Preface.
Reading edition
In the following pages I have attempted to bring together from the pens of several authors who have written expressly for this book, the more interesting phases of the history, literature, folk-lore, etc., of the medical profession.
If the same welcome be given to this work as was accorded to those I have previously produced, my labours will not have been in vain.
William Andrews.
The Hull Press, Hull, November 11th, 1895.
Contents.
Barber-Surgeons. By William Andrews, F.R.H.S. 1
Touching for the King’s Evil. By William Andrews, F.R.H.S. 8
Visiting Patients 22
Assaying Meat and Drink. By William Andrews, F.R.H.S. 24
The Gold-headed Cane. By Tom Robinson, M.D. 32
Magic and Medicine. By Cuming Walters 42
Chaucer’s Doctor of Physic. By W. H. Thompson 70
The Doctors Shakespeare Knew. By A. H. Wall 76
Dickens’ Doctors. By Thomas Frost 90
Famous Literary Doctors. By Cuming Walters 102
The “Doctor” in Time of Pestilence. By William E. A. Axon, F.R.S.L. 125
Mountebanks and Medicine. By Thomas Frost 140
The Strange Story of the Fight with the Small-Pox. By Thomas Frost 153
Burkers and Body-Snatchers. By Thomas Frost 167
Reminiscences of the Cholera. By Thomas Frost 181
Some Old Doctors. By Mrs. G. Linnæus Banks 192
The Lee Penny 209
How Our Fathers were Physicked. By J. A. Langford, LL.D. 216
Medical Folk-Lore. By John Nicholson 234
Of Physicians and their Fees, with some Personal Reminiscences. By Andrew James Symington, F.R.S.N.A. 252
Index 285
THE DOCTOR IN HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND FOLK-LORE.