at
bedtime; and my recollection is that, as a nightcap, it beat bromide and
sulphonal hollow. In the light of more recent science, I suppose that
all this alcoholic treatment was what Milton calls "the sweet poyson of
misused wine," and wrought havoc with one's nerves, digestion, and
circulation. It certainly had this single advantage, that when one grew
to man's estate, and passed from "that poor creature, small beer," to
the loaded port and fiery sherry of a "Wine" at the University, it was
impossible to make one drunk. And thereby hangs a tale. I was once
writing the same sentiment in the same words for a medical journal, and
the compositor substituted "disadvantage" for "advantage," apparently
thinking that my early regimen had deprived me of a real happiness in
after-life.

Such were the Doctors of my youth. By no sudden wrench, no violent
transition, but gently, gradually, imperceptibly, the type has
transformed itself into that which we behold to-day. No doubt an inward
continuity has been maintained, but the visible phenomena are so
radically altered as to suggest to the superficial observer the idea of
a new creation; and even we, who, as Matthew Arnold said, "stand by the
Sea of Time, and listen to the solemn and rhythmical beat of its waves,"
even we can scarcely point with confidence to the date of each
successive change. First, as to personal appearance. When did doctors
abandon black cloth, and betake themselves (like Newman, when he seceded
to the Church of Rome) to grey trousers? Not, I feel pretty sure, till
the 'seventies were well advanced. Quite certainly the first time that I
ever fell into the hands of a moustached Doctor was in 1877. Everyone
condemned the hirsute appendage as highly unprofessional, and when, soon
after, the poor man found his way into a Lunatic Asylum, the
neighbouring Doctors of the older school said that they were not
surprised; that "there was a bad family history"; and that he himself
had shown marked signs of eccentricity. That meant the moustache, and
nothing else. Then, again, when was it first recognized as possible to
take a pulse without the assistance of a gold chronometer? History is
silent; but I am inclined to assign that discovery to the same date as
the clinical thermometer, a toy unknown to the Doctors of my youth, who,
indeed, were disposed to regard even the stethoscope as new-fangled.
Then "the courtly manners of the old school"--when did they go out? I do
n