Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3). Jonah Barrington
blood, Tom’s back did not look much the worse for the tattooing. In truth, if my readers recollect the excellent mode of making a cut down each side of a saddle of mutton, just to elicit the brown gravy, they will have a good idea of the longitudinal cauteries in question. On three or four of the tender places before mentioned Mr. Butler drew his transverse cross bars, which quite took off the uniform appearance, and gave a sort of garnished look to the whole drawing, which seemed very much to gratify the operator, who again walked round and round the body several times with a red-hot iron in his hand, surveying, and here and there retouching the ragged or uneven parts. This finishing rendered the whipper-in rather hoarse, and his first roars were now changed to softer notes – somewhat as an opera singer occasionally breaks into his falsetto.
“Howld your bother,” said Mr. Butler, to whom Tom’s incessant shrieking had become very disagreeable: “howld your music, I say, or I’ll put a touch7 on your nose as tight as yourself did on Brown Jack, when I was firing the ring-bone out of him: you’re a greater beast yourself nor ever Brown Jack was.”
Mr. Butler having partly silenced the whipper-in through fear of the touch, the second part of the process was undertaken – namely, depositing what is termed by farriers the cold charge, on the back of Tom White. However, on this occasion the regular practice was somewhat varied, and the cold charge was nearly boiling hot when placed upon the raw ladder on the whipper-in’s back. I saw the torture boiled in a large iron ladle, and will mention the ingredients, just to show that they were rather more exciting than our milk-and-water charges of the present day: – viz. Burgundy pitch, black pitch, diaculum, yellow wax, white wax, mustard, black resin, white resin, sal ammoniac, bruised hemlock, camphor, Spanish flies, and oil of origanum, boiled up with spirits of turpentine, onion juice, and a glass of whisky; it was kept simmering till it became of a proper consistence for application, and was then laid on with a painter’s brush, in the same way they calk a pleasure-boat. Four coats of this savoury substance did the farrier successively apply, each one as the former began to cool. But, on the first application, even the dread of the touch could not restrain Tom White’s vociferation. After this had settled itself in the chinks, he seemed to be quite stupid, and tired of roaring, and lay completely passive, or rather insensible, while Mr. Butler finished to his taste; dotting it over with short lamb’s-wool as thick as it would stick, and then another coat of the unction, with an addition of wool; so that, when completed by several layers of charge and lamb’s-wool, Tom’s back might very well have been mistaken for a saddle of Southdown before it was skinned. A thin ash board was now neatly fitted to it down Tom’s spine by the carpenter, and made fast with a few short nails driven into the charge. I believe none of them touched the quick, as the charge appeared above an inch and a half thick, and it was only at the blows of the hammer that the patient seemed to feel extra sensibility. Tom was now untied and helped to rise: his woolly carcase was bandaged all round with long strips of a blanket, which being done, the operation was declared to be completed, in less than three quarters of an hour.
The other servants now began to make merry with Tom White. One asked him, how he liked purgatory? – another, if he’d “stop thieving,” after that judgment on him? – a third, what more could Father Cahill do for him? Doctor Butler said but little: he assumed great gravity, and directed “that the whipper-in should sit up stiff for seven days and nights, by which time the juices would be dried on him; after that he might lay down, if he could.”
This indeed was a very useless permission, as the patient’s tortures were now only in their infancy. So soon as the charge got cold and stiff in the nitches and fancy figures upon his back, he nearly went mad; so that for a few days they were obliged to strap him with girths to the head of his bed to make him “stay easy;” and sometimes to gag him, that his roars might not disturb the company in the dining parlour. Wallace the piper said that Tom’s roarings put him quite out: and an elderly gentleman who was on a visit with us, and who had not been long married to a young wife, said his bride was so shocked and alarmed at the groans and “pullaloes” of Tom White, that she could think of nothing else.
