lustration: F]From experience we are aware that the invention of the
useful species of phrenotypics, alluded to in our last chapter, does not
rest with the grinder alone. We once knew a medical student (and many even
now at the London hospitals will recollect his name without mentioning
it), who, when he was grinding for the Hall, being naturally of a
melodious and harmonic disposition, conceived the idea of learning the
whole of his practice of physic by setting a description of the diseases
to music. He had a song of some hundred and twenty verses, which he called
"The Poetry of Steggall's Manual;" and this he put to the tune of the
"Good Old Days of Adam and Eve." We deeply lament that we cannot produce
the whole of this lyrical pathological curiosity. Two verses, however,
linger on our memory, and these we have written down, requesting that they
may be said or sung to the air above-mentioned, and dedicating them to the
gentlemen who are going up next Thursday evening. They relate to the
symptoms, treatment, and causes of Haemoptysis and Haematemesis; which
terms respectively imply, for the benefit of the million unprofessional
readers who weekly gasp for our fresh number, a spitting of blood from the
lungs and a vomiting of ditto from the stomach. The song was composed of
stanzas similar to those which follow, except the portion relating to
_Diseases of the Brain_, which was more appropriately separated into the
old English division of _Fyttes_.

HAEMOPTYSIS.

A sensation of weight and oppression at the chest, sirs;
With tickling at the larynx, which scarcely gives you rest, sirs;
Full hard pulse, salt taste, and tongue very white, sirs;
And blood brought up in coughing, of colour very bright, sirs.
It depends on causes three--the first's exhalation;
The next a ruptured artery--the third, ulceration.
In treatment we may bleed, keep the patient cool and quiet,
Acid drinks, digitalis, and attend to a mild diet.
Sing hey, sing ho, we do not grieve
When this formidable illness takes its leave.

HAEMATEMESIS.

Clotted blood is thrown up, in colour very black, sirs,
And generally sudden, as it comes up in a crack, sirs.
It's preceded at the stomach by a weighty sensation;
But nothing appears ruptured upon examination.
It differs from the last, by the particles thrown off, sirs,
Being denser, deeper-coloured, and without a bit of cough, sirs.
In plethoric habits bleed,