and next minute it stops at the door. Bang! down goes the steps, and presently rat-tat-tat comes a knock at the door.

"As how?" asked Mr. Sparkes, all attention.

66

Darn'd if it

Why, hang me if it didn't fright the child so that it flung 'un into convulsions, and next minut'a was as black in the face as my hat. There was a piece of work! My lady she fainted, the 'Squire he swore, and no zooner had the Bishop poked his nose within the door than he was knocked over by a feller bolt'n off for a doctor. Doctor he come and bled the babby in the juggalar; but 'twarnt o' no use, and in less than an hour's time he was a cops. He was, as true as I'm sitt'n here. He died o'the BISHOP'S KNOCK: and that's why I says as how the Bishop kill'd un."

"Well but, Farmer," urged the coachman, "in course you know 'twas the footman as guv the knock; not the Bishop."

"What any body does by his sarvant," returned Farmer Strong, "he does by his zelf. I've a heer'd the Judge lay that down at 'sizes. Zo I says, and I'll stick to't, as the Bishop kill'd un."

"Ah!" moralised Mr. Sparkes. "It only shows what may come of a Bishop's keep'n his livery footmen.

"Ees," added the farmer, " and moore nor that, Mr. Sparkes, it teaches your fine gentlefolks, as wants their children christened, to be content wi' a pa'ason and a church; and not to want a bishop and a draw'n-room. Well, neighbours, zo much for the Bishop's Knock. Now, arter that if you please, we'll drink the 'Land we live in.'" P. L.

THE MUMMERY OF MEDICINE.

It is impossible to deny that there is some tough reading in the world. Egyptian hieroglyphics puzzle most people-Etruscan inscriptions cannot be read by those who run-and-to ascend from antiquity upwards- even the contemporary pothooks and hangers wherewith John Chinaman labels his tea-boxes-are by no means lucid in their signification. But neither sculptured stones from Egypt-nor vases from Etruscan tombs-nor tea

boxes ornamented with the most mystic devices of China inkare much more obscure in the tale they would tell than the little slips of paper which the doctor tells us to carry to the apothecary, and-on the shut our eyes and open our mouth principle swallow the mysterious substances, solid or fluid, represented by the equally mysterious writings in question.

Now the people of the Delta of the Nile, in tracing their Ibises, and cranes, and crocodiles, used the written language of their time-so did the dwellers in ancient Italy, when they placed inscriptions on their vases-so do the modern inhabitants of the celestial empire, when they pack up supplies for our tea-pots. The doctors-the race of M.D.'s and surgeons-our own neighbours-the grave coloured butterflies who, under our own eyes, have sprung from the medical student grub-are the only race who think fit in the ordinary pursuit of their vocation to use a language which can be described neither as ancient nor moderna sort of hybrid mongrel tongue, the only merit of which seems to consist in its being unintelligible to the vast mass of mankind— and why unintelligibility should be a merit in medical prescriptions those who write them should be most able to tell.

But the medical profession is a learned profession, and its members use Latin because Latin is a learned language. We should like to hear a few "general practitioners " indulging in a quiet chat on Sir James Graham's new Medical Bill—or on mesmerism and homoeopathy in the vernacular of the Cæsars. We should then see how deep the learned profession was in the learned language. But who says that doctors write Latin? After all, we do not. Their Latin is no more Latin than it is English; they have only half translated the tongue they employ; they have taken it out of English without putting it into any other language in particular. We should like to see a committee of taste summoned in the Elysian shades. We would have Virgil and Cicero, Horace and Tacitus-fair representatives of poetry and prose-seated in solemn conclave; we would present them with half a dozen prescriptions taken from the counter of any druggist in town-Latin prescriptions mind, reader !—and then we would solemnly defy the whole four to make out one word of their meaning-nay, we would take considerable odds in favour of their not being able to form anything like a good guess of what the language submitted to them was at all. At length, we would impart to them confidentially that the unknown tongue which they

were scratching their heads over, was no more or less than that which had echoed in the Senate House of Rome, and rung over the Amphitheatre, and the Campus Martius. Heavens ! Conceive their virtuous indignation. Cicero would burst forth on the moment into an oration to which that in Catalinum would be small beer, and Horace would turn a sneering ode unparalleled for the curiosa felicitas of its bitterness. Latin has had many enemies-the Goths and the Visi-Goths paid small respect to its rolling cadences and rounded periods; but the doctors and the lawyers have done more to mangle the unfortunate tongue than all the Franks and Huns who ever poured over the Alps. Our Sangrados, too, add insult to injury-they make us swallow their nasty stuffs, and call them by barbarous names to boot. They insist upon their Latin being as horrid as their drugs; not only is the draught nauscous to one species of taste, but the formula under which it is administered must be revolting to another.

But bad Latin is not our principal objection to our friends of the College of Surgeons and Physicians. Even if they could write Ciceronian prescriptions, which they can't, or, at all events, won't—we ask, what would be the cui bono of doing so. We are not Romans but Englishmen. Write as you speak. You ask us to put out our tongues, and to let you feel our pulse, in plain English; you find the one too white, and the other too fast. Why don't you tell us the names of the drugs we must swallow, to restore the fine red of the one, and moderate the jog-trot of the other, in plain English too?

