456 Notes of the Month on OcT. 



prodigiously, and as evidently feels his chief grievance in the cruelty of 

 the reporters, who, as he says, have not given any idea of the pleasantry 

 of his style of cross-examining the jury, and every body. Sir Anthony, 

 on the other hand, is very pleasant too, and very impudent to the old 

 general, whom he accuses of " squinting/' of not knowing the distinc- 

 tion between a doctor of physic and a doctor of laws, music, or horse- 

 medicine, and of being a little out of practice in his grammar. 



The true secret is, the old general's expecting the knight's advice 

 without a fee! Sir Anthony was of course too professional to suffer the 

 general to get any thing to the purpose out of him ; and talking 

 nonsense, d propos, he left the old Scotchman and old soldier (as tough 

 and money-loving a combination as any under the sun), to make the 

 most of his gratis opinion. All the world knew already the value of 

 i { physic, and law for nothing," and we suppose the general, who writes 

 gaily (for a man married a second time), has now got experience enough 

 to make him think a guinea saved not worth a coroner's inquest, for 

 the rest of his days. 



At the same time, the regular professors may take some hints from St. 

 John Long. His practice of drawing inflammation from one part of the 

 frame, where it is dangerous, to another part where it may be com- 

 paratively harmless, is one of those old practices which modern science 

 has foolishly forgotten. Yet there can be nothing more undoubted than 

 the advantages often to be derived from it. By-exciting disease in a 

 limb it has often been withdrawn from a vital part, as the gout excited 

 in the toe prevents it from being the disease of the heart. Another of 

 the blunders of modern science is that of conceiving that inflammation 

 constitutes the cause of decay in consumptive habits. This is error the 

 first in the case. And that this inflammation is, like the inflammation of 

 a drunkard's veins, to be cured by exhausting the patient. This is error 

 'the second. The fact resulting from the whole of this fine theory is, that 

 the patient slips from the doctor's fingers into the sexton's, and is troubled, 

 and troubles no more. He dies under the operation of cure. Theory 

 triumphs in the fulfilment of its duty, the doctor writes it down in his 

 journal as a new case of sound practice, and consumption is decreed to 

 be an incurable disease for a century to come. But our wise men must 

 now look again to their theory. St. John Long's grand panacea is the due 

 application of beef and mutton. With the beef-steak and the cutlet he 

 faces the enemy, throws potion and pill to the dogs, and bids the delicate 

 grow plump as fast as they can, and the given-over walk in the face of 

 (lay, call on their physicians in defiance, and either challenge them to a 

 meeting in Hyde-Park, or laugh them out of the regions of the 

 fashionable. To this it must come at last, and soon too. For our 

 part, we would not trust any thing to the reputation of a doctor in a 

 difficult case. For, to the disgrace of medicine, the whole of it, in the 

 higher branches, is what we call theory in the man who has taken out 

 his diploma, and what we call charlatanery in the man who has never 

 stepped within college walls. But let our doctors try the beef-steak 

 system. The inhaling gas goes for nothing with us, though it obviously 

 goes a great way to mystify the baronets, M.P.'s, and other old ladies 

 who are to be operated upon. The embrocation, with aquafortis, oil of 

 Vitriol, or corrosive sublimate, does not altogether suit the delicacy of 

 our particular cuticle, and we leave it to the taste of those who may 

 have an enjoyment in excoriations a yard and a half long. But of the 



