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STREET DOCTORS.
STREET vendors of pills, potions, and quack nostrums are
not quite so numerous as they were in former days. The increasingly large number
of free hospitals, where the poor may consult qualified physicians, the aid
received at a trifling cost from clubs and friendly societies, and the spread of
education, have all tended to sweep this class of street-folks from the
thoroughfares of London. Although of late years much has been done by private
charities to supplement the system of parochial relief, there is still a vast
field open for the extension of medical missions among the lower orders of the
community. Far from being in a position to record the extinction of the race of
" herbalists" and "doctors for the million" who practise
upon the poor, my investigations prove they are still about as numerous as their
trade is lucrative.
It would be unjust to say that the itinerant empirics of the
metropolis have advanced with the age, as it is part of their "role"
to adhere to all that is old in the nomenclature and practice of their craft. An
intelligent member of the fraternity informed me that as members of the medical
profession, they are bound to use what may be called "crocus" Latin.
"Our profession is known, sir, as 'crocussing,' and our dodges and
decoctions as 'fakes' or rackets. Many other words make up a sort of dead
language that protects us and the public from ignorant impostors. It don't do to
juggle with drugs, leastwise to them that are ignorant of the business. I was
told by a chum of mine, a university man, that 'crocussing' is nigh as old as
Adam, and that some of our best rackets were copied from Egypshin' tombs."
I ventured to remark possibly they were inscribed on the tombs as a warning from
the dead. "Like as not," was the rejoinder, " I expect the dead
in this country could tell us summat about poisoning by Act of Parliament.
Pardon me, sir, you may be a licensed surgeon yourself. But I would as soon
swallow a brass knocker as some of your drugs. A brass knocker is a safe
prescription for opening a door, it's poison as a pill. I believe it is just the
same with the poisons took out of the bowels of the earth, where they should be
left to correct disorders. Herbs are the thing, they were intended for man and
they grow at his feet, for meat and medicine. You see, sir, I'm a bit of a
philosopher; when I'm not pattering - speaking - I'm thinking. I have been a
cough tablet 'crocus' for nine years, only in summer I go for the Sarsaparilla
'fake.' Sometimes this is a regular 'take-down' - swindle. The 'Blood Purifier'
is made up of a cheap herb called sassafras, burnt sugar, and water flavoured
with a little pine-apple or pear juice. That's what's called sarsaparilla by
some 'crocusses.' If it don't lengthen the life of the buyer it lengthens the
life of the seller. It's about the same thing in the end. A very shady 'racket'
is the India root for destroying all sorts of vermin including rats. It's put
among clothes like camphor. Any root will answer if it's scented, but this
racket requires sailor's togs ; for the 'crocus' must just have come off the
ship from foreign parts. It also requires a couple of tame rats to fight shy of
the root. The silver paste is a fatal 'fake.' The paste is made of whiting and
red ochre. The crocus' has a solution of bichloride of mercury which he mixes
with the paste, and rubbing it over a farthing silvers it. He sells it for
plating brass candlesticks and such like, hut it's the mercury that does the
business, he don't sell that. The mercury in time gets into his blood and
finishes him. I have known two killed this way.
"There are many different dodges in 'crocussing.' One
man I know, togged like a military swell, scares the people into buying his
pills. He has half-a-dozen bottles filled with different fluids he works with,
turnin' one into t'other. He turns a clear fluid black, and says, 'Ladies and
gentlemen, this is what happens to your blood when exposed to the fogs of
London. "Without blood there is no life !" You seem bloodless, my
friends ; look at each other.' They look, and almost believe him. 'Next to no
blood is impure blood! This is your condition, I can describe your symptoms; I
offer you the only safe, certain, and infallible remedy.' This style of 'patter'
makes the pills fly, but it's not every one can come it to perfection.
As to myself, my 'patter' is on the scholarly tack ; reason
and persuasion. I uphold the medical profession for most things, and tell all I
know, and more so, about Materia Medica, for I don't know much. Once a learned
cove, a student, I think, tried to take a rise out of me. Says he, What's 'Materia
Medica?' Says I, 'If you've descended from Balaam's ass, you've browsed on it in
the fields!' I never saw him again. I am not agoin' to give you my 'patter,' I
can't turn it on like steam. You should hear me at my best, it's well worth
publishing. On a fair night, in a good 'pitch,' with a crowd round me, my tongue
seems aflame. Some of our best patterers' lush heavily. One used to say 'Demosthenes
when he studied oratory, went to the sea-shore and filled his mouth with
pebbles. I know a trick worth two of that, I go to the nearest public and fill
my mouth with a glass of the best Scotch whisky.' He went there once too often.
