Chapter XI Marryat
In his novel entitled Japhet in Search of a Father, Captain Marryat introduces to us that eccentric apothecary, Mr. Phineas Cophagus; and although the character is doubtless exaggerated to some extent, it forms an amusing picture of the practising apothecary in the early part of this century.
Japhet, who is taken in hand and apprenticed to the worthy practitioner, describes the shop looking upon Smithfield Market, with its usual allowance of green, yellow, and blue bottles. All the patent medicines in the known world were kept in stock, even to the all-sufficient medicine for mankind of Mr. Euony. The shop was large, and at the back part there was a most capacious iron mortar with a pestle to correspond.
The proprietor himself, we are told, might have been forty-five years of age. “He was of middle height, his face was thin, his nose very much hooked, his eyes small and piercing, with a good-humoured twinkle in them. His mouth was large and drawn down at one corner. He was stout in his body, and carried a considerable protuberance before him, which he was in the habit of patting with his left hand complacently. But although stout in his body, his legs were mere spindles, so that in his appearance he reminded you of some bird of the crane genus.
“He dressed in a black coat and waistcoat, white cravat, and high collar to his shirt; blue cotton-net pantaloons and Hessian boots, both fitting so tight that it appeared as if he was proud of his spindle shanks. His hat was broad-brimmed and low, and he carried a stout black cane with a gold top in his right hand, almost always raising the gold top to his nose when he spoke.
“The apothecary’s assistant, Brookes, was a tall, fresh-coloured, but hectic-looking young man, and, with the ubiquitous Timothy, who took out the medicine, formed the staff of the establishment.”
Japhet’s introduction to the rudiments of the profession was to pound up some drugs in the big iron mortar, which he did with a will until the perspiration ran down him in streams. He hadn’t been many months in the shop before he was left in charge with Timothy, who, after cudgelling his brains as to how they shall make a little money on their own account, agrees with Japhet to physic any one who comes in the shop.
The story is related by Japhet as follows:—
“An old woman soon came in, and addressing Timothy, said that she ‘wanted something for her poor grandchild’s sore throat’.
“‘I don’t mix up the medicines, ma’am,’ replied Timothy; ‘you must apply to that gentleman, Mr. Newland, who is behind the counter; he understands what is good for everybody’s complaints.’
“‘Bless his handsome face—and so young, too! Why, be you a doctor, sir?’
“‘I should hope so,’ replied I. ‘What is it you require—a lotion or an embrocation?’
“‘I don’t understand those hard words, but I want some doctor’s stuff.’
“‘Very well, my good woman; I know what is proper,’ replied I, assuming an important air. ‘Here, Timothy, wash out this phial very clean.’
“‘Yes, sir,’ replied Timothy very respectfully.
“I took one of the measures, and putting in a little green, a little blue, and a little white liquid from the medicine bottles generally used by Mr. Brookes, filled it up with water, poured the mixture into the phial, corked, and labelled it haustus statim sumendus, and handed it over to the old woman.
“‘Is the poor child to take it, or is it to rub outside?’ inquired the old woman.
“‘The directions are on the label; but you don’t read Latin?’
“‘Deary me, no! Latin! and do you understand Latin? What a nice clever boy!’
“‘I should not be a good doctor if I did not,’ replied I. On second thoughts I considered it advisable and safer that the application should be external, so I translated the label to her: haustus, rub it in; statim, on the throat; sumendus, with the palm of the hand.”
Their next effort at doctoring is humorously described by the novelist in the following words:—
“An Irish labourer, more than half-tipsy, came in one evening and asked whether we had such a thing as was called ‘A poor man’s plaister’. ‘By the powers, it will be a poor man’s plaister when it belongs to me; but they tell me that it is a sure and sartain cure for the thumbago, as they call it, which I’ve at the small of my back, and which is a hinder to my mounting up the ladder; so as it’s Saturday night, and I’ve just got the money, I’ll buy the plaister first, and then try what a little whisky inside will do. The devil is in’t if it won’t be driven out of me between the two.’
“We had not that plaister in the shop, but we had blister plaisters, and Timothy, handing one to me, I proffered it to him. ‘And what may you be after asking for the same?’ inquired he.
“The blisters were sold at a shilling each, when spread on paper, so I asked him eighteen-pence, that we might pocket the extra sixpence.
“‘By the powers, one would think that you had made a mistake, and handed me the rich man’s plaister instead of the poor one’s. It’s less whisky I’ll have to drink, any how; but here’s the money, and the top of the morning to ye, seeing as how it’s jist getting late.’
