is also to have known the artist; and the
portraits of all the practitioners with whom at one time or another I
have been brought into intimate relations would fill the largest album,
and go some way towards furnishing a modest Picture-Gallery. Broadly
speaking, the Doctors of the 'fifties and 'sixties were as Dickens drew
them. The famous consultant, Dr. Parker Peps; the fashionable physician,
Sir Tumley Snuffim; the General Practitioner, Mr. Pilkins; and the
Medical Officer of the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life
Insurance Company, Dr. Jobling; are in the highest degree representative
and typical; but perhaps the Doctor--his name, unfortunately, has
perished--who was called to the bedside of little Nell, and came with "a
great bunch of seals dangling below a waistcoat of ribbed black satin,"
is the most carefully finished portrait. Such, exactly, were the Family
Physicians of my youth. They always dressed in shiny black,--trousers,
neckcloth, and all; they were invariably bald, and had shaved upper lips
and chins, and carefully-trimmed whiskers. They said "Hah!" and "Hum!"
in tones of omniscience which would have converted a Christian
Scientist; and, when feeling one's pulse, they produced the largest and
most audibly-ticking gold watches producible by the horologist's art.
They had what were called "the courtly manners of the old school"; were
diffuse in style, and abounded in periphrasis. Thus they spoke of "the
gastric organ" where their successors talk of the stomach, and referred
to brandy as "the domestic stimulant." When attending families where
religion was held in honour, they were apt to say to the lady of the
house, "We are fearfully and wonderfully made"; and, where classical
culture prevailed, they not infrequently remarked--

Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops.

By the way, my reference to "the domestic stimulant" reminds me that on
stimulants, domestic and other, this school of Physicians relied with an
unalterable confidence. For a delicate child, a glass of port wine at
11 was the inevitable prescription, and a tea-spoonful of bark was often
added to this generous tonic. In all forms of languor and debility and
enfeebled circulation, brandy-and-water was "exhibited," as the phrase
went; and, if the dose was not immediately successful, the brandy was
increased. I myself, when a sickly boy of twelve, was ordered by a
well-known practitioner, called F. C. Skey, to drink mulled claret