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HEALTH. 
 
He is not far from every one of us. For in Flim we live and move, 
 not less, than in Him we have our being. 
 
 ‘ Out of darkness comes the hand 
 
 Reaching through nature — moulding man.’ 
 
HEALTH 
 
 FIVE LAY SERMONS TO WORKING 
 PEOPLE 
 
 BY JOHN BROWN M.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF ^ RAB AND HIS FRIENDS ’ ETC. 
 
 EDINBURGH ALEXANDER STRAHAN & CO. 
 
 LONDON HAMILTON ADAMS & CO. 
 
 1862. 
 
EDINBURGH : T. CONSTABLE, 
 
 FRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
(o/3 
 
 rD 
 
 o 
 
 CO 
 
 LD 
 
 CD 
 
 < 3 : 
 
 
 
 Affectionately inscribed to the memory of the Rev^James 
 Trench, the heart and soul of the Canon gate Mission ^ 
 who ^ while he preached a pure and a fervent gospel to its 
 heathens^ taught them a ho and therefore to respect and save 
 their health , and was the Originator and Keeper of their 
 
 Library and Penny Bank, as well as their Minister. 
 
 
/ 
 
C O N T E N TS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface, vii 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 The Doctor — our Duties to him, . . . . . 13 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 His Duties to us, . . . . . . . . 26 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 Children, and how to Guide them, .... 37 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 Health, .52 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 Medical Odds and Ends. 
 
 67 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Three of these sermons were written for, and 
 (shall I say ?) preached some years ago, in one of 
 the earliest missionary stations in Edinburgh, 
 established by Broughton Place Congregation, and 
 presided over at that time by the Rev. James 
 Trench; one of the best human beings it was 
 ever my privilege to know. He is dead ; dying in 
 and of his work — from typhus fever caught at the 
 bedside of one of his poor members — but he lives 
 in the hearts of many a widow and fatherless child ; 
 and lives also, I doubt not, in the immediate vision 
 of Him to do whose will was his meat and his 
 drink. Given ten thousand such men, how would 
 the crooked places be made straight, and the rough 
 places plain, the wildernesses of city wickedness, 
 the solitary places of sin and despair, of pain and 
 shame, be made glad ! This is what is to regene- 
 rate mankind ; this is the leaven that some day is 
 to leaven the lump. 
 
viii 
 
 Preface. 
 
 The other two sermons were never preached, 
 except in print ; but they were composed in the 
 same key. I say this not in defence, but in ex- 
 planation. I have tried to speak to working men 
 and women from my lay pulpit, in the same words, 
 with the same voice, with the same thoughts I 
 was in the habit of using when doctoring them. 
 This is the reason of their plain speaking. There 
 is no other way of reaching these sturdy and 
 weather and work-beaten understandings ; there 
 is nothing fine about them outside, though they 
 are often as white in the skin under their clothes 
 as a duchess, and their hearts as soft and ten- 
 der as Jonathan’s, or as Rachel’s, or our own 
 Grizel Baillie’s ; but you must speak out to them, 
 and must not be mealy-mouthed if you wish to 
 reach their minds and affections and wills. I wish 
 the gentle folks could bear, and could use a little 
 more of this outspokenness ; and, as old Porson 
 said, condescend to call a spade a spade, and not 
 a horticultural implement; five letters instead of 
 twenty-two, and more to the purpose. 
 
 You see, my dear working friends, I am great 
 upon sparing your strength and taking things 
 cannily. ‘ All very well,’ say you ; Gt is easy 
 speaking, and saying. Take it easy ; but if the 
 pat’s on the fire, it maun bile.’ It must, but you 
 needn’t poke up the fire for ever, and you may 
 now and then set the kettle on the hob, and let it 
 sing, instead of leaving it to burn its bottom out. 
 
Preface. 
 
 IX 
 
 I had a friend who injured himself by over- 
 work. One day I asked the servant if any person 
 had called, and was told that some one had. 
 ‘Who was it?’ ‘ Oh, it’s the little gentleman 
 that aye nns when he walks / ’ So I wish this 
 age would walk more, and ‘rin’ less. A man 
 can walk farther and longer than he can run, and 
 it is poor saving to get out of breath. A man 
 who lives to be seventy, and has ten children and 
 (say) five-and-twenty grandchildren, is of more 
 worth to the State than three men who die at thirty, 
 it is to be hoped unmarried. However slow a 
 coach seventy may have been, and however ener- 
 getic and go-a-head the three thirties, I back the 
 tortoise against the hares in the long-run. 
 
 I am constantly seeing men who suffer, and 
 indeed die, from living too fast ; from true though 
 not consciously immoral dissipation or scattering of 
 their lives. Many a man is bankrupt in constitu- 
 tion at forty-five, and either takes out a cessio of 
 himself to the grave, or goes on paying lo per cent, 
 for his stock-in-trade \ he spends his capital instead 
 of merely spending what he makes, or better still, 
 laying up a purse for the days of darkness and old 
 age. A queer man, forty years ago — Mr. Slate, 
 or, as he was called, Sclate^Ws\o was too clever and 
 not clever enough, and had not wisdom to use his 
 wit, always scheming — full of ‘ go,’ but never 
 getting on — was stopped by his friend. Sir Walter 
 Scott — that wonderful friend of us all, to whom 
 
X 
 
 Preface. 
 
 we owe Jeanie Deans and Rob Pvoy, Meg Merrilees 
 and Dandie Dinmont, Jinglin’ Geordie, Cuddie 
 Headrigg, and the immortal Bailie — one day in 
 Princes Street. ^ How are ye getting on, Sclate 
 ‘ Oo, just the auld thing, Sir Walter; ma pennies 
 gang on tippenny eerands.^ And so it is with 
 our nervous power, with our vital capital, with 
 the pence of life ; many of them go on ^ tippenny 
 eerands.’ We are for ever getting our bills re- 
 newed, till down comes the poor and damaged 
 concern with dropsy or consumption, blazing 
 fever, madness, or palsy. There is a Western 
 Banking system in living, in using our bodily 
 organs, as well as in paper- money. But I am 
 running off into another sermon. 
 
 Health of mind and body, next to a good con- 
 science, is the best blessing our Maker can give 
 us, and to no one is it more immediately valuable, 
 than to the labouring man and his wife and children ; 
 and indeed a good conscience is just moral health, 
 the wholeness of the sense and the organ of duty ; 
 for let us never forget that there is a religion of the 
 body, as well as, and greatly helpful of the religion 
 of the soul. We are to glorify God in our souls 
 and in our bodies, for the best of all reasons, be- 
 cause they are His^ and to remember that at last 
 we must give account not only of our thoughts and 
 spiritual desires and acts, but of all the deeds done in 
 our body. A husband who, in the morning before 
 going to his work, would cut his right hand off 
 
Preface. 
 
 XI 
 
 sooner than injure the wife of his bosom, strangles 
 her that same night, when mad with drink ; 
 that is a deed done in his body, and truly by his 
 body, for his judgment is gone ^ and for that he 
 must give an account when his name is called ; 
 his judgment was gone ; but then, as the child 
 of a drunken murderer said to me, ‘ A’but, sir, 
 wha goned it ? ’ I am not a teetotaller. I am 
 against teetotalism as a doctrine of universal appli- 
 cation ; I think we are meant to use these things 
 as not abusing them, — this is one of the disciplines 
 of life ; but I not the less am sure that drunken- 
 ness ruins men’s bodies — it is not for me to speak 
 of souls — is a greater cause of disease and misery, 
 poverty, crime, and death among the labouring 
 men and women of our towns, than consumption, 
 fever, cholera, and all their tribe, with thieving 
 and profligacy and improvidence thrown into the 
 bargain : these slay their thousands ; this its tens of 
 thousands. Do you ever think of the full meaning 
 of ^ he’s the waur o’ drink?’ How much the 
 waur ? — and then ^ dead drunk,’ — ‘ mortal.’ Can 
 there be anything more awfully significant than 
 these expressions you hear from children in the 
 streets ? 
 
 You will see in the woodcut a good illustration 
 of the circulation of the blood ; both that through 
 our lungs, by which we breathe and burn, and that 
 through the whole body, by which we live and build. 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 That hand grasps the heart, the central depot, with 
 its valves opening out and in, and, by its contrac- 
 tion and relaxation, makes the living fluid circulate 
 everywhere, carrying in strength, life, and supply 
 to all, and carrying oiF waste and harm. None 
 of you will be the worse of thinking of that hand 
 as His who makes, supports, moves, and governs 
 all things, — that hand which, while it wheels the 
 rolling worlds, gathers the lambs with his arm, 
 carries them in his bosom, and gently leads those 
 that are with young, and which was once nailed 
 for ^ our advantage on the bitter cross.’ 
 
 J. B. 
 
 23 Rutland Street, 
 
 December 16 , 1861 . 
 
SERMON 1. 
 
 THE DOCTOR— OUR DUTIES TO HIM. 
 
 Everybody knows the Doctor ; a very import- 
 ant person he is to us all. What could we do 
 without him ? He brings us into this world, and 
 tries to keep us as long in it as he can, and as long 
 as our bodies can hold together ; and he is with 
 us at that strange and last hour which will come 
 to us all, when we must leave this world and go 
 into the next. 
 
 When we are well, we perhaps think little about 
 the Doctor, or we have our small joke at him 
 and his drugs ; but let anything go wrong with 
 our body, that wonderful tabernacle in which our 
 soul dwells, let any of its wheels go wrong, then 
 off we fly to him. If the mother thinks her hus- 
 band or her child dying, how she runs to him, 
 and urges him with her tears ! how she watches 
 his face, and follows his searching eye, as he ex- 
 amines the dear sufferer ; how she wonders what 
 
 B 
 
H 
 
 Health. 
 
 he thinks — what would she give to know what he 
 knows ! how she wearies for his visit ! how a 
 cheerful word from him makes her heart leap with 
 joy, and gives her spirit and strength to watch over 
 the bed of distress ! Her whole soul goes out to 
 him in unspeakable gratitude when he brings back 
 to her from the power of the grave her husband 
 or darling child. The Doctor knows many of our 
 secrets, of our sorrows, which no one else knows 
 — some of our sins, perhaps, which the great God 
 alone else knows ; how many cares and secrets, 
 how many lives, he carries in his heart and in his 
 hands ! So you see he is a very important person 
 the Doctor, and we should do our best to make 
 the most of him, and to do our duty to him and to 
 ourselves. 
 
 A thinking man feels often painfully what a 
 serious thing it is to be a doctor, to have the 
 charge of the lives of his fellow-mortals, to stand, 
 as it were, between them and death, and eter- 
 nity, and the judgment-seat, and to fight hand 
 to hand with Death. One of the best men and 
 greatest physicians that ever lived. Dr. Sydenham, 
 says, in reference to this, and it would be well 
 if all doctors, young and old, would consider his 
 words : — 
 
 ^ It becomes every man who purposes to give 
 himself to the care of others, seriously to consider 
 the four following things : — Firsts That he must 
 one day give an account to the Supreme Judge of 
 
"The 'Doctor — our Duties to him. 1 5 
 
 all the lives intrusted to his care. Secondly^ That 
 all his skill, and knowledge, and energy, as they 
 have been given him by God, so they should be 
 exercised for His glory and the good of mankind, 
 and not for mere gain or ambition. Thirdly^ and 
 not more beautifully than truly. Let him reflect 
 that he has undertaken the care of no mean crea- 
 ture, for, in order that we may estimate the value, 
 the greatness of the human race, the only begotten 
 Son of God became himself a man, and thus en- 
 nobled it with His divine dignity, and, far more 
 than this, died to redeem it ; and. Fourthly^ That 
 the Doctor, being himself a mortal man, should be 
 diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, 
 inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like 
 sufferer.’ 
 
 I shall never forget a proof I myself got twenty 
 years ago, how serious a thing it is to be a doctor, 
 and how terribly in earnest people are when they 
 want him. It was when cholera first came here in 
 1832. I v/as in England at Chatham, which you 
 all know is a great place for ships and sailors. This 
 fell disease comes on generally in the night ; as 
 the Bible says, ^ it walks in darkness,’ and many 
 a morning was I roused at two o’clock to go and 
 see its sudden victims, for then is its hour and 
 power. One morning a sailor came to say I must 
 go three miles down the river to a village where it 
 had broken cut with great fury. Off I set. We 
 rowed in silence down the dark river, passing the 
 
Health, 
 
 i6 
 
 huge hulks, and hearing the restless convicts turn- 
 ing in their beds in their chains. The men rowed 
 with all their might : they had too many dying or 
 dead at home to have the heart to speak to me. 
 We got near the place; it was very dark, but I 
 saw a crowd of men and women on the shore, at 
 the landing-place. They were all shouting for 
 the Doctor ; the shrill cries of the women, and the 
 deep voices of the men coming across the water to 
 me. We were near the shore, when I saw a big 
 old man, his hat off, his hair grey, his head bald ; 
 he said nothing, but turning them all off with his 
 arm, he plunged into the sea, and before I knew 
 where I v/as, he had me in his arms. I was help- 
 less as an infant. He waded out with me, carrying 
 me high up in his left arm, and with his right level- 
 ling every man or woman who stood in his way. 
 
 It v/as Big Joe carrying me. to see his grandson, 
 little Joe ; and he bore me off to the poor con- 
 vulsed boy, and dared me to leave him till he was 
 better. He did get better, but Big Joe was dead 
 that night. He had the disease on him when he 
 carried me away from the boat, but his heart was 
 set upon his boy. I never can forget that night, 
 and how important a thing it was to be able to 
 relieve suffering, and how much Old Joe was in 
 earnest about having the Doctor. 
 