“Timothy and I laughed as we divided the sixpence. It appeared that after taking his allowance of whisky the poor fellow fixed the plaister on his back when he went to bed, and the next morning found himself in a condition not to be envied. It was a week before we saw him again, and, much to the horror of Timothy and myself, he walked into the shop when Mr. Brookes was employed behind the counter. Timothy perceived him before he saw us, and pulling me behind the large mortar, we contrived to make our escape into the back parlour, the door of which we held ajar to hear what would take place.
“‘Murder and turf!’ cried the man, ‘but that was the devil’s own plaister you gave me here for my back, and it left me as raw as a turnip, taking every bit of my skin off me entirely, forbye my lying in bed for a whole week and losing my day’s work.’
“‘I really do not recollect supplying you with a plaister, my good man,’ replied Mr. Brookes.
“‘Then by the piper that played before Moses, if you don’t recollect it, I’ve an idea that I shall never forget it. Sure enough, it cured me, but wasn’t I quite kilt before I was cured?’
“‘It must have been some other shop,’ observed Mr. Brookes. ‘You have made a mistake.’
“‘Devil a bit of a mistake, except in selling me the plaister. Didn’t I get it of a lad in this same shop?’
“‘Nobody sells things out of this shop without my knowledge.’
“The Irishman was puzzled—he looked round the shop. ‘Well, then, if this a’n’t the shop, it was own sister to it.’”
“Like all embryo apothecaries,” says Japhet, “I carried in my appearance, if not the look of wisdom, most certainly that of self-sufficiency, which does equally well with the world in general. My forehead was smooth and very white, and my dark locks were combed back systematically and with a regularity that said, as plainly as hair could do, ‘The owner of this does everything by prescription, measurement, and rule’. Altogether I cut such a truly medical appearance that even the most guarded would not have hesitated to allow me the sole conduct of a whitlow, from inflammation to suppuration, and from suppuration to cure, or have refused to have confided to me the entire suppression of a gumboil.
“Such were my personal qualifications at the time I was raised to the important office of dispenser of, I may say, life and death.”
Footnotes
1 Etc. is probably a direction ad lib. for the doctor speaking the formulæ.
2 Hanbury’s Notes on Chinese Materia Medica.
3 Lilly’s Autobiography, 1774.
4 The Egyptian magical texts show that hair, feathers, the serpent’s skin, and “the blood of the mystic eye,” were used as charms of protecting or destroying power. This very probably denotes what is known as the charm of dragon’s blood, which is still employed as a potent love charm or philtre, the blood being now typified by the red resin of this name.
5 Bullen’s Governmente of Health. 1558.
6 William Coles, Adam in Eden. 1657.
7 Lib. viii., c. ii., 5.
8 Now in the possession of Mr. E. W. Cox, to whom we are indebted for the sketch.
9 Hamlet, act i., scene v.
10 Paris, Pharmacologia, p. 294.
11 Romeo and Juliet, act v., scene i.
12 Cymbeline, scene vi.
13 Henry VI., part iii., act ii., scene iii.
14 Pericles, act iii., scene ii.
15 Othello, act v., scene ii.
16 King Lear, act iii., scene iv.
17 Henry IV., part ii., act i., scene ii.
18 Henry VI., act v., scene iv.
19 Comedy of Errors, act iv., scene i.
20 Two Gentlemen of Verona, act ii., scene iv.
21 Lucrece, v., 76.
22 King Henry IV., part ii., act iv., scene iv.
23 King Henry IV., part i., act ii., scene iv.
24 King Henry IV., part ii., act v., scene iii.
25 Othello, act i., scene iii.
26 Love’s Labour’s Lost, act v., scene ii.
27 Hamlet, act iv., scene v.
28 Winter’s Tale, act iv., scene iii.
29 Othello, act iii., scene iii.
30 Romeo and Juliet, act iv., scene iii.
31 All’s Well that Ends Well, act ii., scene iii.
32 Macbeth, act v., scene iii.
33 Winter’s Tale, act iv., scene iv.
34 Hamlet, act iv., scene v.
35 Winter’s Tale, act iv., scene iii.
36 Macbeth, act v., scene iii.
37 Love’s Labour’s Lost, act v., scene ii.
38 Sonnets, verses 118, 119.
39 The Faerie Queen, book i., canto x.
40 The Faerie Queen, book vi., canto vi.
41 The Faerie Queen, book i., canto i.
42 The Faerie Queen, book ii., canto vi.
43 The Faerie Queen, book ii., canto vii.
44 Shepherd’s Calendar—July.
45 Ben Jonson’s Fox, act ii., scene i.