:>8 DARWINIANISM. 



brings. He is lucky enough at the start to save a local 

 magnate from the sentence of death pronounced upon 

 him by the leading practitioner, who actually, in conse- 

 quence, is obliged to pack up and leave the neighbour- 

 hood. He was bold and determined in his treatment, 

 sparing neither his lancet nor his digitalis ; the former 

 of which he regrets, on his death-bed, not to have had, 

 himself, more of (he calls it in Zoonomia, ii. 197, "the 

 anchor of hope ") ; while, for its part, the latter 

 (digitalis) is again and again praised by him, and his own 

 receipt for the infusion of it carefully detailed (Botanic 

 Garden, ii., Note). 1 Miss Seward is full of the relative 

 particulars in these matters. The local magnate saved 

 was Mr. Inge of Thorpe, a gentleman of family, fortune, 

 and consequence, then attended by the celebrated Dr. 

 Wilks of Willenthal. Dr. Wilks, for many years the 

 established medical authority of Lichfield, had pro- 

 nounced the case of Mr. Inge hopeless, and even left it 

 as such. And it was now that the intervention of Dr. 

 Erasmus Darwin " gave the dying patient back to exist- 

 ence, to health, prosperity, and all that high reputation 

 which Mr. Inge afterwards possessed as a public 

 magistrate." No wonder that Wilks took himself off, 

 and left the field to Erasmus, who exhibited " strength 

 of mind and fortitude unappalled ! " " The perpetual 

 success which attended this great man's deviations from 

 the beaten track, enabled him," Miss Seward calmly 

 intimates, " to shake all mists from his reputation, as the 

 lion shakes to the air the dewdrops on his mane ! " He 

 seems to have had a browbeating, peremptory way with 

 his patients, that not unfrequently infused into them 

 even awe. Other practitioners have been heard of witli 

 some such similar, but, doubtless, much more exag- 



1 This is worth looking at in these days when digitalis has come 

 again so much to the front. 