 Now, I want you to consider how important the 
 Doctor is to you. Nobody needs him so much as 
 the poor and labouring man. He is often ill. He 
 
"The Doctor — our Duties to him. 1 7 
 
 is exposed to hunger and wet and cold, and to 
 fever, and to all the diseases of hard labour and 
 poverty. His work is heavy, and his heart is often 
 heavy too with misery of all kinds — his back weary 
 with its burden — his hands and limbs often meeting 
 with accidents, — and you know if the poor man, if 
 one of you falls ill and takes fever, or breaks his 
 leg, it is a far more serious thing than with a richer 
 man. Your health and strength are all you have 
 to depend on ; they are your stock-in-trade, your 
 capital. Therefore I shall ask you to remember 
 four things about your duty to the Doctor, so as to 
 get the most good out of him, and do the most 
 good to him too. 
 
 It is your duty to trust the Doctor. 
 
 2^i^, It is your duty to obey the Doctor. 
 
 '^dly^ It is your duty to speak the truth to the 
 Doctor, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
 truth ; and, 
 
 4M/V, It is your duty to reward the Doctor. 
 
 And so now for the first. It is your duty to trust 
 the Doctor, that is, to believe in him. If you were 
 in a ship, in a wild storm, and among dangerous 
 rocks, and if you took a pilot on board, who knew 
 all the coast and all the breakers, and had a clear 
 eye, a firm heart, and a practised hand, would you 
 not let him have his own way ? would you think 
 of giving him your poor advice, or keep his hand 
 from its work at the helm ? Y ou would not be 
 such a fool, or so uncivil, or so mad. And yet 
 
Health, 
 
 many people do this very same sort of thing, just 
 because they don’t really trust their Doctor ; and 
 a Doctor is a pilot for your bodies, when they are 
 in a storm and in distress. He takes the helm, and 
 does his best to guide you through a fever \ but he 
 must have fair play ; he must be trusted even in 
 the dark. It is wonderful what cures the very 
 sight of a Doctor will work, if the patient believes 
 in him ; it is half the battle. His very face is as 
 good as a medicine, and sometimes better, — and 
 much pleasanter too. 
 
 One day a labouring man came to me with in- 
 digestion. He had a sour and sore stomach, and 
 heartburn, and the water-brash, and wind, and 
 colic, and wonderful misery of body and mind. I 
 found he was eating bad food, and too much of 
 it ; and then, when its digestion gave him pain, 
 he took a glass of raw whisky. I made him pro- 
 mise to give up his bad food and his worse whisky, 
 and live on pease-brose and sweet milk, and I wrote 
 him a prescription, as we call it, for some medicine, 
 and said, ‘Take that^ and come back in a fort- 
 night, and you will be well.’ He did come back, 
 hearty and hale ; — no colic, no sinking at the 
 heart, a clean tongue, and a cool hand, and a firm 
 step, and a clear eye, and a happy face. I was 
 very proud of the wonders my prescription had 
 done ; and having forgotten what it was, I said, 
 ‘ Let me see what I gave you.’ ‘ Oh,’ says he, 
 ‘I took it.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but the prescrip- 
 
The Doctor — our Duties to him, 1 9 
 
 tion.’ ‘ / took it^ as you bade me. I swallowed 
 it.’ He had actually eaten the bit of paper, and 
 been all that the better of it ; but it would have 
 done him little, at least less good, had he not 
 trusted me when I said he would be better, and 
 attended to my rules. 
 
 So, take my word for it, and trust your Doctor ; 
 it is his due, and it is for your own advantage. 
 Now, our next duty is to obey the Doctor. This 
 you will think is simple enough. What use is 
 there in calling him in, if we don’t do what he bids 
 us ? and yet nothing is more common, partly from 
 laziness and sheer stupidity, partly from conceit 
 and suspiciousness, and partly, in the case of chil- 
 dren, from false kindness and indulgence, than to 
 disobey the Doctor’s orders. Many a child have I 
 seen die from nothing but the mother’s not liking 
 to make her swallow a powder, or put on a blister ; 
 and let me say, by the bye, teach your children at 
 once to obey you, and take the medicine. Many 
 a life is lost from this, and remember you may 
 make even Willie Winkie take his castor-oil in 
 spite of his cries and teeth, by holding his nose,^ so 
 that he must swallow. 
 
 Thirdly,^ Ton should tell the truth,^ the whole truth,^ 
 and nothing but the truths to your Doctor. He may 
 be never so clever, and never so anxious, but he can 
 no more know how to treat a case of illness with- 
 out knowing all about it, than a miller can make 
 meal without corn ; and many a life have I seen 
 
20 
 
 Health, 
 
 lost from the patient or his friends concealing some- 
 thing that was true, or telling something that was 
 false. The silliness of this is only equal to its 
 sinfulness and its peril. 
 
 I remember, in connexion with that place where 
 Big Joe lived and died, a singular proof of the per- 
 versity of people in not telling the Doctor the truth 
 — as you know people are apt to send for him 
 in cholera when it is too late, when it is a death 
 rather than a disease. But there is an early stage, 
 called premonitory — or warning — when medicines 
 can avail. I summoned all the people of that fish- 
 ing village who were well, and told them this, and 
 asked them if they had any of the symptoms. 
 They all denied having any (this is a peculiar fea- 
 ture in that terrible disease, they are afraid to let on 
 to themselves, or even the Doctor, that they are 
 Mn for it’), though from their looks and from 
 their going away while I was speaking, I knew 
 they were not telling the truth. Well, I said, 
 ‘ You must, at any rate, every one of you, take 
 some of this,’ producing a bottle of medicine. I 
 will not tell you what it was, as you should never 
 take drugs at your own hands, but it is simple and 
 cheap. I made every one take it \ only one woman 
 going away without taking any ; she was the only 
 one of all those who died. 
 
 Lastly^ It is your duty to rezvard your Doctor. 
 There are four ways of rewarding your Doctor. 
 The first is by giving him your money ; the second 
 
The Doctor — our Duties to him, 2 1 
 
 is by giving him your gratitude \ the third is by 
 your doing his bidding ; and the fourth is by 
 speaking well of him, giving him a good name, re- 
 commending him to others. Now, I know few if 
 any of you can pay your Doctor, and it is a great 
 public blessing that in this country you will always 
 get a good doctor willing to attend you for no- 
 thing, and this is a great blessing ; but let me tell 
 you, — I don’t think I need tell you, — try and 
 pay him, be it ever so little. It does you good 
 as well as him ^ it keeps up your self-respect \ it 
 raises you in your own eye, in your neighbour’s, 
 and, what is best, in your God’s eye, because it is 
 doing what is right. The ^ man of independent 
 mind,’ be he never so poor, is ‘ king of men for 
 a’ that;’ ay, and ^ for twice and mair than a’ 
 that and to pay his way is one of the proudest 
 things a poor man can say, and he may say it 
 oftener than he thinks he can. And then let me 
 tell you, as a bit of cool, worldly wisdom, that your 
 Doctor will do you all the more good, and make a 
 better job of your cure, if he gets something, some 
 money for his pains ; it is human nature and com- 
 mon sense, this. It is wonderful how much real 
 kindness and watching and attendance and clean- 
 liness you may get for so many shillings a week. 
 Nursing is a much better article at that, — much 
 — than at nothing a week. But I pass on to the 
 other ways of paying or rewarding your Doctor, 
 and, above all, to gratitude. 
 
22 
 
 Health. 
 
 Honey is not sweeter in your mouths, and light 
 is not more pleasant to your eyes, and music to 
 your ears, and a warm, cosy bed is not more wel- 
 come to your wearied legs and head, than is the 
 honest deep gratitude of the poor to the young 
 Doctor. It is his glory, his reward ; he fills him- 
 self with it, and wraps himself all round with it as 
 with a cloak, and goes on in his work, happy and 
 hearty \ and the gratitude of the poor is worth the 
 having, and worth the keeping, and worth the 
 remembering. Twenty years ago I attended old 
 Sandie Campbell’s wife in a fever, in Big Hamil- 
 ton’s Close in the Grassmarket — two worthy, 
 kindly souls they were and are. (Sandie is dead 
 now. ) By God’s blessing, the means I used 
 saved ‘ oor Kirsty’s ’ life, and I made friends of 
 these two for ever ; Sandie would have fought for 
 me if need be, and Kirsty would do as good. I 
 can count on them as my friends, and when I pass 
 the close-mouth in the West Port, where they now 
 live, and are thriving, keeping their pigs, and their 
 hoary old cuddle and cart, I get a curtsy from 
 Kirsty, and see her look after me, and turn to the 
 women beside her, and I know exactly what she is 
 saying to them about ^ Dr. Broon.’ And when I 
 meet old Sandie, with his ancient and long-lugged 
 friend, driving the draff from the distillery for his 
 swine, I see his grey eye brighten and glisten, and 
 he looks up and gives his manly and cordial nod, 
 and goes on his way, and I know that he is saying 
 
'The Doctor — our Duties to him, 23 
 
 to himself, ^ God bless him ! he saved my Kirsty’s 
 life,’ and he runs back in his mind all those t\venty 
 past years, and lays out his heart on all he remem- 
 bers, and that does him good and me too, and no- 
 body any ill. Therefore, give your gratitude to your 
 Doctor, and remember him, like honest Sandie; 
 it will not lose its reward and it costs you nothing ; 
 it is one of those things you can give and never be 
 a bit the poorer, but all the richer. 
 
 One person I would earnestly warn you against, 
 and that is the ^uack Doctor, If the real Doctor 
 is a sort of God of healing, or rather our God’s 
 cobbler for the body, the Quack is the devil for 
 the body, or rather the devil’s servant against the 
 body. And like his father, he is a great liar and 
 cheat. He offers you what he cannot give. When- 
 ever you see a medicine that cures everything, be 
 sure it cures nothing ; and remember, it may kill. 
 The devil promised our Saviour all the kingdoms 
 of the world if he would fall down and worship 
 him y now this was a lie, he could not give him 
 any such thing. Neither can the Quack give you 
 his kingdoms of health, even though you worship 
 him as he best likes, by paying him for his trash ; 
 he is dangerous and dear, and often deadly, — have 
 nothing to do with him. 
 
 We have our duties to one another, yours to 
 me, and mine to you ; but we have all our duty to 
 one else — to Almighty God, who is beside us at 
 this very moment — who followed us all this day. 
 
24 
 
 Health. 
 
 and knew all we did and didn’t do ; what we 
 thought and didn’t think — who will watch over us 
 all this night — who is continually doing us good — 
 who is waiting to be gracious to us — who is the 
 great Physician, whose saving health will heal all 
 our diseases, and redeem our life from destruction, 
 and crown us with loving-kindness and tender 
 mercies, — who can make death the opening into a 
 better life, the very gate of heaven ; that same death 
 which is to all of us the most awful and most cer- 
 tain of all things, and at whose door sits its dread- 
 ful king, with that javelin, that sting of his, which 
 is sin, our own sin. Death would be nothing 
 without sin, no more than falling asleep in the dark 
 --to awake to the happy light of the morning. Now, 
 I would have you think of your duty to this great 
 God, our Father in heaven ; and I would have 
 you to remember that it is your duty to trust Plim, 
 to believe in Him. If you do not, your soul will 
 be shipwrecked, you will go down in terror and in 
 darkness. 
 
 It is your duty to obey Him. Whom else in all 
 this world should you obey, if not Him ? and v/ho 
 else so easily pleased, if we only do obey ? It is 
 your duty to speak the truth to Him, not that He 
 needs any man to tell Him anything. He knows 
 everything about everybody ; nobody can keep a 
 secret from Him. But he hates lies ; He abhors 
 a falsehood. He is the God of truth, and must be 
 dealt honestly with, in sincerity and godly fear ; 
 
^he Doctor — our Duties to him. 25 
 
 and, lastly, you must in a certain sense reward 
 Him. You cannot give Him money, for the silver 
 and gold, the cattle upon a thousand hills, are all 
 His already, but you can give Him your grateful 
 lives ; you can give Him your hearts ; and, as 
 old Mr. Henry says, ‘ Thanks-giving is good, but 
 thanks-living is better.” 
 
 One word more \ you should call your Doctor 
 early. It saves time ; it saves suffering ; it saves 
 trouble ; it saves life. If you saw a fire beginning 
 in your house, you would put it out as fast as you 
 could. You might perhaps be able to blow out 
 with your breath what in an hour the fire-engine 
 could make nothing of. So is it with disease and 
 the Doctor. A disease in the morning when be- 
 ginning, is like the fire beginning ; a dose of medi- 
 cine, some simple thing, may put it out, when if 
 left alone, before night it may be raging hopelessly, 
 like the fire if left alone, and leaving your body 
 dead and in ruins in a few hours. So, call in the 
 Doctor soon ; it saves him much trouble, and may 
 save you your life. 
 
 And let me end by asking you to call in the 
 Great Physician ; to call Him instantly, to call 
 Him in time ; there is not a moment to lose. He 
 is waiting to be called ; He is standing at the door. 
 But He must be called — He may be called too 
 late. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 THE DOCTOR— HIS DUTIES TO YOU. 
 
