182 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



day in the present age equally unjust and cruel, only we 

 cannot see them ; as some one observed, one cannot see 

 the eye because it is so close to the sight. In the almost 

 sacred name of education tyrannies are being enacted 

 surpassing anything recorded in the most outlying vil- 

 lage in the most outlying time. One constantly sees 

 cases of poor people sent to prison because they happen 

 to have children. No other reason can be detected. 



Our great-grandfathers' doctors never used to trouble 

 themselves to write prescriptions for their poorer patients ; 

 they used to keep two or three mixtures always made 

 up ready in great jars, and ladle them out. There was 

 the bread and cheese mixture, very often called for, as 

 the ailments of the labourers are commonly traceable to 

 a heavy diet of cheese. As an old doctor used to say 

 when he was called to a cottage, ' Hum ; s'pose you've been 

 eating too much fat bacon and cabbage ! ' Another was 

 the club mixture, called for about May, when the village 

 clubs are held and extra beer disturbs the economy. In 

 factory towns, where the mechanics have dispensaries 

 and employ doctors, something of the same sort of story 

 has got about at the present day. The women are con- 

 stantly coming for physic, and the assistants are stated 

 to gravely measure a little peppermint and colour it pink 

 or yellow, which does as well. Great invalids with 

 long pockets, who have paid their scores of guineas and 

 gone the round of fashionable physicians, do not seem to 

 have received much more benefit than if they had them- 

 selves chosen the yellow or pink hue of their tinted water. 

 It is wonderful what value the country poor set on a bottle 

 of physic ; they are twice as grateful for it as for a good 

 dinner. Some of the doctors of old are said to have had 

 an eye for an old book, or an old clock, or an old bit of 

 furniture or china in the cottage, and when the patient 



