Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3). Jonah Barrington

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СКАЧАТЬ sent for, and phlebotomy was resorted to as for apoplexy, which the seizure was pronounced to be. His head was shaved; and by the time he revived a little, he had three extensive blisters and a cataplasm preparing their stings for him.

      It was two days before he recovered sufficiently to tell his Mary of the horrid spectre that had assailed him – for he really thought he had been felled to the ground by a blow from the goblin. Nothing, indeed, could ever persuade him to the contrary, and he grew quite delirious.

      His reason returned slowly and scantily; and when assured it was only a looking-glass that was the cause of his terror, the assurance did not alter his belief. He pertinaciously maintained, that this was only a kind story invented to tranquillise him. “Oh, my dearest Mary!” said poor Conaghty, “I’m gone! – my day is come – I’m called away for ever. Oh! had you seen the frightful figure that struck me down, you could not have survived it one hour! Yet why should I fear the d – l? I’m not wicked, Mary! No, I’m not very wicked!”

      A thorough Irish servant, an old fellow whom the Counsellor had brought from Connaught, and who of course was well acquainted with supernatural appearances, and had not himself seen the fatal mirror, – discovered, as he thought, the real cause of the goblin’s visit, which he communicated to his mistress with great solemnity, as she afterward related.

      “Mistress,” said the faithful Dennis Brophy, “Mistress, it was all a mistake. By all the books in the master’s study, I’d swear it was only a mistake! – What harm did ever my master do nobody? and what would bring a d – l overhauling a Counsellor that did no harm? What say could he have to my master?”

      “Don’t teaze me, Dennis,” said the unhappy Mary; “go along! – go!”

      “I’ll tell you, mistress,” said he; “it was a d – l sure enough that was in it!”

      “Hush! nonsense!” said his mistress.

      “By J – s! it was the d – l, or one of his gossoons,” persisted Dennis; “but he mistook the house, mistress, and that’s the truth of it!”

      “What do you mean?” said the mistress.

      “Why, I mane that you know Mr. – lives on one side of us, and Mr. – lives at the other side, and they are both attornies, and the people say they’ll both go to him: and so the d – l, or his gossoon, mistook the door, and you see he went off again when he found it was my master that was in it, and not an attorney, mistress.”

      All efforts to convince Conaghty he was mistaken were vain. The illusion could not be removed from his mind; he had received a shock which affected his whole frame; a constipation of the intestines took place; and in three weeks, the poor fellow manifested the effects of groundless horror in a way which every one regretted.

      FORMER STATE OF MEDICINE IN IRELAND

      Remarks on Sir Charles Morgan’s account of the Former State of Medicine in Italy – The author’s studies in the Anatomical Theatre of Dublin University – Dr. Burdet – Former importance of farriers and colloughs – Jug Coyle, and her powers of soliloquy – Larry Butler, the family farrier, described – Luminous and veritable account of the ancient colloughs – The faculty of the present day – Hoynhymms and Yahoos – Hydrophobia in Ireland, and its method of cure.

      Doctor Sir Charles Morgan has given us, at the conclusion of his lady’s excellent work “Italy,” the state of “medicine” in that country. Our old cookery books, in like manner, after exquisite receipts for all kinds of dainties, to suit every appetite, generally finished a luxurious volume with remedies for the “bite of a mad dog – for scald heads – ague – burns – St. Anthony’s fire – St. Vitus’s dance – the tooth-ache,” &c. &c. Now, though the Doctor certainly did not take the cooks by way of precedent, that is no reason why I should not indulge my whim by citing both examples, and garnishing this volume with “the state of medicine in Ireland” fifty years ago.

      I do not, however, mean to depreciate the state of medicine in these days of “new lights” and novelties, when old drugs and poisons are nicknamed, and every recipe is a rebus to an old apothecary. Each son of Galen now strikes out his own system; composes his own syllabus; and finishes his patients according to his own proper fancy. When a man dies after a consultation (which is generally the case – the thing being often decided by experiment) – there is no particular necessity for any explanation to widows, legatees, or heirs-at-law; the death alone of any testator being a sufficient apology to his nearest and dearest relatives for the failure of a consultation – that is, if the patient left sufficient property behind him.

      My state of Irish medicine, therefore, relates to those “once on a time” days, when sons lamented their fathers,4 and wives could weep over expiring husbands; when every root and branch of an ancient family became as black as rooks for the death of a blood relation, though of almost incalculable removal. In those times the medical old woman and the surgeon-farrier – the bone-setter and the bleeder – were by no means considered contemptible practitioners among the Christian population – who, in common with the dumb beasts, experienced the advantages of their miscellaneous practice.

      An anatomical theatre being appended to the University of Dublin, whenever I heard of a fresh subject, or remarkable corpse, being obtained for dissection, I frequently attended the lectures, and many were the beauteous women and fine young fellows then carved into scraps and joints pro bono publico.5 I thereby obtained a smattering of information respecting our corporeal clockwork; and having, for amusement, skimmed over “Cullen’s First Lines,” “Every Man his Own Doctor,” “Bishop Berkeley on Tar Water,” and “Sawny Cunningham on the Virtues of Fasting Spittle,” I almost fancied myself qualified for a diploma. A Welsh aunt of mine, also, having married Doctor Burdet, who had been surgeon of the Wasp sloop of war, and remarkable for leaving the best stumps of any naval practitioner, he explained to me the use of his various instruments for tapping, trepanning, raising the shoulder-blades, &c. &c.: but when I had been a short time at my father’s in the country, I found that the farriers and old women performed, either on man or beast, twenty cures for one achieved by the doctors and apothecaries. I had great amusement in conversing with these people, and perceived some reason in their arguments.

      As to the farriers, I reflected, that as man is only a mechanical animal, and a horse one of the same description, there was no reason why a drug that was good for a pampered gelding might not also be good for the hard-goer mounted on him. In truth, I have seen instances where, in point both of intellect and endurance, there was but very little distinction between the animals – save that the beverage of the one was water, and that of the other was punch– and, in point of quantity, there was no great difference between them in this matter either.

      At that time there was seldom more than one regular doctor in a circuit of twenty miles, and a farrier never came to physic a gentleman’s horse that some boxes of pills were not deducted from his balls, for the general use of the ladies and gentlemen of the family; and usually succeeded vastly better than those of the apothecary.

      The class of old women called colloughs were then held in the highest estimation, as understanding the cure (that is if God pleased) of all disorders. Their materia medica did not consist of gums, resins, minerals, and hot iron, – as the farriers’ did; but of leaves of bushes, bark of trees, weeds from churchyards, and mushrooms from fairy grounds; rue, garlic, rosemary, birds’-nests, foxglove, &c.: in desperate cases they sometimes found it advisable to put a charm into the bolus or stoop, and then it was sure to be “firm and good.” I never could find СКАЧАТЬ