Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/96

 74 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2 S .x.jAx.2.,i9M. Stephens upon a proper discovery to be | By 1772 the medicine had become a made by her for the use of the publick of | standing joke. The Rev. Richard Graves, the medicines prepared by her for the cure) one of the keenest humorists of the eighteenth of the stone." On March 5, 1739/40, the ! century, thus refers to it in his ' Spiritual major portion of the trustees named in j Quixote ' (Book ix., ch. 14) : the Act met and signed a certificate stating i Slicer [a hypochondriac who was in the habit that they were " convinced by experiment j of sampling ail the quack remedies advertised] of the utility and efficacy " of the medicines, ^Jen bid the servant bring him Mrs. Stephens's ^oi~o^ i? TV/T o-i-i v,~ nn, -> Medicine for the Stone and Gravel, which he disclosed by Mrs. Stephens Thereupon nev er omitted, he said, since it was first discovered, the Treasury paid out 5,000 to her. Writers what 1 are you afflicted with the stone and on the eighteenth century have condemned gravel then ? " says Mr. Selkirk. "Afflicted ! " says the whole transaction in the severest terms, ' Slicer, " no sir, God forbid ! nor ever was but it can scarcely be said that the Govern- l afflicted with it ; but I suppose I should have ,, ill rc j_i cct j. been afflicted with it betore this time it 1 had not ment acted recklessly. Of the 22 trustees ! taken ^ admirable medicine ; and, as every who signed the certificate, nine Were medical < one is subject more or less, to gravel and sabulous men of standing in their profession : T. I concretions, it is madness to neglect so easy a Pellet, president of the Royal College of i precaution as this noble lithonthriptic, which PVivsioians thpfonro^risorq of that TrtllpcrP Provldence has permitted to be discovered,
 * >ur censors ot tnat UOllege, and for wMch the Parliament has granted so

Peter Shaw, who Was as eminent as a scienti- | handsome a reward." The servant having fie chemist as a physician ; Cheselden, brought the preparation, with a large bason of surgeon to Chelsea Hospital Csesar Haw- i veal broth, Slicer swallowed the nauseous pre- kins, surgeon to the Prince of Wales ; scription with alacrity ; though the virtues, or i o i 01 n > ' even the safety of that medicine have justly been and Samuel Sharpe surgeon to Guy s. i questi oned,. notwithstanding the decision of The Rev. Stephen Hales, the ablest scientific O ur wise legislators in its favour, chemist of his day, was also a signatory, i j p AUL DE C ASTRO. In the face of these names it cannot be said | 1? Essex Court? Tem pi e . that the Government failed to take expert j advice. The malady sought to be cured ; was, at that time, almost as direful as the j, o THE BEGGARS OPERA IN DICKENS small-pox, and no one would say that ( 12S - lx - 309 ; x - 14 )- Miss DODDS pulls me Jenner's discoveries would not have been U P about the paucity of literary allu- worth such a sum as was paid to Mrs. i sions m Dickens; but when wrote Stephens literary [ was contrasting him in my That 'Mrs. Stephens's remedies were a min <* with Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray, failure is not to be denied. A severe critic who abound in such quotations often of them was Dr. Mead, archiater and the i learned ; perhaps I should not have applied first opinion of his day. In 1751, in his i the word ' literary 'to The Beggars " Medical Precepts," chap. X., he wrote : P? ra "' wh f lch 1S rather dra ^ atlc or T musical Particular care should be taken not to put and erefore current and popular. Of the patient into a course of powerful diuretics | popular dramatic allusions there may be with a view of preventing the gravel from con- j many in Dickens ; I have just found creting in the kidneys : because, whatever great j another to add to Miss Dodds's list, also things may be said of this sort. of medicines by f rom 'David Copperfield.' The song from ignorant pretenders, they certainly injure the parts by their heat and acrimony. Nor can I avoid observing, though I am extremely sorry ' The Beggar's Opera,' ' When the heart of a man,' which Mr. .Wegg sang, was also for the occasion, that some gentlemen of the j sung by Steerforth's friend Markham at the faculty a few years since acted a part much be- j disastrous supper party in chap. xxiv. neath their character, first, in suffering them- ! g uch references to the ' B.O.' are perhaps ^^tr^^SiS^s^nsi ?? a level w ? h ^ am Y e rJ ler>s <?f ntio v f medicine at an exorbitant price ; by vouching | the once popular story of George Barnwell. that it was capable of breaking stone in the bladder, and bringing away the fragments. . . Mead proceeds to explain the manner in which the experimenters had misled themselves, and recommends a book by Dr. Parsons " in which both the mischief done by the medicine, and the artifices If I may add another word, we must distinguish between quotations proper and allusions, or hidden quotations without inverted commas in the text of authors. One of these was the passage I quoted from Miss Moucher. A recent reading of several of Scott's novels has shown me how .employed to bring it into vogue, are set many unacknowledged expressions from out in a clear light." Milton there are in his pages. For instance,.