 You remember our last sermon was mostly 
 about your duties to the Doctor. I am now going 
 to speak about his duties to you ; for you know 
 it is a law of our life, that there are no one-sided 
 duties — they are all double. It is like shaking 
 hands, there must be two at it ; and both of you 
 ought to give a hearty grip and a hearty shake. 
 You owe much to many, and many owe much to 
 you. The Apostle says, ^ Owe no man anything 
 but to love one another;’ but if you owe that, 
 you must be for ever paying it ; it is always due, 
 always running on ; and the meanest and most 
 helpless, the most forlorn, can always pay and 
 be paid in that coin, and in paying can buy more 
 than he thought of. Just as a farthing candle, 
 twinkling out of a cottar’s window, and, it may 
 be, guiding the gudeman home to his wife and 
 
 children, sends its rays out into the infinite expanse 
 
 26 
 
^he Doctor — his Duties to you. 27 
 
 of heaven, and thus returns, as it were, the light 
 of the stars, which are many of them suns. You 
 cannot pass any one on the street to whom you 
 are not bound by this law. If he falls down, you 
 help to raise him. You do your best to relieve 
 him, and get him home ; and let me tell you, to 
 your great gain and honour, the poor are far more 
 ready and better at this sort of work than the 
 gentlemen and ladies. You do far more for each 
 other than they do. You will share your last loaf; 
 you v/ill sit up night after night with a neighbour 
 you know nothing about, just because he is your 
 neighbour, and you know what it is to be neigh- 
 bour-like. You are more natural and less selfish 
 than the fine folks. I don’t say you are better, 
 neither do I say you are worse ; that would be a 
 foolish and often mischievous way of speaking. 
 We have all virtues and vices and advantages 
 peculiar to our condition. You know the queer 
 old couplet, — 
 
 ‘ Them what is rich, them rides in chaises j 
 Them what is poor, them walks like blazes.’ 
 
 If you were well, and not in a hurry, and it were 
 cold, would you not much rather ‘ walk like 
 blazes,’ than ride listless in your chaise ? But 
 this I know, for I have seen it, that according to 
 their means, the poor bear one another’s burdens 
 far more than the rich. 
 
 There are many reasons for this, outside of your- 
 selves, and there is no need of your being proud of 
 
28 
 
 Health, 
 
 it, or indeed of anything else ; but it is something 
 to be thankful for, in the midst of all your hard- 
 ships, that you in this have more of the pov/er and 
 of the luxury of doing immediate, visible good. 
 You pay this debt in ready-money, as you do your 
 meal and your milk \ at least you have very short 
 credit, and the shorter the better. Now, the 
 Doctor has his duties to you, and it is well that 
 he should know them, and that you should know 
 them too ; for it will be long before you and he 
 can do without each other. You keep each other 
 alive. Disease, accidents, pain, and death, reign 
 everywhere, and we call one another mortals,^ as if 
 our chief peculiarity was that we must die, and 
 you all know how death came into this world. 
 
 By one man sin entered into the world, and 
 death by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, 
 for that all have sinned;” and disease, disorder, 
 and distress are the fruits of sin, as truly as that 
 apple grew on that forbidden tree. You have 
 now-a-days all sorts of schemes for making bad 
 men good, and good men better. The v/orld is 
 full of such schemes, some of them wise and some 
 foolish ; but to be wise they must all go on the 
 principle of lessening misery by lessening sin ; so 
 that the old weaver at Kilmarnock, who, at a 
 meeting for abolishing slavery, the corn laws, and 
 a few more things, said, ^ Mr. Preses, I move 
 that we abolish Original Sin,’ was at least begin- 
 ning at the right end. Only fancy what a world 
 
T'he Doctor — his Duties to you, 29 
 
 it would be, what a family any of ours v/ould be, 
 when everybody did everything that was right, and 
 nothing that was wrong, say for a week ! The 
 world would not know itself. It would be inclined 
 to say with the ^ wee bit wifiekie,’ though revers- 
 ing the cause, ^ This is no me.’ I am not going 
 to say more on. this point. It is not my parish. 
 But you need none of you be long ignorant of 
 Who it is who has abolished death, and therefore 
 vanquished sin. 
 
 Well, then, it is the duty of the Doctor in the 
 first place, to cure us ; in the second, to be hind to 
 us ; in the third, to be true to us ; m the fourth, to 
 keep our secrets ; in the fifth, to warn us^ and, best 
 of all, to forewarn us ; in the sixth, to he grateful to 
 us ; and, in the last, to keep his time and his temper. 
 
 And, frst,^ it is the duty of the Doctor to cure 
 you — if he can. That is what we call him in for ; 
 and a doctor, be he never so clever and delightful, 
 who doesn’t cure, is like a mole-catcher who can’t 
 catch moles, or a watchmaker who can do every- 
 thing but make your watch go. Old Dr. Pringle 
 of Perth, when preaching in the country, found his 
 shoes needed mending, and he asked the brother 
 whom he was assisting to tell him of a good 
 cobbler, or, as he called him, a snab. His friend 
 mentioned a ‘ Tammas Rattray, a godly man, and 
 an elder. ’ ‘ But,’ said Dr. Pringle, in his snell 
 
 way, ‘ can he mend my shoon ? that’s what I 
 want ; I want a shoemaker \ I ’m not wanting an 
 c 
 
30 
 
 Health. 
 
 elder.’ It turned out that Tammas was a better 
 elder than a shoemaker. A doctor was once at- 
 tending a poor woman in labour \ it was a des- 
 perate case, requiring a cool head and a firm will ; 
 the good man — for he was good — had neither of 
 these, and losing his presence of mind, gave up 
 the poor woman as lost, and retired into the next 
 room to pray for her. Another doctor, who per- 
 haps wanted what the first one had, and cer- 
 tainly had what he wanted, brains and courage, 
 meanwhile arrived, and called out — ^ Where is 
 
 Dr. ? ’ ^ Oh, he has gone into the next 
 
 room to pray ! ’ ‘ Pray ! tell him to come here 
 
 this moment, and help me ; he can work and pray 
 too ; ’ and with his assistance the snell doctor 
 saved that woman’s life. This, then, is the Doc- 
 tor’s first duty to you, — to cure you, — and for this 
 he must, in the first place, be up to his business ; 
 he must know what to do, and, secondly, he must 
 be able to do it ; he must not merely do as a 
 pointer dog does, stand and say ^ there it is,’ and 
 no more, he must point and shoot too. And let 
 me tell you, moreover, that unless a man likes 
 what he is at, and is in earnest, and sticks to it, 
 he will no more make a good doctor than a good 
 anything else. Doctoring is not only a way for a 
 man to do good by curing disease, and to get 
 money to himself for doing this, but it is also a 
 study which interests for itself alone, like geology, 
 or any other science \ and moreover it is a way to 
 
The Doctor — his Duties to you, 3 1 
 
 fame and the glory of the world ; all these four 
 things act upon the mind of the Doctor, but un- 
 less the first one is uppermost, his patient will 
 come off second-best with him ; he is not the man 
 for your lives or for your money. 
 
 They tell a story, which may not be word for 
 word true, but it has truth and a great principle 
 in it, as all good stories have. It is told of one of 
 our clever friends, the French, who are so know- 
 ing in everything. A great French Doctor was 
 taking an English one round the wards of his 
 hospital ; all sorts of miseries going on before 
 them, some dying, others longing for death, all 
 ill ; the Frenchman was wonderfully eloquent 
 about all their diseases, you would have thought 
 he saw through them, and knew all their secret 
 wheels like looking into a watch, or into a glass 
 bee-hive. He told his English friend what would 
 be seen in such a case, when the body was opened ! 
 He spent some time in this sort of work, and was 
 coming out, full of glee, when the other Doctor 
 
 said : ^ But, Dr. , you haven’t prescribed for 
 
 these cases.’ ‘Oh, neither I have!’ said he, 
 with a grumph and a shrug ; ‘ I quite forgot that ; 
 that being the one thing why these poor people 
 were there, and why he was there too. Another 
 ' story of a Frenchman, though I daresay we could 
 tell it of ourselves. He was a great professor, and 
 gave a powerful poison as a medicine for an ugly 
 disease of the skin. He carried it very far, so as 
 
3 ^ 
 
 Health. 
 
 to weaken the poor fellow, who died, just as the 
 last vestige of the skin disease died too. On 
 looking at the dead body, quite smooth and white, 
 and, also, quite dead, he said, ‘ Ah, never mind, 
 he was dead cured.'* 
 
 So let me advise you, as, indeed, your good 
 sense will advise yourselves, to test a Doctor by 
 this : — Is he in earnest ? does he speak little and 
 do much ? does he make your case his first care ? 
 He may, after that, speak of the weather, or the 
 money-market ; he may gossip, and even haver ; 
 or he may drop, quietly and shortly, some ^ good 
 words’ — the fewer the better; something that 
 causes you to think and feel ; and may teach you 
 to be more of the Publican than of the Pharisee, 
 in that story you know of, when they two went up 
 to the temple to pray ; but generally speaking, the 
 Doctor should, like the rest of us, stick to his 
 trade, and mind his business. 
 
 Secondly^ It is the Doctor’s duty to be kind to 
 you. I mean by this, not only to speak kindly, 
 but to he kind, which includes this and a great deal 
 more, though a kind word, as well as a merry heart, 
 does good, like a medicine. Cheerfulness, or rather 
 cheeriness, is a great thing in a Doctor ; his very 
 foot should have ‘ music in’t, when he comes up 
 the stair.’ The Doctor should never lose his 
 power of pitying pain, and letting his patient see 
 this and feel it. Some men, and they are often 
 the best at their proper work, can let their hearts 
 
"The Doctor — his Duties to you, jj 
 
 come out only through their eyes ; but it is not the 
 less sincerej and to the point ; you can make your 
 mouth say what is not true ; you can’t do quite so 
 much with your eyes. A Doctor’s eye should 
 command, as well as comfort and cheer his patient ; 
 he should never let him think disobedience or de- 
 spair possible. Perhaps you think Doctors get 
 hardened by seeing so much suffering ; this is not 
 true. Pity as a motive, as well as a feeling ending 
 in itself, is stronger in an old Doctor than in a 
 young, so he be made of the right stuff. He 
 comes to know himself, what pain and sorrow 
 mean, what their weight is, and how grateful he 
 was or is for relief and sympathy. 
 
 Thirdly It is his duty to be true to you. True 
 in word and in deed. He ought to speak nothing 
 but the truth, as to the nature, and extent, and 
 issues of the disease he is treating ; but he is not 
 bound, as I said you were, to tell the whole truth 
 — that is for his own wisdom and discretion to 
 judge of; only, never let him tell an untruth, and 
 let him be honest enough when he can’t say any- 
 thing definite, to say nothing. It requires some 
 courage to confess our ignorance, but it is worth 
 it. As to the question, often spoken of — telling a 
 man he is dying — the Doctor must, in the first 
 place, be sure the patient is dying ; and, secondly, 
 that it is for his good, bodily and mental, to tell 
 him so : he should almost always warn the friends, 
 but, even here, cautiously. 
 
34 
 
 Health, 
 
 Fourthly,^ It is his duty to keep your secrets. 
 There are things a Doctor comes to know and is 
 told which no one but he and the Judge of all 
 should know ; and he is a base man, and unworthy 
 to be in such a noble profession as that of healing, 
 who can betray what he knows must injure, and in 
 some cases may ruin. 
 
 Fifthly^ It is his duty to warn you against what 
 is injuring your health. If he finds his patient has 
 brought disease upon himself by sin, by drink, by 
 over-work, by over-eating, by over-anything, it is 
 his duty to say so plainly and firmly, and the same 
 with regard to the treatment of children by their 
 parents ; the family doctor should forewarn them ; 
 he should explain, as far as he is able and they can 
 comprehend them, the Laws of Health, and so tell 
 them how to prevent disease, as well as do his best 
 to cure it. What a great and rich field there is 
 here for our profession, if they and the public could 
 only work well together ! In this, those queer, 
 half-daft, half-wise beings, the Chinese, take a 
 wiser way ; they pay their Doctor for keeping 
 them well, and they stop his pay as long as they 
 are ill ! 
 
 Sixthly^ It is his duty to be grateful to you ; 
 li/, for employing him, whether you pay him in 
 money or not, for a Doctor, worth being one, 
 makes capital, makes knowledge, and therefore 
 power out of every case he has ; 'idly^ for obeying 
 him and getting better. I am always very much 
 
"The Doctor — his Duties to you. 
 
 35 
 
 obliged to my patients for being so kind as to be 
 better, and for saying so ; for many are ready 
 enough to say they are worse, not so many to say 
 they are better, even when they are ; and you 
 know our Scotch way of saying, ‘I’m no that 
 ill,’ when ‘I’ is in high health, or, ‘I’m no 
 ony waur,’ when ‘ I ’ is much better. Don’t be 
 niggards in this ; it cheers the Doctor’s heart, and 
 it will lighten yours. 
 
 Seventhly.^ and lastly. It is the Doctor’s duty to 
 keep his time and his temper with you. Any man or 
 woman who knows how longed for a doctor’s visit 
 is, and counts on it to a minute, knows how wrong, 
 how painful, how angering it is for the Doctor not 
 to keep his time. Many things may occur, for his 
 urgent cases are often sudden, to put him out of 
 his reckoning; but it is wonderful what method, 
 and real consideration, and a strong will can do in 
 this way. I never found Dr. Abercrombie a minute 
 after or before his time (both are bad, though one 
 is the worser), and yet if I wanted him in a hurry, 
 and stopped his carriage in the street, he could 
 always go with me at once ; he had the knack and 
 the principle of being true in his times, for it is 
 often a matter of truth. And the Doctor must 
 keep his temper : this is often worse to manage 
 than even his time, there is so much unreason, and 
 ingratitude, and peevishness, and impertinence, and 
 impatience, that it is very hard to keep one’s tongue 
 and eye from being angry ; and sometimes the 
 
36 
 
 Health. 
 
 Doctor does not only well, but the best when he 
 is downrightly angry, and astonishes some fool, or 
 some insolent, or some untruth-doing or saying 
 patient ; but the Doctor should be patient with 
 his patients, he should bear with them, knowing 
 how much they are at the moment suffering. Let 
 us remember Him who is full of compassion, whose 
 compassion never fails ; whose tender mercies are 
 new to us every morning, as His faithfulness is 
 every night ; who healed all manner of diseases, 
 and was kind to the unthankful and the evil ; what 
 would become of us, if He were as impatient with 
 us as we often are with each other ? If you want 
 to be impressed with the Almighty’s infinite loving- 
 kindness and tender mercy. His forbearance. His 
 long-suffering patience. His slowness to anger. His 
 Divine ingeniousness in trying to find it possible to 
 spare and save, think of the Israelites in the desert, 
 and read the chapter where Abraham intercedes 
 with God for Sodom, and these wonderful ^ per- 
 adventures.’ 
 
