas was the fee advertised in the _Ipswich Journal_ in 1761 for performing the operation by Robert Sutton, an operator in Kent, who announced that he had "only met with but one accident out of the many hundreds he has had under his cure."

The prevalence of this hideous disease in the last century, and the dread which it inspired, is curiously attested by the frequency with which advertisements for servants, etc., appeared in the newspapers, in which there was an express stipulation that applicants must have had the small-pox. A housemaid or footman whose face bore the traces of this disease would not, at the present day, find their appearance much in their favour: but the following selection of advertisements, culled from the _Ipswich Journal_ and the _Salisbury and Winchester Journal_, show that in the last century the marks would increase their chances of obtaining employment very considerably. The dates range from 1755 to 1781, and such announcements might be increased to any extent.

"A Three Years' APPRENTICE is wanted to use the Sea between Manningtree and London, whose age is between 18 and 25 years, and has had the Small-pox. Such a one, inquiring of MR. WM. LEACH, at Mistley Thorne, in Essex, will hear of good encouragement."

"WANTED, about Michaelmas, as Coachman, in a gentleman's family, who can drive four horses, and ride postillion well. A Single Man, must have had the Small-pox, and know how to drive in London. Such an one, who can be well recommended, by giving a description of himself, his age, and abilities, in a letter directed to A. B., at MR. J. KENDALL'S, in COLCHESTER, may hear of a very good place."

"WANTED, a JOURNEYMAN BAKER, that is a good workman, and has had the SMALL-POX. Such a person may hear of a good place by applying to MR. JOHN STOW, at Sudbury, or to the Printer of this paper."

"Wanted an Apprentice to an eminent Surgeon in full practice in the county of Suffolk. If he has not had the Small-Pox, it is expected he will be inoculated for it, before he enters on business.--Enquire of JOHN FOX, at Dedham, Essex."

"COLCHESTER, June 15th, 1762.

"Wanted immediately, a Stout Lad as an Apprentice to a Currier. If he can write it will be the more agreeable. Inquire further of ELEANOR ONYON. N.B.--If he has not had the Small-pox, he need not apply."

"WANTED for a gentleman that lives most part of the year in London, A Genteel Person, between 28 and 40 years of age, that has had the Small-pox, to be as Companion and Housekeeper. One that has been brought up in a genteel, frugal and handsome manner, either a Maid or Widow, so they have no incumbrances."

"WANTED, a NURSEMAID. None need apply who cannot bring a good character from their last place; and has had the Small-pox."

"WANTS a place in a large or small family, in town or country, a YOUNG MAN, who is well versed in the different branches of a Gardener, has had the Small-pox, and can write a good hand."

"WANTED, in a large family, a STOUT WOMAN, about 30, single, or a widow without children, who has had the Small-pox, to take care of a lusty child, under a year old. Her character must be unexceptionable, and by no means a fashionable dresser, and lived in families of credit. Any person answering this description may enquire of MRS. MERCER, at the Star and Garter, Andover, and be further informed."

It was about the time when the last of these advertisements appeared that Jenner commenced his inquiries concerning the prophylactic virtues of cow-pox, though nearly twenty years elapsed before they were sufficiently advanced to enable him to make the results known. His idea of using vaccine inoculation to bring about the total extinction of small pox was scouted by those of his professional brethren to whom he mentioned it, and we learn from one of his biographers that, at the outset, "both his own observation and that of other medical men of his acquaintance proved to him that what was commonly called cow-pox was not a certain preventive of small-pox. But he ascertained by assiduous inquiry and personal investigation that cows were liable to various kinds of eruption on their teats, all capable of being communicated to the hands of the milkers; and that such sores when so communicated were all called cow-pox." But when he had traced out the nature of these various diseases, and ascertained which of them possessed the protective virtue against small-pox, he was again foiled by learning that in some cases when what he now called the true cow-pox broke out among the cattle on a dairy farm, and had been communicated to the milkers, they subsequently had small-pox. These repeated failures perplexed him, but at the same time stimulated, instead of discouraging him. He conceived the idea that the virus of cow-pox might undergo some change which deprived it of its protective power, while still enabling it to communicate a disease to human beings. Following up the inquiry from this point, he at length discovered that the virus was capable of imparting protection against small-pox only in a certain condition of the pustule.

He was now prepared to submit his theory to the test of experiment, but it was not until 1796 that he had the opportunity. A dairymaid, who had contracted cow-pox from one of her employer's cows, afforded the matter, and Jenner introduced it into two incisions in the arms of a boy about eight years of age. The disease thus transferred ran its ordinary course without any ill effects, and the boy was afterwards inoculated with the virus of small pox, which produced no effect. The disappearance of the cow-pox from the dairies in the neighbourhood of his country practice in Gloucestershire prevented him from making further experiments; and when he visited London for that purpose, he had the mortification of finding that no one could be found who would consent to be operated upon. It was not until 1798 that this obstacle was overcome, and then, the results of the earlier experiments having been confirmed by a series of vaccinations, followed by inoculation for small-pox several months afterwards without effect, Jenner made his discovery public.