Gentlemen," Medicine-men," or "Mystery-men," as the Ojibbeways and their red brethren of the wilderness call you; there has been from time immemorial a considerable quantity of humbug in your profession, the still existing remnants of which we would fain see purged off. In times of yore, when people called you Leeches and Chirurgeons, you added a good many of the tricks of the juggler to your legitimate craft. You were then the prime professors of Alchemy, of Astrology; the principal conjurors and magicians of the olden time, ere the advent of Herr Dobler and the Wizard of the North: you masqueraded in flowing robes and long beards, and carried white wands like the stewards at a charity dinner: you used a mysterious jargon, both in your medical and your magical practice: you applied one to aid you in carrying on the other: you had sympathetic powders, and charms and enchantments: you worked both by spell and pill: hax,

pax, max, was an old medical charm against the effect of a mad dog's bite the not very dignified syllables of och, och, you held to be able to perform cures, to accomplish which sulphur ointment has obtained a more modern celebrity. Long ago, however, you gave up reading your patient's symptoms, and chances in the stars, and you now look for the legitimate reward of your learned labours, rather to guinea fees than to the mystic riches of the crucible. So far, so good. You have in a measure kept pace with the world which is moving on around you; but still, in some respects, you are lagging; still you have a yearning longing for that veil of mystery, which once hung, awe-inspiring, around you; still in your prescriptions live the embers of your former secret fires; still, in ordering a simple pill or a soothing draught, do you fondly hug the glory with which the omne ignotum pro magnifico invests you. Of the old mystic formulas you still have a fond recollection. Gentlemen, your faith in spells is not yet quite at an end. In ordering a dose of salts, your sulph. mag. corresponds to the ancient och. och. We never see a prescription, setting forth the necessity of beginning next day with a dram of castor oil, the neat and appropiate sentiment couched under the dim phraseology of ol. ric. cras, mane, without thinking with great tolerance of the days when hax, pax, max, and similar luminous and useful sentences were in great vogue and vigour.

Drop, then, we beseech of you, the last links which connect science with nonsense-the Doctor with the Diddler family; rhubarb will do as much good when ordered in English as in dog Latin; senna is not a bit more agreeable as Fol. sen. ; nor cream of tartar as Bitar. Pot. Apothecaries can understand “To be made into a draught," just as well as Fiat Haustus; and even the most ignorant will not require more spelling over "The mixture to be taken at bed-time," than they would to read and understand Mist. h. s. sumda

Why on earth should one profession continue to carry on the written part of their business in a dead language-nay, more, in a language not only dead, but corrupted? A merchant might as well draw out his bills in bad Latin, or worse Greek. Only think of invoices, couched in the classical tongues,-of promising to pay for value received, in the language of Cato the elder; or writing a receipt for the value of dry goods in the tongue of Pericles! And why should prescriptions be more learned documents than acknowledgments or promissory notes? We have doubts of the extent of

ance.

learned lore of those who have to write them, and still more terrible misgivings of the capabilities of those who have to read them. We doubt whether a country druggist's boy is more learned in the Latin rudiments, than perhaps his elder brother, a respectable tavern waiter; or, it may be, landlord. But who would think, in a coffee-room or parlour, of mildly ordering a "poculum cervicia," or of vociferating for a cyathum spiriti Galliæ cum aqua pura," when he wanted a glass of porter, or a go of brandy and water? Did you try the experiment, however, with a learned waiter, who could catch, at all events, a glimpse of your meaning, a mistake would not be, perhaps, of great importYou might think the whisky tendered from misconception for brandy, or the ale for porter-no bad substitutes for the originally ordered articles. But in the apothecary's shop-Heaven help us!-the case is different. Oxalic acid mistaken for salts, or a neat packet of sugar-of-lead politely handed over the counter for magnesia, may lead to awkward consequences, connected with coroners' juries and paragraphs headed "Poisoned by mistakeCarelessness of an apothecary," in the newspapers. And let it not be said that chemists or their assistants, although not acquainted with Latin as a language, know well the peculiar abbreviations of the peculiar words which come before them. Their knowledge in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is purely mechanical; they read Latin as parrots speak English, and thus, deriving no help from the sense, but trusting entirely to the accuracy of the formation of the characters-a false stroke of a pen, the accidental transposition of a dot on a line, may lead to nothing more or less than manslaughter.

And now, gentle, confiding, gulled public, a word with you who are so fond of swallowing drugs blindfold, who would, perhaps, even deem the dignity of the medicine you gulp down impaired, its efficacy weakened, were the prescription, to which you trust as to an amulet, made clear, and distinct, and intelligible unto you. Listen. "We have sat at good men's feasts," that is to say, ordinaries, tables d'hôtes, and other kinds and varieties of public dinners. On the board we have often remarked certain dishes, mystically concocted of mysterious substances-not ordinary, home-made, household fare, but meats so skilfully besauced and bestewed, not to say bedevilled, that all the wise men of the East could hardly have guessed at their original component parts. Well, such dishes we have invariably beheld carefully eschewed by nine-tenths of the