 But I am getting tedious, and keeping you and 
 myself too long, so good-night. Let the Doctor 
 and you be honest and grateful, and kind and cor- 
 dial, in one word, dutiful to each other, and you 
 will each be the better of the other. 
 
 I m.ay by and by say a word or two to you on 
 your Healthy which is your wealth, that by which 
 you are and do well, and on your Children^ and how 
 to guide it, and them. 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM. 
 
 Our text at this time is Children and their 
 treatment, or, as it sounds better to our ears. 
 Bairns, and how to guide them. You all know 
 the wonder and astonishment there is in a house 
 among its small people when a baby is born ; how 
 they stare at the new arrival with its red face. 
 Where does it come from ? Some tell them it 
 comes from the garden, from a certain kind of 
 cabbage ; some from ‘ Rob Rorison^s bonnet,’ of 
 which wha hasna heard ? some from that famous 
 wig of Charlie’s, in which the cat kittled, when 
 there was three o’ them leevin’, and three o’ 
 them dead ; and you know the Doctor is often said 
 to bring the new baby in his pocket ; and many 
 a time have my pockets been slily examined by 
 the curious youngsters — especially the girls ! — in 
 hopes of finding another baby. But I’ll tell you 
 where all the babies come from ^ they all come 
 
38 
 
 Health, 
 
 from God ; His hand made and fashioned them ; 
 He breathed into their nostrils the breath of life — 
 of His life. He said, ‘ Let this little child be,’ 
 and it was. A child is a true creation ; its soul, 
 certainly, and in a true sense, its body too. And 
 as our children came from Him, so they are going 
 back to Him, and He lends them to us as keep- 
 sakes ; we are to keep and care for them for His 
 sake. What a strange and sacred thought this is ! 
 Children are God’s gifts to us, and it depends on 
 our guiding of them, not only whether they are 
 happy here, but whether they are happy hereafter 
 in that great unchangeable eternity, into which you 
 and I, and all of us are fast going. I once asked 
 a little girl, ‘ Who made you ? ’ and she said, 
 holding up her apron as a measure, ^ God made 
 me that length, and I growed the rest myself.’ 
 Now this, as you know, was not quite true, for 
 she could not grow one half-inch by herself. God 
 makes us grow as well as makes us at first. But 
 what I want you to fix in your minds is, that 
 children come from God, and are returning to 
 Him, and that you and I, who are parents, have 
 to answer to Him for the way we behave to 
 our dear children — the kind of care we take of 
 them. 
 
 Now, a child consists, like ourselves, of a body 
 and a soul. I am not going to say much about 
 the guiding of the souls of children — that is a little 
 out of my line — but I may tell you that the soul, 
 
Children and How to Guide them. 39 
 
 especially in children, depends much, for its good 
 and for its evil, for its happiness or its misery, 
 upon the kind of body it lives in : for the body 
 is just the house that the soul dwells in ; and you 
 know that, if a house be uncomfortable, the tenant 
 of it will be uncomfortable and out of sorts ; — if its 
 windows let the rain and wind in, if the chimney 
 smoke, if the house be damp, and if there be a 
 want of good air, then the people who live in it 
 will be miserable enough ; and if they have no 
 coals, and no water, and no meat, and no beds, 
 then you may be sure it will soon be left by its 
 inhabitants. And so, if you don’t do all you can to 
 make your children’s bodies healthy and happy, 
 their souls will get miserable and cankered and 
 useless, their tempers peevish ; and if you don’t 
 feed and clothe them right, then their poor little 
 souls will leave their ill-used bodies — will be starved 
 out of them ; and many a man and woman have 
 had their tempers, and their minds and hearts, 
 made miseries to themselves, and all about them, 
 just from a want of care of their bodies when 
 children. 
 
 There is something very sad, and, in a true 
 sense, very unnatural in an unhappy child. You 
 and I, grown-up people, who have cares, and have 
 had sorrows and difficulties and sins, may well be 
 dull and sad sometimes ; it would be still sadder, 
 if we were not often so ; but children should be 
 always either laughing and playing, or eating and 
 
40 
 
 Health. 
 
 sleeping. Play is their business. You cannot 
 think how much useful knowledge, and how much 
 valuable bodily exercise, a child teaches itself in its 
 play ; and look how merry the young of other 
 animals are : the kitten making fun of everything, 
 even of its sedate mother’s tail and whiskers ; the 
 lambs, running races in their mirth ; even the 
 young asses — the baby-cuddie — how pawky and 
 droll and happy he looks with his fuzzy head, and 
 his laughing eyes, and his long legs, stot, stotting 
 after that venerable and sair hauden-doun lady, 
 with the long ears, his mother. One thing I like 
 to see, is a- child clean in the morning. I like to 
 see its plump little body, well washed, and sweet 
 and caller from top to bottom. But there is an- 
 other thing I like to see, ana that is a child dirty 
 at night. I like a steerin bairn — goo-gooin’, crow- 
 ing -and kicking, keeping everybody alive. Do 
 you remember William Miller’s song of ^ Wee 
 Willie Winkie?’ Here it is. I think you will 
 allow, especially you who are mothers, that it 
 is capital. 
 
 Wee Willie Winkie 
 Rins through the toun, 
 
 Up stairs an' doon stairs 
 In his nicht-goun, 
 
 Tirlin’ at the window, 
 
 Crying at the lock, 
 
 ‘ Are the weans in their bed, 
 
 For it’s noo ten o’clock ?’ 
 
 ‘ Hey, Willie Winkie, 
 
 Are ye cornin’ ben ? 
 
Children and How to Guide them. 41 
 
 The cat’s singin’ grey thrums 
 To the sleepin’ hen, 
 
 The dog ’s speldert on the floor, 
 
 And disna gi'e a cheep. 
 
 But here ’s a waukrife laddie ! 
 
 That winna fa’ asleep.’ 
 
 ‘ Onything but sleep, you rogue ! 
 
 Glow’rin’ like the moon ! 
 
 Rattlin’ in an aim jug 
 Wi’ an aim spoon. 
 
 Rumblin’, tumblin’ roun’ about, 
 
 Crawin’ like a cock. 
 
 Skirlin’ like a kenna-what, 
 
 Wauk’nin’ sleepin’ folk. 
 
 « Hey, Willie Winkle, 
 
 The wean ’s in a creel ! 
 
 Wamblin’ aff a bodie’s knee 
 Like a verra eel, 
 
 Ruggin’ at the cat’s lug. 
 
 And ravelin’ a’ her thrums — 
 
 Hey, Willie Winkle— 
 
 See, there he comes ! ’ 
 
 Wearied is the mither 
 That has a stoorie wean, 
 
 A wee stumpie stousie, 
 
 Wha canna rin his lane. 
 
 That has a battle aye wi’ sleep 
 Afore he ’ll close an e’e — 
 
 But ae kiss frae aff his rosy lips 
 Gi’es strength anew to me. 
 
 Is not this good ? first-rate ! The cat singin’ 
 grey thrums, and the wee stumpie stousie, ruggin’ 
 at her lug, and ravelin’ a’ her thrums ; and then 
 what a din he is making ! — rattlin’ in an aim jug 
 
42 
 
 Health. 
 
 wi’ an aim spoon, skirlin’ like a kenna-what, and 
 ha’in’ a battle aye wi’ sleep. What a picture of a 
 healthy and happy child ! 
 
 Now, I know how hard it is for many of you to 
 get meat for your children, and clothes for them, 
 and bed and bedding for them at night, and I 
 know how you have to struggle for yourselves and 
 them, and how difficult it often is for you to take 
 all the care you would like to do of them, and you 
 will believe me when I say, that it is a far greater 
 thing, because a far harder thing, for a poor, strug- 
 gling, and it may be weakly woman in your station, 
 to bring up her children comfortably, than for 
 those who are richer ; but still you may do a great 
 deal of good at little cost either of money or time 
 or trouble. And it is well-wared pains ; it will 
 bring you in 200 per cent, in real comfort, and 
 profit, and credit ; and so you will I am sure listen 
 good-naturedly to me, when I go over some plain 
 and simple things about the health of your 
 children. 
 
 To begin with their heads. You know the head 
 contains the brain, which is the king of the body, 
 and commands all under him ; and it depends on 
 his being good or bad whether his subjects — the 
 legs, and arms, and body, and stomach, and our 
 old friends the bowels, are in good order and 
 happy, or not. Now, first of all, keep the head 
 cool. Nature has given it a night-cap of her own 
 in the hair, and it is the best. And keep the head 
 
Children and How to Guide them, 43 
 
 clean. Give it a good scouring every Saturday 
 night at the least ; and if it gee sore and scabbit, 
 the best thing I know for it is to wash it with soft 
 soap (black soap), and put a big cabbage-blade on 
 it every night. Then for the lungs^ or lichts — the 
 bellows that keep the fire of life burning — they 
 ' are very busy in children, because a child is not 
 like grown-up folk, merely keeping itself up. It 
 is doing this, and growing too ; and so it eats more, 
 and sleeps more, and breathes more in proportion 
 than big folk. And to carry on all this business it 
 must have fresh air, and lots of it. So, whenever 
 it can be managed, a child should have a good 
 while every day in the open air, and should have 
 well-aired places to sleep in. Then for their nicht- 
 gowns^ the best are long flannel gowns ; and chil- 
 dren should be always more warmly clad than 
 grown-up people — cold kills them more easily. 
 Then there is the stomachy and as this is the kitchen 
 and great manufactory, it is almost always the first 
 thing that goes wrong in children, and generally 
 as much from too much being put in, as from its 
 food being of an injurious kind. A baby for nine 
 months after it is born, should have almost nothing 
 but its mother’s milk. This is God’s food, and 
 it is the best and the cheapest too. If the baby 
 be healthy it should be weaned or spained at nine 
 or ten months ; and this should be done gradually, 
 giving the baby a little gruel, or new milk, and 
 water and sugar, or thin bread-berry, once a day 
 
44 
 
 Health. 
 
 for some time, so as gradually to wean it. This 
 makes it easier for mother as well as baby. No 
 child should get meat or hard things till it gets teeth 
 to chew them, and no baby should ever get a drop 
 of whisky, or any strong drink, unless by the doc- 
 tor’s orders. Whisky to the soft, tender stomach 
 of an infant is like vitriol to ours ; it is a burning 
 poison to its dear little body, as it may be a burning 
 poison and a curse to its never-dying soul. As 
 you value your children’s health of body, and the 
 salvation of their souls, never give them a drop 
 of whisky ; and let mothers, above all others, 
 beware of drinking when nursing. The whisky 
 passes from their stomachs into their milk, and 
 poisons their own child. This is a positive fact. 
 And think of a drunk woman carrying and manag- 
 ing a child ! I was once, many years ago, walking 
 in Lothian Street, when I saw a woman staggering 
 along very drunk. She was carrying a child ; it 
 was lying over her shoulder. I saw it slip, slippin’ 
 farther and farther back. I ran, and cried out ; 
 but before I could get up, the poor little thing 
 smiling over its miserable mother’s shoulder, fell 
 down, like a stone, on its head, on the pavement \ 
 it gave a gasp, and turned up its blue eyes, and 
 had a convulsion, and its soul was away to God, 
 and its little, soft, waefu’ body lying dead, and its 
 idiotic mother grinning and staggering over it, 
 half seeing the dreadful truth, then forgetting it, 
 and cursing and swearing. That was a sight ! so 
 
Children and How to Guide them. 45 
 
 much misery, and wickedness, and ruin. It was 
 the young woman’s only child. When she came 
 to herself, she became mad, and is to this day a 
 drivelling idiot, and goes about for ever seeking 
 for her child, and cursing the woman who killed 
 it. This is a true tale, too true. 
 
 There is another practice which I must notice, 
 and that is giving children laudanum to make them 
 sleep, and keep them quiet, and for coughs and 
 windy pains. Now, this is a most dangerous 
 thing. I have often been called in to see children 
 who were dying, and who did die, from laudanum 
 given in this way. I have known four drops kill 
 a child a month old ; and ten drops one a year old. 
 The best rule, and one you should stick to, as 
 under God’s eye as well as the law’s, is, never to 
 give laudanum v/ithout a doctor’s line or order. 
 And when on this subject, I would also say a 
 word about the use of opium and laudanum among 
 yourselves. I know this is far commoner among 
 the poor in Edinburgh than is thought. But I 
 assure you, from much experience, that the drunk- 
 enness and stupefaction from the use of laudanum 
 is even worse than that from whisky. The one 
 poisons and makes mad the body ; the other, the 
 laudanum, poisons the mind, and makes it like an 
 idiot’s. So, in both matters beware ; death is in 
 the cup, murder is in the cup, and poverty and the 
 workhouse, and the gallows, and an awful future 
 of pain and misery — all are in the cup. These are 
 
 D 
 
46 
 
 Health, 
 
 the wages the devil pays his servants with for doing 
 his work. 
 
