1813: Doctors Differ, or Dame Nature against the College.[1] Four physicians have quarrelled in consultation over the nature of their patient's malady, and the proper mode of administering to his relief. Unable to convince one another, they wax so warm in argument that they speedily proceed from words to blows. "I say," shouts one (beneath the feet of the other three), "I say it is an exfoliation of the glands which has fallen on the membranous coils of the intestines, and must be thrown off by an emetic." "I say," says another, raising at the same time his cane to protect his head, "I say it is a pleurisie in the thigh, and must be sweated away." "You are a blockhead!" cries a third, furiously striking at him with his professional cane. "I say it is a nervous affection of the cutis, and the patient must immediately lose eighteen ounces of blood, and then take a powerful drastic." "What are you quarrelling about?" asks a fourth, arresting the downfall of his professional brother's cane. "You are all wrong! I say it is an inflammation in the os sacrum, and therefore fourteen blisters must be immediately applied to the part affected and the adjacents." The table is down, and the prescriptions of the learned doctors covered with the ink which flows from the ruined inkstand The amused patient (whom nature has meanwhile relieved of the cause and effect) watches the combat from the adjoining bedroom, and makes preparations to retreat and save both his "pocket and his life."
1814. The year 1814 was marked by the bursting of one of the most extraordinary religious bubbles with which England has ever been scandalized. The person identified with and responsible for the craze to which we allude, was Joanna Southcott, the daughter of Joanna Southcotta farmer residing at the village of Gettisham, in Devonshire, where she herself was born in the month of April, 1750. At the time, therefore, the imposture was made patent to such of her deluded followers as retained any remnants of the small stock of com-
- ↑ A caricature entitled Doctors Differ, according to Mr. Grego (published in 1785) is due to Rowlandson. It is possible, therefore, that the present one, although not in Rowlandson's style, may be a reproduction.