The fact is, most of us come to the gutter through boozing, and if a racket is
dishonest, you may be certain the crocus' drinks hard.
"The corn 'fake' pay's with a fellow who can 'patter.'
His stock costs next to nothing. It should be sulphur and rosin to drop on the
corn red hot. But rosin does alone at a pinch.
"I find a good honest 'racket' pays best in the end,
people buy and come again. I have had my regular customers for years, and now I
make a tidy living both summer and winter, and I need all I earn, for I have my
old mother depending on me."
My informant has the reputation of being an honest,
hard-working fellow. His cough tablets, if they do not possess all the virtues
he ascribes to them, are certainly pleasant to the taste.
The subject of the accompanying illustration is a vendor of
cough lozenges and healing ointment. He was originally a car-driver employed by
a firm in the city, but had to leave his situation on account of failing sight.
His story, told in his own words, is as follows :-" First of all I had to
leave my place on account of bad sight. It was brought on by exposure to the
cold. Inflammation set in in the right eye and soon affected the left. The
doctors called it 'atrophy.' I went to St. Thomas's Hospital for nine months, to
St. George's Hospital, and to Moorfields Opthalmic Hospital. From St. Thomas's
Hospital I was sent to the sea-side at the expense of the Merchant Taylors'
Company. No good came of it all, and at last I was so blind that I had to be led
about like a child. At that time my wife worked with her needle and her hands to
keep things going. She used to do charing during the day and sewing at night,
shirt-making for the friend of a woman who worked for a contractor. She got
twopence-halfpenny for making a shirt, and by sitting till two or three in the
morning could finish three shirts at a stretch. I stood at a street corner in
the New Cut selling fish, and had to trust a good deal to the honesty of my
customers, as I could not see.
"At this time I fell in with a gentleman selling
ointment, he gave me a box, which I used for my eyes. I used the ointment about
a month, and found my sight gradually returning. The gentleman who makes the
ointment offered to set me up in business with his goods. I had no money, but he
gave me everything on trust. It was a good thing for both of us, because I was a
sort of standing advertisement for him and for myself.
"I now make a comfortable living and have a good stock.
When the maker of the ointment started he carried a tray; now he has three vans,
and more than fifty people selling for him.
"I find the most of my customers in the street, but I am
now making a private connexion at home of people from all parts of London. The
prices for the Arabian Family Ointment, which can he used for chapped hands,
lips, inflamed eyes, cuts, scalds, and sores, are from a penny to half-a-crown a
box. Medicated cough lozenges a halfpenny and a penny a packet."
On the occasion of my last visit to my informant I had an
opportunity of seeing one or two of his patients;. One, a blacksmith, who had
burned his arm severely, stoutly testified to the wonderful healing properties
of the ointment. Another, also a worker in iron, came in to purchase a box
"It has been the saving of my wife," he said ; "she has a bad
leg, but this salve keeps the wound open, and this wound do act as a
safety-valve to her heart ; were it allowed to close she would die of heart
disease. Me and my wife discovered this, and it's worth knowing. It draws off
the bad humour, and, bless you, sir, there's a deal of bad humour about my wife!
I'm a temperance son of the Phoenix. My wife ain't. She would not be a Phoenix
if she could. She pulls one way, I pull t'other. She was teetotal for five years
before me, but when I became a Phoenix she took the bottle. The Phoenix is a
benefit and burial society. I pay three pence a week into it, and would be
decently buried if I died. It is the interest of the Phoenixes to get us to live
long, and for that reason it is a teetotal brotherhood."
This man was subscribing twopence halfpenny weekly to a club
which secured for him and his family the attendance of a surgeon in the
neighbourhood. For all that, he had sought the ail of this dispenser of quack
compounds, and expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the result of his
treatment.
I found in the course of my inquiries that the poor, many of
them, prefer either resorting to quack remedies or employing their own paid
surgeon, to placing themselves in the hands of the parish doctor, or under
hospital treatment. This is accounted for in two ways. An honourable feeling of
in dependence deters the poorer orders of the lahouring classes from seeking
parish relief in any shape. Others, who would gladly avail themselves of free
medical advice, cannot find time to obtain a certificate from the relieving
officer, and to present the certificate in the proper quarter. When all the
forms have been duly complied with, grievous delays frequently occur in
obtaining advice, and the necessary prescriptions; the latter have, in some
instances, to be taken to the dispensary at the other end of the parish. Some of
the aged, infirm, and friendless poor, who receive regular out-door relief, have
under ordinary circumstances to pay a messenger a shilling for collecting their
weekly pittance of half-a-crown. In time of sickness, when they cannot crawl
from their door, they too are fain to avail themselves of the remedies of
itinerant doctors.