 But to go back to the bairns. And first a word 
 on our old friends, the bowels. Let them alone 
 as much as you can. They will put themselves 
 and keep themselves right, if you take care to pre- 
 vent wrong things going into the stomach ! No 
 sour apples, or raw turnips or carrots ; no sweeties 
 or tarts, and all that kind of abomination ; no tea, 
 to draw the sides of their tender little stomachs 
 together ; no whisky, to kill their digestion ; no 
 Gundy ^ or Taffy ^ or L'lck,^ or Black Alan^ or yib ; 
 the less sugar and sweet things the better ; the 
 more milk and butter and fat the better ; but plenty 
 of plain, halesome food, parritch and milk, bread 
 and butter, potatoes and milk, good broth, — kail 
 as we call it. You often hear of the wonders 
 of cod-liver oil, and they are wonders ; poor little 
 wretches who have faces like old puggies’, and are 
 all belly and no legs, and are screaming all day and 
 all night too, — these poor little wretches under the 
 cod-liver oil, get sonsy, and rosy, and fat, and 
 happy, and strong. Now, this is greatly because 
 the cod-liver oil is capital food. If you can’t afford 
 to get cod-liver oil for delicate children, or if they 
 reject it, give them plain olive oil, a tablespoon- 
 ful twice a day, and take one to yourself, and 
 you will be astonished how you will, both of you, 
 thrive. 
 
 Some folk will tell you that children’s feet should 
 
Children and How to Guide^them. 47 
 
 be always kept warm. I say no. No healthy 
 child’s feet are warm \ but the great thing is to 
 keep the body warm. That is like keeping the 
 fire good, and the room will be warm. The chest, 
 the breast, is the place where the fire of the body 
 — the heating apparatus — is, and if you keep it 
 warm, and give it plenty of fuel, which is fresh air 
 and good food, you need not mind about the feeti- 
 kins, they will mind themselves ; indeed, for my 
 own part, I am so ungenteel as to think bare feet 
 and bare legs in summer the most comfortable 
 wear, costing much less than leather and worsted, 
 the only kind of soles that are always fresh. As 
 to the moral training of children, I need scarcely 
 speak to you. What people want about these 
 things is not knowledge, but the will to do what is 
 right, — what they know to be right, and the moral 
 power to do it. 
 
 Whatever you wish your child to be, be it your- 
 self. If you wish it to be happy, healthy, sober, 
 truthful, affectionate, honest, and godly, be your- 
 self all these. If you wish it to be lazy and sulky, 
 and a liar, and a thief, and a drunkard, and a 
 swearer, be yourself all these. As the old cock 
 crows, the young cock learns. You will remem- 
 ber who said, ^ Train up a child in the way he 
 should go, and when he is old he will not depart 
 from it.’ And you may, as a general rule, as soon 
 expect to gather grapes from thorns, and figs from 
 
48 
 
 Health. 
 
 thistles, as get good, healthy, happy children from 
 diseased and lazy and wicked parents. 
 
 Let me put you in mind, seriously, of one thing 
 that you ought to get done to all your children, 
 and that is, to have them vaccinated, or inoculated 
 with the cow-pock. The best time for this is two 
 months after birth, but better late than never, and 
 in these times you need never have any excuse for 
 its not being done. You have only to take your 
 children to the Old or the New Town Dispen- 
 saries. It is a real crime, I think, in parents to 
 neglect this. It is cruel to their child, and it is a 
 crime to the public. If every child in the world 
 were vaccinated, which might be managed in a few 
 years, that loathsome and deadly disease, the small- 
 pox, would disappear from the face of the earth ; 
 but many people are so stupid, and so lazy, and so 
 prejudiced, as to neglect this plain duty, till they 
 find to their cost that it is too late. So promise 
 me, all seriously in your hearts, to see to this if it 
 is not done already, and to see to it immediately. 
 
 Be always frank and open with your children. 
 Make them trust you and tell you all their secrets. 
 Make them feel at ease with you, and make free 
 with them. There is no such good plaything for 
 grown-up children like you and me,. as weans., wee 
 ones. It is wonderful what you can get them to 
 do with a little coaxing and fun. You all know 
 this as well as I do, and you all practise it every 
 day in your own families. Here is a pleasant little 
 
Children and How to Guide them, 49 
 
 story out of an old book. ‘ A gentleman having 
 led a company of children beyond their usual jour- 
 ney, they began to get weary, and all cried to him 
 to carry them on his back, but because of their 
 multitude he could not do this. But,” says he, 
 ‘‘I’ll get horses for us all;” then, cutting little 
 wands out of the hedge as ponies for them, and a 
 great stake as a charger for himself, this put mettle 
 in their little legs, and they rode cheerily home.’ 
 So much for a bit of ingenious fun. 
 
 One thing, however poor you are, you can give 
 your children, and that is your prayers, and they 
 are, if real and humble, worth more than silver or 
 gold, — more than food and clothing, and have often 
 brought from our Father who is in heaven, and 
 hears our prayers, both money and meat and 
 clothes, and all worldly good things. And there is 
 one thing you can always teach your child : you 
 may not yourself know how to read or write, and 
 therefore you may not be able to teach your chil- 
 dren how to do these things ; you may not know 
 the names of the stars or their geography, and may 
 therefore not be able to tell them how far you are 
 from the sun, or how big the moon is ; nor be able 
 to tell them the way to Jerusalem or Australia, but 
 you may always be able to tell them who made 
 the stars and numbered them, and you may tell 
 them the road to heaven. You may always teach 
 them to pray. Some weeks ago, I was taken out 
 to see the mother of a little child. She was very 
 
5 ^ 
 
 Health, 
 
 dangerously ill, and the nurse had left the child 
 to come and help me. I went up to the nursery 
 to get some hot water, and in the child’s bed I 
 saw something raised up. This was the little 
 fellow under the bed-clothes kneeling. I said, 
 ‘ What are you doing ? ’ ‘I am praying God to 
 make mamma better,’ said he. God likes these 
 little prayers and these little people — for of such 
 is the kingdom of heaven. These are His little 
 ones. His lambs, and He hears their cry ; and 
 it is enough if they only lisp their prayers. ‘ Abba, 
 Father,’ is all He needs ; and our prayers are never 
 so truly prayers as when they are most like chil- 
 dren’s in simplicity, in directness, in perfect fulness 
 of reliance. ‘ They pray right up,’ as black Uncle 
 Tom says in that wonderful book, which I hope 
 you have all read and wept over. 
 
 I forgot to speak about punishing children. I 
 am old-fashioned enough to uphold the ancient 
 practice of warming the young bottoms with some 
 sharpness, if need be ; it is a wholesome and 
 capital application, and does good to the bodies, 
 and the souls too, of the little rebels, and it is far 
 less cruel than being sulky, as some parents are, 
 and keeping up a grudge at their children. Warm 
 the bolt, say I, and you will warm the heart too ; 
 and all goes right. 
 
 And now I must end. I have many things I 
 could say to you, but you have had enough of me 
 ana my bairns, I am sure. Go home, and when 
 
Children and How to Guide them. 51 
 
 you see the little curly pows on their pillows, sound 
 asleep, pour out a blessing on them, and ask our 
 Saviour to make them His ; and never forget what 
 we began with, that they came from God, and are 
 going back to Him, and let the light of eternity 
 fall upon them as they lie asleep, and may you 
 resolve to dedicate them and yourselves to Him 
 who died for them and for us all, and who was 
 once Himself a little child, and sucked the breasts 
 of a woman, and who said that awful saying, 
 ^ Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, 
 it had been better for him that a millstone were 
 hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned 
 in the midst of the sea.’ 
 
 library 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 HEALTH. 
 
 My dear Friends, — I am going to give you a 
 sort of sermon about your health, — and you know 
 a sermon has always a text ; so, though I am only 
 a doctor, I mean to take a text for ours, and I will 
 choose it, as our good friends the ministers do, 
 from that best of all books, the Bible. Job ii. 
 4 : ^ All that a man hath will he give for his life.’ 
 
 This, you know, was said many thousands ot 
 years ago by the devil, when, like a base and im- 
 pudent fellow, as he always was and is, he came 
 into the presence of the great God, along with the 
 good angels. Here, for once in his life, the devil 
 spoke the truth and shamed himself. 
 
 What he meant, and what I wish you now 
 seriously to consider, is, that a man — you or I — 
 will lose anything sooner than life ; we would 
 give everything for it, and part with all the 
 money, everything we had, to keep away death 
 
 52 
 
Health. 
 
 53 
 
 and to lengthen our days. If you had ^^500 in 
 a box at home, and knew that you would cer- 
 tainly be dead by to-morrow unless you gave the 
 ^500, would you ever make a doubt about what 
 you would do ? Not you ! And if you were told 
 that if you got drunk, or worked too hard, or took 
 no sort of care of your bodily health, you would 
 turn ill to-morrow and die next week, would you 
 not keep sober, and work more moderately, and be 
 more careful of yourself ? 
 
 Now, I want to make you believe that you are 
 too apt to do this very same sort of thing in your 
 daily life, only that instead of to-morrow or next 
 week, your illness and your death comes next year, 
 or, at any rate, some years sooner than otherwise. 
 But your death is actually preparing already and that 
 by your own hands^ by your own ignorance, and 
 often by your own foolish and sinful neglect and 
 indulgence. A decay or rottenness spreads through 
 the beams of a house, unseen and unfeared, and 
 then, by and by down it comes, and is utterly de- 
 stroyed. So it is with your bodies. You plant, 
 by sin and neglect and folly, the seeds of disease 
 by your own hands ; and as surely as the harvest 
 comes after the seed-time, so will you reap the 
 harvest of pain, and misery, and death. And 
 remember there is nobody to whom health is so 
 valuable, is worth so much, as to the poor labour- 
 ing man ; it is his stock-in-trade, his wealth, his 
 capital ; his bodily strength and skill are the main 
 
54 
 
 Health. 
 
 things he can make his living by, and therefore 
 he should take better care of his body and its 
 health than a rich man ; for a rich man may be 
 laid up in his bed for weeks and months, and 
 yet his business may go on, for he has means to 
 pay his men for working under him, or he may be 
 what is called ‘ living on his money.’ But if a 
 poor man takes fever, or breaks his leg, or falls 
 into a consumption, his wife and children soon 
 want food and clothes ; and many a time do I see 
 on the streets poor, careworn men, dying by inches 
 of consumption, going to and from their work, 
 when, poor fellows, they should be in their beds ; 
 and all this just because they cannot afford to be 
 ill and to lie out of work, — they cannot spare the 
 time and the wages. 
 
 Now, don’t you think, my dear friends, that 
 it is worth your while to attend to your health ? 
 If you were a carter or a coach-driver, and had 
 a horse, would you not take care to give him 
 plenty of corn, and to keep his stable clean and 
 well aired, and to curry his skin well, and you 
 would not kill him with overwork, for besides 
 the cruelty, this would be a dead loss to you — 
 it would be so much out of your pocket ? And 
 don’t you see that God has given you your bodies 
 to work with, and to please Him with their dili- 
 gence ; and it is ungrateful to Him, as Vv^ell as 
 unkind and wicked to your family and yourself, 
 to waste your bodily strength, and bring disease 
 
Health. 
 
 55 
 
 and death upon yourselves ? But you will say, 
 ‘ How can we make a better of it ? We live from 
 hand to mouth ; we can’t have fine houses and 
 warm clothes, and rich food and plenty of it.’ No, 
 I know that ; but if you have not a fine house, 
 you may always have a clean one, and fresh air 
 costs nothing — God gives it to all his children 
 without stint, — and good plain clothes, and meal, 
 may now be had cheaper than ever. 
 
 Health is a word that you all have some notion 
 of, but you will perhaps have a clearer idea of 
 it when I tell you what the word comes from. 
 Health was long ago wholth^ and comes from 
 the word whole or hale. The Bible says, ^ They 
 that are whole need not a physician j’ that is, 
 healthy people have no need of a doctor. Now, 
 a man is whole when, like a bowl or any vessel, 
 he is entire, and has nothing broken about him ^ 
 he is like a watch that goes well, neither too 
 fast nor too slow. But you will perhaps say, 
 ^ You doctors should be able to put us all to 
 rights, just as a watchmaker can clean and sort 
 a watch ; if you can’t, what are you worth ? ’ 
 But the difference between a man and a watch 
 is, that you must try to mend the man when he 
 is going. You can’t stop him and then set him 
 agoing ; and, you know, it would be no joke to 
 a watchmaker, or to the watch, to try and clean 
 it while it was going. But God, who does every- 
 thing like Himself, with his own perfectness, has 
 
Health. 
 
 56 
 
 put inside each of our bodies a Doctor of his own 
 making — one wiser than we with all our wisdom. 
 Every one of us has in himself a power of keeping 
 and setting his health right. If a man is over- 
 worked, God has ordained that he desires rest, 
 and that rest cures him. If he lives in a damp, 
 close place, free and dry air cures him. If he 
 eats too much, fasting cures him. If his skin is 
 dirty, a good scrubbing and a bit of yellow soap 
 will put him all to rights. 
 
 What we call disease or sickness, is the opposite 
 of health, and it comes on us — u/. By descent 
 from our parents. It is one of the surest of all 
 legacies ; if a man’s father and mother are diseased, 
 naturally or artificially, he will have much chance 
 to be as bad, or worse. 2^/y, Hard work brings 
 on disease, and some kinds of work more than 
 others. Masons who hew often fall into con- 
 sumption ; labourers get rheumatism, or what you 
 call ^ the pains;’ painters get what is called their 
 colic, from the lead in the paint, and so on. In a 
 world like ours, this set of causes of disease and ill 
 health cannot be altogether got the better of ; and 
 it was God’s command, after Adam’s sin, that men 
 should toil and sweat for their daily bread ; but 
 more than the half of the bad effects of hard work 
 and dangerous employments might be prevented 
 by a little plain knowledge, attention, and common 
 sense, Sin, wickedness, foolish and excessive 
 
 pleasures, are a great cause of disease. Thousands 
 
Health. 
 
