Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/298

278 coming into fashion, and was played by quite young boys and girls, who received lessons in whist at a guinea each from masters in the art.

The universal habit of gambling led to duels. By an unwritten code of the times, men held that all shortcomings should be atoned for at the point of the sword or the mouth of the pistol. Thus brawls and squabbles of the coffee-house, disputed love-affairs, political strife or irritation produced by gaming or racing losses—all were settled by this "reigning curse," as it has been called. Duels took place in the open street, in the ballroom, the pit of the theatre, on Wimbledon Common, the Ring at Hyde Park, or the empty room of a coffee-house. If a man was not actually killed he bore the scars of his wounds till he died, testifying to the fact that he was a man of honour.

These wounds were very indifferently treated by the surgeons and physicians of the day, for medical knowledge was still at a low ebb in the early eighteenth century and quackery was yet rampant.

"I tell you," says a contemporary, "'tis an easie thing for a Man of Parts to be a Surgeon; do but buy a Lancet, Forceps, Saw; talk a little of