When the poor fellow’s pains had altogether subsided, and the swathing was off, he cut one of the most curious figures ever seen: he looked as if he had a stake driven through his body; and it was not till the end of four months that Mr. Butler began to pour sweet oil down his neck, between his back and the charge, which he continued to do daily for about another month, till the charge gradually detached itself, and broken-backed Tom was declared cured: in truth, I believe he never felt any inconvenience from his fall afterward.
This mode of cauterising the people was then much practised by the old farriers, often with success; and I never recollect any fatal effects happening in consequence.
The farriers’ rowelling also was sometimes had recourse to, to prevent swellings from coming to a head: and I only heard of two fatalities arising herefrom; one, in the case of a half-mounted gentleman at Castle Comber, who died of a locked jaw; and another, in that of a shopkeeper at Borris, in Ossory, who expired from mortification occasioned by a tow and turpentine rowell being used to carry off an inflammation.
THE RIVAL PRACTITIONERS
Dr. Fletcher, Dr. Mulhall, and the author’s father – Interesting particulars of a medical consultation – Family recollections – Counsellor, afterward Judge Fletcher – First meeting between him and the author – Catching a Tartar – Sam Doxy of the Derrys – Breaks his neck in riding to a Turnpike-Board dinner – Pronounced dead by Mr. Knaggs, the apothecary – That eminent practitioner’s judgment disputed by Lieut. Jerry Palmer – The apothecary proceeds to show that the patient must, or at least ought to be, dead – An incision, and its consequences – Lieut. Palmer’s successful mode of treatment – Recovery of the corpse.
In addition to my preceding illustrations of the former state of medicine and surgery in Ireland, I cannot omit a couple of convincing proofs of the intuitive knowledge possessed by Irish practitioners in my early days. They present scenes at which I was myself present, and one of which was the most distressing I had witnessed, while the other was more amusing at its conclusion than any operation I ever saw performed by any, either of the farriers or colloughs of Ireland.
Doctor Knaggs, the hero of the second incident, was a tall, raw-boned, rough, dirty apothecary; but he suited the neighbours, as they said he had “the skill in him,” and was “mighty successful.” Sam Doxy, his patient, was, on the contrary, a broad, strong, plethoric, half-mounted gentleman. He had his lodge, as he called it, in the midst of a derry (a bog), drank his gallon of hot punch to keep out the damp, and devoured numerous cock turkeys, and cows that were past child-bearing, to keep down the potsheen. Every neighbour that could get to him was welcome, and the road was seldom in a fit state to permit their going away again quickly.
The first of these anecdotes I still relate with some pain, though forty-five years and more have of course blunted the feeling I experienced on its occurrence; and as I shall soon be in the same situation myself as the parties now are, I can, comparatively speaking, look lightly on an event which, in youth, health, and high blood, was quite chilling to my contemplation.
The father of the late Judge Fletcher of the Common Pleas was an actual physician at Mount Melec, about seven miles from my father’s. He was a smart, intelligent, and very humorous, but remarkably diminutive doctor. He attended my father in his last moments, in conjunction with the family practitioner, Doctor Dennis Mulhall, whose appearance exactly corresponded with that of Doctor Slop, save that his paunch was doubly capacious, and his legs, in true symmetry with his carcase, helped to waddle him into a room. He was a matter-of-fact doctor, and despised anatomy. His features had been so confused and entangled together by that unbeautifying disorder, the smallpox, (which I have so often alluded to,) that it almost required a chart to find their respective stations.
These two learned gentlemen attended my poor father with the greatest assiduity, and daily prescribed for him a certain portion of every drug the Stradbally apothecary could supply: but these were not very numerous; and as every thing loses its vigour by age, so the Stradbally drugs, having been some years
An instrument used in the practice of farriers. It is a piece of cord passed round the nose of a horse (being the most sensitive part of that animal); and being twisted tight by a short stick, it creates a torture so exquisite, that all other tortures go for nothing. Therefore, when a horse is to have his tail cut off, or his legs burned, &c., a touch is put upon his nose, the extreme pain whereof absorbs that of the operation, and, as they term it, makes the beast “