 SI 
 
 die from drinking, and from following other evil 
 courses. There is no life so hard, none in which 
 the poor body comes so badly off, and is made so 
 miserable, as the life of a drunkard or a dissolute 
 man. I need hardly tell you, that this cause of 
 death and disease you can all avoid. I don’t say it 
 is easy for any man in your circumstances to keep 
 from sin ; he is a foolish or ignorant man who says 
 so, and that there are no temptations to drinking. 
 You are much less to blame for doing this than 
 people who are better off ; but you can keep from 
 drinking, and you know as well as I do, how much 
 better and happier, and healthier and richer and 
 more respectable you will be if you do so. \thly 
 and lastly. Disease and death are often brought on 
 from ignorance, from not knowing what are called 
 the laws of healthy those easy, plain, common things 
 which, if you do, you will live long, and which, if 
 you do not do, you will die soon. 
 
 Now, I would like to make a few simple state- 
 ments about this to you ; and I will take the body 
 bit by bit, and tell you some things that you should 
 know and do in order to keep this wonderful house 
 that your soul lives in, and by the deeds done in 
 which you will one day be judged, and which is 
 God’s gift, and God’s handiwork, — clean and com- 
 fortable, hale, strong, and hearty ; for you know, 
 that besides doing good to ourselves and our family 
 and our neighbours with our bodily labour, we are 
 told that we should glorify God in our bodies as 
 
58 
 
 Health, 
 
 well as in our souls, for they are His, more His 
 than ours, — He has bought them by the blood of 
 His Son Jesus Christ. We are not our own, we 
 are bought with a price ; therefore ought we to 
 glorify God with our souls and with our bodies, 
 which are His. 
 
 Now, first, for the skin. You should take great 
 care of it, for on its health a great deal depends ; 
 keep it clean, keep it warm, keep it dry, give it 
 air ; have a regular scrubbing of all your body 
 every Saturday night, and if you can manage it, 
 you should every morning wash not only your face, 
 but your throat and breast with cold water, and 
 rub yourself quite dry with a hard towel till you 
 glow all over. You should keep your hair short if 
 you are men ; it saves you a great deal of trouble 
 and dirt. 
 
 Then, the inside of your head — you know what 
 is inside your head — your brain ; you know how 
 useful it is to you ; the cleverest pair of hands 
 among you would be of little use without brains, 
 they would be like a body without a soul, a watch 
 with the mainspring broken.- Now, you should 
 consider what is best for keeping the ' brain in 
 good trim. One thing of great consequence is 
 regular sleeps and plenty of it. Every man should 
 have at the least eight hours in his bed every four- 
 and-twenty hours, and let him sleep all the time if 
 he can ; but even if he lies awake, it is a rest to 
 his v/earied brain, as well as to his wearied legs 
 
Health, 
 
 S9 
 
 and arms. Sleep is the food of the brain. Men 
 may go mad and get silly, if they go long without 
 sleep. Too much sleep is bad \ but I need hardly 
 warn you against that, or against too much meat. 
 You are in no great danger from these. 
 y^Then, again, whisky and all kinds of intoxi- 
 j eating liquors, in excess, are just so much poison 
 / to the brain. I need not say much about this, 
 / you all know it ; and we all know what dreadful 
 j things happen when a man poisons his brain and 
 makes it mad, and like a wild beast with drink ; 
 he may murder his wife, or his child, and when he 
 comes to himself he knows nothing of how he did 
 it, only the terrible thing is certain, that he did do 
 it, and that he may be hanged for doing something 
 when he was mad, and which he never dreamt of 
 doing when in his senses ; but then he knows that 
 I he made himself mad, and he must take all the 
 I wretched and tremendous consequences. 
 U-^-^T^rom the brains we go to the lungs ^ — you know 
 where they are, — they are what the butchers call 
 the lichts ; here they are, they are the bellows that 
 keep the fire of life going ; for you must know 
 that a clever German philosopher has made out 
 that we are all really burning, — that our bodies are 
 warmed by a sort of burning or combustion, as it 
 is called, — and fed by breath and food, as a fire is 
 fed with coals and air. 
 
 Now the great thing for the lungs is plenty of 
 fresh air, and plenty of room to play in. About 
 
6c 
 
 Health. 
 
 7O5OOO people die every year in Britain from that 
 disease of the lungs called consumption — that is^ 
 nearly half the number of people in the city of 
 Edinburgh ; and it is certain that more than the 
 half of these deaths could be prevented if the 
 lungs had fair play. So you should always try to 
 get your houses well ventilated, that means to let 
 the air be often changed, and free from impure 
 mixtures ; and you should avoid crowding many 
 into one room, and be careful to keep everything 
 clean, and put away all filth ; for filth is not only 
 disgusting to the eye and the nose, but it is dan- 
 gerous to the health. I have seen a great deal of 
 cholera, and been surrounded by dying people, who 
 were beyond any help from doctors, and I have 
 always found that where the air was bad, the 
 rooms ill ventilated, cleanliness neglected, and 
 drunkenness prevailed, there this terrible scourge, 
 which God sends upon us, was most terrible, 
 most rapidly and widely destructive. Believe this, 
 and go home and consider well what I now say, 
 for you may be sure it is true. 
 
 Now we come to the heart. You all know 
 where it is. It is the most wonderful little pump 
 in the world. There is no steam-engine half so 
 clever at its work, or so strong. There it is in 
 every one of us, beat, beating, — all day and all 
 night, year after year, never stopping, like a watch 
 ticking ; only it never needs to be wound up, — 
 God winds it up once for all. It depends for its 
 
Health. 
 
 6i 
 
 healtn on the state of the rest of the body, espe- 
 cially the brains and lungs. But all violent passions, 
 all irregularities of living, damage it. Exposure 
 to cold when drunk, falling asleep, as many poor 
 wretches do, in stairs all night, — this often brings 
 on disease of the heart ; and you know it is not 
 only dangerous to have anything the matter with 
 the heart : it is the commonest of all causes of 
 sudden death. It gives no warning ; you drop 
 down dead in a moment. So we may say of the 
 bodily as well as of the moral organ, ‘ Keep your 
 heart with all dilip-ence ; for out of it are the issues 
 of life.’ 
 
 We now come to the stomach. You all know, 
 I daresay, where it lies ! It speaks for itself. 
 Our friends in England are very respectful to 
 their stomachs. They make a great deal of them, 
 and we make too little. If an Englishman is ill, 
 all the trouble is in his stomach ; if an Irishman is 
 ill, it is in his heart, and he’s ‘ kilt entirely and 
 if a Scotsman, it is his ^ heed.’ Now, I wish I 
 saw Scots men and women as nice and particular 
 about their stomachs, or rather about what they 
 put into them, as their friends in England. Indeed, 
 so much does your genuine John Bull depend on 
 his stomach, and its satisfaction, that we may put 
 in his mouth the stout old lines of Prior : — 
 
 ‘ The plainest man alive may tell ye 
 The seat of empire is the Belly : 
 
 E 
 
62 
 
 Health. 
 
 From hence are sent out those supplies, 
 
 Which make us either stout or wise ; 
 
 The strength of every other member 
 Is founded on your Belly-timber j 
 The qualms or raptures of your blood 
 Rise in proportion to your food, 
 
 Your stomach makes your fabric roll, 
 
 Just as the bias rules the bowl : 
 
 That great Achilles might employ 
 The strength designed to ruin Troy, 
 
 He dined on lions’ marrow, spread 
 On toasts of ammunition bread 5 
 But by his mother sent away. 
 
 Amongst the Thracian girls to play, 
 
 Effeminate he sat and quiet j 
 Strange product of a cheese-cake diet. 
 
 Observe the various operations. 
 
 Of food and drink in several nations. 
 
 Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel. 
 
 Upon the strength of water-gruel ? 
 
 But who shall stand his rage and force, 
 
 If first he rides, then eats his horse ' 
 
 Salads and eggs, and lighter fare. 
 
 Turn the Italian spark’s guitar ; 
 
 And if I take Dan Congreve right. 
 
 Pudding and beef make Britons fight.’ 
 
 Good cooking is the beauty of a dinner. It 
 really does a man as much good again if he eats his 
 food with a relish ; and with a little attention, it is 
 as easy to cook well as ill. And let me tell the 
 wives, that your husbands would like you all the 
 better, and be less likely to go off to the public- 
 house, if their bit of meat or their drop of broth 
 were well cooked. Labouring men should eat 
 well. They should, if possible, have meat — 
 
Health. 
 
 63 
 
 butcher-meat — every day. Good broth is a capital 
 dish. But, above all, keep ’whisky out of your 
 stomachs \ it really plays the very devil when it 
 gets in. It makes the brain mad, it burns the 
 coats of the stomach \ it turns the liver into a lump 
 of rottenness \ it softens and kills the heart ; it 
 makes a man an idiot and a brute. If you really 
 need anything stronger than good meat, take a pot 
 of wholesome porter or ale ; but I believe you are 
 better without even that. You will be all the 
 better able to afford good meat, and plenty of it. 
 
 With regard to your bowels — a very important 
 part of your interior — I am not going to say much, 
 except that neglect of them brings on many dis- 
 eases ; and labouring men are very apt to neglect 
 them. Many years ago, an odd old man, at 
 Greenock, left at his death a number of sealed 
 packets to his friends, and on opening them, they 
 found a Bible, ^^50, and a box of pills, and the 
 words, ‘ Fear God, and keep your bowels open.^ 
 It was good advice, though it might have been 
 rather more decorously worded. If you were a 
 doctor, you would be astonished how many violent 
 diseases of the mind, as well as of the body, are 
 produced by irregularity of the bowels. Many 
 years ago, an old minister, near Linlithgow, was 
 wakened out of his sleep to go to see a great lady 
 in the neighbourhood who was thought dying, and 
 whose mind was jn dreadful despair, and who wished 
 to see him immediately. The old man, rubbing 
 
64 
 
 Health. 
 
 his eyes, and pushing up his Kilmarnock night-cap, 
 said, ‘ And when were her leddyship’s booels 
 opened ? ’ And on finding, after some inquiry, 
 that they were greatly in arrears, ‘ I thocht sae. 
 Rax me ower that pill-box on the chimney-piece, 
 and gie my compliments to Leddy Margret, and 
 tell her to tak thae twa pills, and I’ll be ower by 
 and by mysel’.’ They did as he bade them. They 
 did their duty, and the pills did theirs, and her 
 leddyship was relieved, and she was able at break- 
 fast-time to profit by the Christian advice of the 
 good old man, which she could not have done 
 when her nerves were all wrong. The old Greeks, 
 who were always seeking after wisdom, and didn’t 
 always find it, showed their knowledge and sense 
 in calling depression of mind Melancholy, which 
 means black bile. Leddy Margret’s liver, I have 
 no doubt, had been distilling this perilous stuff. 
 
 My dear friends, there is one thing I have forgot 
 to mention, and that is, about keeping common- 
 <Jtairs clean ; you know they are often abominably 
 filthy, and they aggravate fever, and many of your 
 worst and most deadly diseases ; for you may keep 
 your own houses never so clean and tidy, but if the 
 common- stair is not kept clean too, all its foul 
 air comes into your rooms, and into your lungs, 
 and poisons you. So let all in the stair resolve to 
 keep it clean, and well aired. 
 
 But I must stop now. I fear I have wearied 
 you. You see I had nothing new to tell you. 
 
Health. 
 
 65 
 
 The great thing in regulating and benefiting human 
 life, is not to find out new things, but to make the 
 best of the old things — to live according to Nature, 
 and the will of Nature’s God, — that great Being 
 who bids us call Him our Father, and who is at 
 this very moment regarding each one of us with 
 far more than any earthly father’s compassion and 
 kindness, and who would make us all happy if we 
 would but do His bidding, and take His road. He 
 has given us minds by which we may observe the 
 laws He has ordained in our bodies, and which are 
 as regular and as certain in their effects, and as 
 discoverable by us as the motions of the sun, 
 moon, and stars in the heavens ; and we shall not 
 only benefit ourselves and live longer and work 
 better and be happier, by knowing and obeying 
 these laws, from love to ourselves, but we shall 
 please Him, we shall glorify Him, and make Him 
 our Friend^ — only think of that ! and get His 
 blessing, by taking care of our health, from love 
 to Him, and a regard to His will, in giving us 
 these bodies of ours to serve Him with, and which 
 He has, with His own almighty hands, so fearfully 
 and wonderfully made. 
 
 I hope you will pardon my plainness in speaking 
 to you. I am quite in earnest, and I have a deep 
 regard, I may say a real affection, for you \ for I 
 know you well. I spent many of my early years 
 as a doctor in going about among you. I have 
 attended you long ago v/hen ill ; I have delivered 
 
66 
 
 Health, 
 
 your wives, and been in your houses when death 
 was busy with you and yours, and I have seen 
 your fortitude, energy, and honest, hearty, gener- 
 ous kindness to each other ; your readiness to help 
 your neighbours with anything you have, and to 
 share your last sixpence and your last loaf with 
 them. I wish I saw half as much real neighbour- 
 liness and sympathy among what are called your 
 betters. If a poor man falls down in a fit on the 
 street, who is it that takes him up and carries him 
 home, and gives him what he needs ? it is not the 
 man with a fine coat and gloves on, — it is the poor, 
 dirty-coated, hard-handed, warm-hearted, labour- 
 ing man. 
 
 Keep a good hold of all these homely and sturdy 
 virtues, and add to them temperance and dili- 
 gence, cleanliness, and thrift, good knowledge, and, 
 above all, the love and the fear of God, and you 
 will not only be happy yourselves, but you will 
 make this great and wonderful country of ours 
 which rests upon you, still more wonderful and 
 great. 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. 
 
 My dear Friends, — We are going to ring in 
 now, and end our course. I will be sorry and 
 glad, and you will be the same. We are this 
 about everything. It is the proportion that settles 
 it. I am, upon the whole, as we say, sorry, and 
 I daresay on the whole you are not glad. I dislike 
 parting with anything or anybody I like, for it is 
 ten to one if we meet again. 
 
