DR. ERASMUS DARWIN. 39 



gerated bearing ; the contemptuousness with which they 

 atfect , to regard their patients, or even, walking round 

 them, to look them through and through (ending, 

 perhaps, with a spit !), would appear to strike these 

 latter almost with a sense of omniscience. Erasmus 

 comforted a brother practitioner who stammered (he 

 stammered himself) by assuring him that his impediment 

 in speech would " not at all injure him, but rather on 

 the contrary by attracting notice." It has a relevant 

 medical interest here to be told that a " Dr. K. supported 

 his business by perpetual boastings ; " and to be co- 

 ordinately assured that " the world is not governed by 

 the clever men, but by the active and energetic." We 

 learn from the narrative that Dr. Erasmus gained for 

 himself not a little wonder in the eyes of Miss Seward 

 and Lady Northesk by declaiming to them about the 

 restoration to health to be produced in the latter by the 

 transfusing into her veins of the willingly sacrificial 

 blood of the former only it was unfortunate that 

 there was no possibility of his procuring a necessary 

 instrument that would be delicate enough ! I suppose it 

 is characteristic of Erasmus, too, that, towards the end of 

 Zoonomia, when he is explaining why there are more 

 boys than girls born, an art of " Calipsedia " is announced 

 as " privately communicable ! " 



Dr. Erasmus was the head of the Lichfield Botanical 

 Society, and in its name sent " various observations " to 

 the " periodical publications " of the day. The Lichfield 

 Botanical Society, made by himself, consisted of Boothby, 

 Jackson, and himself ! This Jackson seems to have 

 been a forlorn creature "a Proctor in the Cathedral 

 jurisdiction," " of the lowest possible origin, and wholly 

 uneducated," with " habits of ebriety," etc., in short, a 

 sort of unholy " Holy Willie " ! 



Miss Seward is tolerably particular about Dr. Darwiu's 



