Burton ('Dr. Slop') : his forceps and his foes / by Alban Doran.

  • Doran, Alban H. G. (Alban Henry Griffiths), 1849-1927
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Burton ('Dr. Slop') : his forceps and his foes / by Alban Doran. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    29/56 (page 21)
    us that when the article appeared “ The Writer then lodged near the new Church in the Strand; but has since removed to some other Place.” The furious diatribes in this “ letter ” hurled by Burton at a member of his own profession were possibly parodied in the form of excommunication ascribed to Bishop Ernulphus, of Burton’s own faith, which Dr. Slop, after his cursing of poor Obadiah, is made to read aloud to Tristram’s father and Uncle Toby [TristramShandy, Bk. Ill, Chap. xi). The Lithopaedus footnote proves that Sterne had read and studied the Letter to Smellie. Space will not allow of discussion of the question from Smellie’s point of view. The main features are given in detail in McClintock’s edition of that great Scotch obstetrician’s standard work and related in Sir John Byers’s recent address. Burton and the Non-Naturals. A notice of some of Burton’s minor medical works may be of some interest to the reader. I will begin with a quaint little publication. The title-page we will give in full: — a TREATISE on the NON-NATURALS. In which the Great Influence They have on Human Bodies is Set forth and Mechanically accounted for. To which is subjoin’d, A Short Essay on the CHIN- COUGH, with a new Method of Treating that Obstinate Dis- temper. By John Burton, M.B. Cantab., M.D. Rhem. He that contemneth small Things, shall fall by little and little. Eccles, xix, 1. YORK: Printed by A. Staples and J. Hildyard, Book- seller in York [here follow the names of six London booksellers who sold the Treatise]. MDCCXXXVIII. According to Murray’s New English Dictionary the non-naturals in “ old medicine ” were “ the six things necessary to health, but liable, by abuse or accident, to become the cause of disease, viz., air, meat and drink, sleep and waking, motion and rest, excretion and retention, the affections of the mind.” The term excited the mirth of the author of Tristram Shandy, who could not understand “ why the most natural actions of a man’s life should be called his non-naturals?” 1 The title-page is followed by a really graceful, though very flowery dedication of the Treatise to Boerhaave, under whom he had studied at Leyden. The Preface, on the other hand, is written in Burton’s worst style, being lengthy, wordy and egotistical, redeemed in part by a gracious repetition of his feelings of gratitude for his i. Tristram Shandy, Bk. I, Chap, xxiii. That work, as will be shown, contains other references to Burton’s Treatise on the Non-Naturals.