 My text is, ‘ That his way may he known upon 
 earth; his saving health to all nations,'^ You will 
 find it in that perfect little psalm, the 67th. But 
 before taking it up, I will, as my dear father used 
 to say, — you all remember him, his keen eye and 
 voice ; his white hair, and his grave, earnest, pene- 
 trating look ; and you should remember and possess 
 his Canongate Sermon to you — ^ The Bible, what 
 it is, what it does, and what it deserves,’ — well, 
 he used to say, let us recapitulate a little. It is a 
 
68 
 
 Health. 
 
 long and rather kittle word, but it is the only one 
 that we have. He made it longer, but not less alive, 
 by turning it into ‘ a few recapitulatory remarks.’ 
 What ground then have we travelled over ? First.^ 
 Our duties to and about the Doctor ; to call him 
 in time, to trust him, to obey him, to be grateful 
 to, and to pay him with our money and our hearts 
 and our good word, if we have all these \ if we 
 have not the first, with twice as much of the 
 others. Second^ The Doctor’s duties to us. He 
 should be able and willing to cure us. That is 
 v/hat he is there for. He should be sincere, at- 
 tentive, and tender to us, keeping his time and our 
 secrets. We must tell him all we know about our 
 ailments and their causes, and he must tell us all 
 that is good for us to know, and no more. Thirds 
 Your duties to your children; to the wee Willie 
 Winkies and the little wifies that come toddlin’ 
 hame. It is your duty to mind them. It is a 
 capital Scotch use of this word : they are to be in 
 your mind ; you are to exercise your understand- 
 ing about them ; to give them simple food ; to 
 keep goodies and trash, and raw pears and whisky, 
 away from their tender mouths and stomachs ; to 
 give them that never-ending meal of good air, 
 night and day, which is truly food and fire to them 
 and you ; to be good before as well as to them, 
 to speak and require the truth in love — that is a 
 wonderful expression, isn’t it ? — the truth in love ; 
 that, if acted on by us all, would bring the millen- 
 
Medical Odds and Ends. 
 
 69 
 
 nium next week ; to be plain and homely with 
 them, never spaining their minds from you. You 
 are all sorry, you mothers, when you have to Spain 
 their mouths ; it is a dreadful business that to both 
 parties ; but there is a spaining of the affections 
 still more dreadful, and that need never be, no, 
 never, neither in this world nor in that which is 
 to come. Dr. Waugh, of London, used to say 
 to bereaved mothers, Rachels weeping for their 
 children, and refusing to be comforted, for that 
 simplest of all reasons, because they were not; 
 after giving them God’s words of comfort, clapping 
 them on the shoulders, and fixing his mild deep 
 eyes on them (those who remember those eyes 
 will know what they could mean), ^ My woman, 
 your bairn is where it will have two fathers, but 
 never but one mother.’ 
 
 You should also, when the time comes, explain 
 to your children what about their own health and 
 the ways of the world they ought to know, and for 
 the want of the timely knowledge of which many 
 a life and character has been lost. Show them, 
 moreover, the value you put upon health, by car- 
 ing for your own. 
 
 Do your best to get your sons well married, and 
 soon. By ‘ well married,’ I mean that they should 
 pair off old-fashionedly, for love, and marry what 
 deserves to be loved, as well as what is lovely. 
 I confess I think falling in love is the best way to 
 begin; but then the moment you fall, you should 
 
70 
 
 Health. 
 
 get up and look about vou, and see how the land 
 lies, and whether it is as goodly as it looks. I 
 don’t like walking into love, or being carried into 
 love ; or, above all, being sold or selling yourself 
 into it, which, after all, is not it. And by ^ soon,’ I 
 mean as soon as they are keeping themselves ; for 
 a wife — such a wife as alone I mean, is cheaper 
 to a young man than no wife, and is his best 
 companion. 
 
 Then for your duties to yourselves. See that 
 you make yourself do what is immediately just to 
 your body, feed it when it is really hungry ; let it 
 sleep when it, not its master, desires sleep ; make 
 it happy, poor hard-working fellow ! and give it 
 a gambol when it wants it and deserves it, and as 
 long as it can execute it. Dancing is just the 
 music of the feet, and the gladness of the young 
 legs, and is well called the poetry of motion. It is 
 like all other natural pleasures, given to be used, 
 and to be not abused, either by yourself or by those 
 who don’t like it, and don’t enjoy your doing it — 
 shabby dogs these, beware of them ! And if this 
 be done, it is a good and a grace, as well as plea- 
 sure, and satisfies some good end of our being, and 
 in its own way glorifies our Maker. Did you ever 
 see anything in this world more beautiful than the 
 lambs running races and dancing round the big 
 stone of the field ; and does not your heart get 
 young when you hear, — 
 
Medical Odds and Ends. 71 
 
 ‘ Here we go by Jingo ring, 
 
 Jingo ring, Jingo ring 5 
 Here we go by Jingo ring. 
 
 About the merry ma tanzie/ 
 
 This is just a dance in honour of poor old pagan 
 Jingo ; measured movements arising from and giv- 
 ing happiness. We have no right to keep our- 
 selves or others from natural pleasures ; and we are 
 all too apt to interfere with and judge harshly the 
 pleasures of others ; hence we who are stiff and given 
 to other pleasures, and who, now that we are old, 
 know the many wickednesses of the world, are too 
 apt to put the vices of the jaded, empty old heart, 
 like a dark and ghastly fire burnt out, into the feet 
 and the eyes, and the heart and the head of the 
 young. I remember a story of a good old Anti- 
 burgher minister. It was in the days when danc- 
 ing was held to be a great sin, and to be dealt with 
 by the session. Jessie, a comely, and good, and 
 blithe young woman, a great favourite of the mini- 
 ster’s, had been guilty of dancing at a friend’s 
 wedding. She was summoned before the session 
 to be ^ dealt with’ — the grim old fellows sternly 
 concentrating their eyes upon her, as she stood 
 trembling in her striped short-gown, and her pretty 
 bare feet. The Doctor, who was one of divinity, 
 and a deep thinker, greatly pitying her and himself, 
 said, ^ Jessie, my woman, were ye dancin’ ? ’ 
 
 ^ Yes,’ sobbed Jessie. 
 
 ‘ Ye maun e’en promise never to dance again, 
 Jessie.’ 
 
72 
 
 Health, 
 
 ‘ I wull, sir ; I wull promise/ with a curtsy. 
 
 ‘ Now, what were ye thinking o’, Jessie, when 
 ye were dancin’ ? tell us truly,’ said an old elder, 
 who had been a poacher in youth. 
 
 ^ Nae ill, sir,’ sobbed out the dear little wo- 
 man. 
 
 ‘ Then, Jessie, my woman, aye dance,’ cried the 
 delighted Doctor. 
 
 And so say I, to the extent, that so long as our 
 young girls think ^ nae ill,’ they may dance their 
 own and their feet’s fills \ and so on with all the 
 round of the sunshine and flowers God has thrown 
 on and along the path of his children. 
 
 Lastly your duty to your own bodies : to pre- 
 serve them ; to make, or rather let — for they are 
 made so to go — their wheels go sweetly ; to keep 
 the girs firm round the old barrel \ neither to over 
 nor under work our bodies, and to listen to their 
 teaching and their requests, their cries of pain and 
 sorrow ; and to keep them as well as your souls 
 unspotted from the world. If you want to know a 
 good book on Physiology, or the Laws of Health 
 and of Life, g'^et Dr. Combe’s Physiology ; and let 
 all you mothers get his delightful Management of 
 Infancy, You will love him for his motherly 
 words. You will almost think he might have 
 worn petticoats, — for tenderness he might ; but in 
 mind and will and eye he was every inch a man. 
 It is now long since he wrote, but I have seen 
 nothing so good since \ he is so intelligent, so 
 
Medical Odds and Ends, 
 
 73 
 
 reverent, so full of the solemnity, the sacredness, 
 the beauty, and joy of life, and its work ; so full of 
 sympathy for suffering, himself not ignorant of such 
 evil, — for the latter half of his life was a daily, 
 hourly struggle with death, fighting the destroyer 
 from within with the weapons of life, his brain and 
 his conscience. It is very little physiology that 
 you require, so that it is physiology, and is suitable 
 for your need. I can’t say I like our common 
 people, or, indeed, what we call our ladies and 
 gentlemen, poking curiously into all the ins and 
 outs of our bodies as a general accomplishment, 
 and something to talk of. No, I don’t like it. I 
 would rather they chose some other But let 
 
 them get enough to give them awe and love, light 
 and help, guidance and foresight. 
 
 These, with good sense and good senses, humi- 
 lity, and a thought of a hereafter in this world as 
 well as in the next, will make us as able to doctor 
 ourselves — especially to act in the preventive ser- 
 vice^ which is your main region of power for good 
 — as in this mortal world we have any reason to 
 expect. And let us keep our hearts young, and 
 they will keep our legs and our arms the same. 
 For we know now that hearts are kept going by 
 having strong, pure, lively blood ; if bad blood goes 
 into the heart, it gets angry, and shows this by 
 beating at our breasts, and frightening us ; and 
 sometimes it dies of sheer anger and disgust, if its 
 blood is poor or poisoned, thin and white. ‘ He 
 
74 
 
 Health, 
 
 may dee, but he’ll never grow auld,’ said a canty 
 old wife of her old minister, whose cheek was 
 ruddy like an apple. 
 
 Run for the Doctor 'y don’t saunter to him, or go 
 in, by the bye, as an old elder of my father’s did, 
 when his house was on fire. He was a perfect 
 Nathanael, and lived more in the next world than 
 in this, as you will soon see. One winter night 
 he slipped gently into his neighbour’s cottage, and 
 found James Somerville reading aloud by the blaze 
 of the licht coal \ he leant over the chair, and 
 waited till James closed the book, when he said, 
 ^ By the bye, I am thinkin’ ma hoose is on fire ! ’ 
 and out he and they all ran, in time to see the auld 
 biggin’ fall in with a glorious blaze. So it is too 
 often when that earthly house of ours — our cottage, 
 our tabernacle — is getting on fire. One moment 
 your finger would put out what in an hour all the 
 waters of Clyde would be too late for. If the 
 Doctor is needed, the sooner the better. If he is 
 not, he can tell you so, and you can rejoice that 
 he had a needless journey, and pay him all the 
 more thankfully. So run early and at once. How 
 many deaths — how many lives of suffering and in- 
 capacity — may be spared by being in time ? by 
 being a day or two sooner. With children this is 
 especially the case, and with working men in the 
 full prime of life. A mustard plaster, a leech, a pill, 
 fifteen drops of Ipecacuanha wine, a bran poultice, 
 a hint or a stitch in time, may do all and at once ; 
 
Medical Odds and Ends. 
 
 75 
 
 when a red-hot iron, a basonful of blood, all the 
 wisdom of our art, and all the energy of the Doc- 
 tor, all your tenderness and care are in vain. 
 Many a child’s life is saved by an emetic at night, 
 who would be lost in twelve hours. So send in 
 time ; it is just to your child or the patient, and to 
 yourself 3 it is just to your Doctor ^ for I assure 
 you we Doctors are often sorry, and angry enough, 
 when we find we are too late. It affronts us, and 
 our powers, besides affronting life and all its mean- 
 ings, and Him who gives it. And we really enjoy 
 curing ; it is like running and winning a race — like 
 hunting and finding and killing our game. And 
 then remember to go to the Doctor early in the 
 day, as well as in the disease. I always like my 
 patients to send and say that they would like the 
 Doctor ^ to call before he goes out ! ’ This is like 
 an Irish message, you will say, but there is ‘ sinse’ 
 in it. Fancy a Doctor being sent for, just as he is 
 in bed, to see some one, and on going he finds 
 they had been thinking of sending in the morning, 
 and that he has to run neck and neck with death, 
 with the odds all against him. 
 
 I now wind up with some other odds and ends. 
 I give you them as an old wife would empty her 
 pockets — such wallets they use to be ! — in no 
 regular order ^ here a bit of string, now a bit of 
 gingerbread, now an ^ aiple,’ now a bunch of keys, 
 now an old almanac, now three bawbees and a bad 
 shilling, a ‘ wheen’ buttons all marrowless, a thim- 
 
76 
 
 Health, 
 
 ble, a bit of black sugar, and maybe at the very"" 
 bottom a ^ goold guinea.’ 
 
 Shoes , — It is amazing the misery the people of 
 civilisation endure in and from their shoes. No- 
 body is ever, as they should be, comfortable at once 
 in them ; they hope in the long-run and after much 
 agony, and when they are nearly done, to make 
 them fit, especially if they can get them once well 
 wet, so that the mighty knob of the big toe may 
 adjust himself and be at ease. For my part, if I 
 were rich, I would advertise for a clean, wholesome 
 man, whose foot was exactly my size, and I would 
 make him wear my shoes till I could put them on, 
 and not know I was in them.^ Why is all this ? 
 Why do you see every man’s and woman’s feet so 
 out of shape ? Why are there corns, with their 
 miseries and maledictions ? why the virulence and 
 unreachableness of those that are ‘ soft ? ’ Why do 
 our nails grow in and sometimes have to be torn 
 violently off? 
 
 All because the makers and users of shoes have 
 not common sense, and common reverence for 
 God and his works enough to study the shape and 
 motions of that wonderful pivot on which we turn 
 and progress. Because Fashion — that demon that 
 I wish I saw dressed in her own crinolihe, in bad 
 shoes, a man’s old hat, and trailing petticoats, 
 and with her (for she must be a her) waist well 
 
 1 Frederick the Great kept an aide-de-camp for this purpose, and, poor 
 fellow ! he sometimes wore them too long, and got a kicking for his pains. 
 
Medical Odds and Ends. 
 
 11 
 
 nipt by a circlet of nails with the points inmost, 
 and any other of the small torments, mischiefs, and 
 absurdities she destroys and makes fools of us with, 
 — whom, I say, I wish I saw drummed and hissed, 
 blazing and shrieking, out of the world ; because 
 this contemptible slave, which domineers over her 
 makers, says the shoe must be elegant, must be 
 so and so, and the beautiful living foot must be 
 crushed into it, and human nature must limp along 
 Princes Street and through life natty and wretched. 
 
 It makes me angry when I think of all this. 
 Now, do you want to know how to put your feet 
 into new shoes, and yourself into a new world ? go 
 and buy from Edmonston and Douglas sixpence 
 worth of sense, in f/ie Shoe Pinches ; you 
 
 will, if you get your shoemaker to do as it bids 
 him, go on your ways rejoicing ; no more knobby, 
 half-dislocated big toes ; no more secret parings, 
 and slashings desperate, in order to get on that 
 pair of exquisite boots or shoes. 
 
 Then there is the Infirmary . — Nothing I like 
 better than to see subscriptions to this admirable 
 house of help and comfort to the poor, advertised 
 as from the quarrymen of Craigleith ; from Mr. 
 Milne the brassfounder’s men ; from Peeblesshire ; 
 from the utmost Orkneys ; and from those big, 
 human mastiifs, the navvies. And yet we doctors 
 are often met by the most absurd and obstinate 
 objections by domestic servants in town, and by 
 country people, to going there. This prejudice 
 F 
 
78 
 
 Health, 
 
 is lessening, but it is still great. ‘ Ok, I canna 
 gang into the Infirmary ; I would rather dee ! ’ 
 Would you, indeed ? Not you, or if so, the 
 sooner the better. They have a notion that they 
 are experimented on, and slain by the surgeons \ 
 neglected and poisoned by the nurses, etc., etc. 
 Such utter nonsense ! I know well about the 
 inner life and work of at least our Infirmary, 
 and of that noble, old Minto House, now gone \ 
 and I would rather infinitely, were I a servant, 
 ^prentice boy, or shopman, a porter, or student, 
 and anywhere but in a house of my own, and 
 even then, go straight to the Infirmary, than lie 
 in a box-bed off the kitchen, or on the top of the 
 coal-bunker, or in a dark hole in the lobby, or in 
 a double-bedded room. The food, the bedding, 
 the physicians, the surgeons, the clerks, the dress- 
 ers, the medicines, the wine and porter — and they 
 .don’t scrimp these when necessary — the books, 
 the Bibles, the baths, are all good ; are all better 
 far than one man in ten thousand can command in 
 his own house. So off with a grateful heart and a 
 fearless to the Infirmary, and your mistress can 
 come in and sit beside you ; and her doctor and 
 yours will look in and single you out with his smile 
 and word, and cheer you and the ward by a kindly 
 joke, and you will come out well cured, and having 
 seen much to do you good for life. I never knew 
 any one who was once in, afraid of going back ; 
 they know better. 
 
Medical Odds and Ends. 
 
 79 
 
 There are few things in human nature finer than 
 the devotion and courage of medical men to their 
 hospital and charitable duties ; it is to them a great 
 moral discipline ; not that they don’t get good, 
 selfish good to themselves. Why shouldn’t they ? 
 Nobody does good without getting it ; it is a law of 
 the government of God. But, as a rule, our medi- 
 cal men are not kind and skilful and attentive to 
 their hospital patients, because this is to make 
 them famous, or even because through this they 
 are to get knowledge and fame ; they get all this, 
 and it is their only and their great reward ; but 
 they are in the main disinterested men. Honesty 
 is the best policy ; but, as Dr. Whately, in his 
 keen way, says, ^ that man is not honest who is so 
 for this reason,’ and so with the doctors and their 
 patients. And I am glad to say for my profession, 
 few of them take this second-hand line of duty. 
 
 Beards . — I am for beards out and out, because 
 I think the Maker of the beard was and is. This 
 is reason enough ; but there are many others. 
 The misery of shaving, its expense, its consump- 
 tion of time — a very corporation existing for no 
 other purpose but to shave mankind. Campbell 
 the poet, who had always a bad razor, I suppose, 
 and was late of rising, said he believed the man or 
 civilisation who lived to be sixty had suffered more 
 pain in littles every day in shaving, than a woman 
 with a large family had from her lyings-in. This 
 would be hard to prove ; but it is a process that 
 
8o 
 
 Health, 
 
 never gets pleasanter by practice ; and then the 
 waste of time and temper, — the ugliness of being 
 ill or unshaven. Now, we can easily see advan- 
 tages in it ; the masculine gender is intended to 
 be more out of doors, and more in all weathers 
 than the smooth-chinned ones, and this protects 
 him and his Adam’s apple from harm. It acts 
 as the best of all respirators to the mason and the 
 east wind. Besides, it is a glory ; and it must 
 be delightful to have and to stroke a natural beard, 
 not one like bean-stalks or a bottle-brush, but such 
 a beard as Abraham’s or Abd-el-Kader’s. It is the 
 beginning ever to cut, that makes all the difference. 
 I hazard a theory, that no hair of the head or beard 
 should ever be cut, or needs it, any more than the 
 eyebrows or eyelashes. The finest head of hair I 
 know is one which was never cut. It is not too 
 long ; it is soft and thick. The secret where to 
 stop growing is in the end of the native untouched 
 hair. If you cut it off, the poor hair does not know 
 when to stop ; and if our eyebrows were so cut, they 
 might be made to hang over our eyes, and be 
 wrought into a veil. Besides, think of the waste of 
 substance of the body in hewing away so much hair 
 every morning, and encouraging an endless rotation 
 of crops ! Well then, I go in for the beards of the 
 next generation, the unshorn beings whose beards 
 will be wagging when we are away ; but of course 
 they must be clean. But how are we to sup our 
 porridge and kail? Try it when young, when 
 
Medical Odds and Efids. 8 i 
 
 there is just a shadowy down bn the upper lip, and 
 no fears but they will do all this ‘ elegantly ’ even. 
 Nature is slow and gentle in her teaching even 
 the accomplishment of the spoon. And as for 
 women’s hair, don’t plaster it with scented and 
 sour grease, or with any grease ; it has an oil of 
 its own. And don’t tie up your hair tight, and 
 make it like a cap of iron over your skull. And 
 why are your ears covered ? You hear all the 
 worse, and they are not the cleaner. Besides, the 
 ear is beautifil in itself, and plays its own part in 
 the concert of the features. Go back to the curls, 
 some of you, and try in everything to dress as it 
 becomes you, and as you become ; not as that fine 
 lady, or even your own "I'ibbie or Grizzy chooses 
 to dress, it may be becomingly to her. Why 
 shouldn’t we even in dress be more ourselves than 
 somebody or everybody else ? 
 
 I had a word about leeth. Don’t get young 
 children’s teeth drawn. At least, let this be the 
 rule. Bad teeth come of bad health and bad and 
 hot food, and much sugar. I can’t say I am a 
 great advocate for the common people going in 
 for tooth-brushes. No, they are not necessary 
 in full health. The healthy man’s teeth clean 
 themselves, and so does his skin. A good dose 
 of Gregory often puts away the toothache. It is 
 a great thing, however, to get them early stuffed, 
 if they need it ; that really keeps them and your 
 temper whole. For appearance’ sake merely, I 
 
82 
 
 Health. 
 
 hate false teeth, as I hate a wig. But this is not 
 a matter to dogmatize about. I never was, I 
 think, deceived by either false hair, or false teeth,^ 
 or false eyes, or false cheeks, for there are in the 
 high — I don’t call it the great — world, plumpers 
 for making the cheeks round, as well as a certain 
 dust for making them bloom. But you and I 
 don’t enjoy such advantages. 
 
 Rheumatism is peculiarly a disease of the work- 
 ing man. One old physician said its only cure 
 was patience and flannel. Another said six weeks. 
 But I think good flannel and no drunkenness 
 (observe, I don’t say no drinking, though very 
 nearly so) are its best preventives. It is a curious 
 thing the way in which cold gives rheumatism. 
 Suppose a man is heated and gets cooled, not 
 being very well at any rate, and is sitting or sleep- 
 ing in a draught ; the exposed part is chilled ; the 
 pores of its skin, which are always exuding and 
 exhaling waste from the body, contract and shut 
 in this bad stuff ; it — this is my theory — not getting 
 out is taken up by a blunder of the deluded absorb- 
 ents, who are always prowling about for some 
 thing, and it is returned back to the centre, and 
 finds its way into the blood, and poisons it, affect- 
 ing the heart, and carrying bad money, bad change, 
 bad fat, bad capital all over the body, making 
 nerves, lungs, everything unhappy and angry. 
 This vitiated blood arrives by and bye at the 
 origin of its mischief, the chilled shoulder, and 
 
Medical Odds and Ends. 
 
 83 
 
 here it wreaks its vengeance, and in doing so, does 
 some general good at local expense. It gives pain ; 
 it produces a certain inflammation of its own, and 
 if it is not got rid of by the skin and other ways, it 
 may possibly kill by the rage the body gets in, and 
 the heat ; or it may inflame the ill-used heart itself, 
 and then either kill, or give the patient a life of 
 suffering and peril. The medicines we give act 
 not only by detecting this poison of blood, which, 
 like yeast, leavens all in its neighbourhood ; but by 
 sending it out of the body like a culprit. 
 
 Vaccination , — One word for this. Never neglect 
 it ; get it done within two months after birth, and 
 see that it is well done ; and get all your neighbours 
 to do it. 
 
 Infectious Diseases , — Keep out of their way; 
 kill them by fresh air and cleanliness ; defy them 
 by cheerfulness, good food [better food than usual, 
 in such epidemics as cholera), good sleep, and a 
 good conscience. 
 
 When in the midst of and waiting on those who 
 are under the scourge of an epidemic, be as little 
 very close to the patient as you can, and don’t 
 inhale his or her breath or exhalations when you 
 can help it ; be rather in the current to, than from 
 him. Be very cleanly in putting away all excre- 
 tions at once, and quite away ; go frequently into 
 the fresh air ; and don’t sleep in your day clothes. 
 Do what the Doctor bids you ; don’t crowd round 
 your dying friend ; you are stealing his life in 
 
84 
 
 Health, 
 
 taking his air, and you are quietly killing yourself. 
 This is one of the worst and most unmanageable 
 of our Scottish habits, and many a time have I 
 cleared the room of all but one, and dared them to 
 enter it. 
 
 Then you should, in such things as small-pox, 
 as indeed in everything, carry out the Divine in- 
 junction, ‘ Whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do unto you, do ye even so to them.’ Don’t send 
 for the minister to pray with and over the body of 
 a patient in fever or delirium, or a child dying of 
 small-pox or malignant scarlet fever ; tell him, by 
 all means, and let him pray with you, and for your 
 child. Prayers, you know, are like gravitation, or 
 the light of heaven ; they will go from whatever 
 place they are uttered ; and if they are real prayers, 
 they go straight and home to the centre, the focus 
 of all things ; and you know that poor fellow with 
 the crust of typhus on his lips, and its nonsense on 
 his tongue — that child tossing in misery, not know- 
 ing even its own mother — what can they know, 
 what heed can they give to the prayer of the 
 minister ? He may do all the good he can, the 
 most good maybe, when, like Moses on the hill- 
 side, in the battle with Amalek, he uplifts his 
 hands apart. No ! a word spoken by your minis- 
 ter to himself and his God, a single sigh for mercy 
 to Him who is Mercy, a cry of hope, of despair 
 of self, opening into trust in Him, may save that 
 child’s life, when an angel might pour forth in vain 
 
Medical Odds and Ends. 8 5 
 
 his burning, imploring words into the dull, or wild 
 ears of the sufferer, in the vain hope of getting him 
 to pray. I never would allow my father to go to 
 typhus cases ; and I don’t think they lost anything 
 by it. I have seen him rising in the dark of his 
 room from his knees, and I knew whose case he 
 had been laying at the footstool. 
 
 And now, my dear friends, I find I have ex- 
 hausted our time, and never yet got to the sermon 
 — and its text — ^ That the way of God^ — what is it ? 
 it is His design in setting you here ; it is the road 
 He wishes you to walk in ; it is His providence in 
 your minutest as in the world’s mightiest things ; 
 it is His will expressed in His works and word, 
 and in your own soul it is His salvation. That it 
 ^ may be known^ that the understandings of His 
 intelligent, responsible, mortal and immortal crea- 
 tures should be directed to it, to study and (as far 
 as we ever can or need) to understand that which, 
 in its fulness, passes all understanding ; that it may 
 be known ^ on the earth^^ here, in this very room, 
 this very minute ; not as too many preachers and 
 performers do, to be known only in the next world, 
 men who, looking at the stars, stumble at their 
 own door, and it may be smoor their own child, 
 besides despising, upsetting, and extinguishing their 
 own lantern. No ! the next world is only to be 
 reached through this, and our road through this 
 our wilderness is not safe unless on the far beyond 
 there is shining the lighthouse on the other side 
 
86 
 
 Health, 
 
 of the dark river that has no bridge. Then ‘ Hu 
 saving health His health — whose ? — God’s — His 
 soundness, the wholeness, the perfectness that is 
 alone in and from Him — health of body, of heart, 
 and brain, health to the finger-ends, health for 
 eternity as well as time. ‘ Saving we need to 
 be saved, and we are salvable, this is much ; and 
 God’s health can save us, that is more. When 
 a man or woman is fainting from loss of blood, we 
 sometimes try to save them, when all but gone, by 
 transfusing the warm rich blood of another into 
 their veins. Now this is what God, through His 
 Son, desires to do ; to transfuse His blood. Him- 
 self, through His Son, who is Himself, into us, 
 diseased and weak. ^ And^ refers to His health 
 being ^ known^ recognised, accepted, used, ^ among 
 all nations ; not among the U.P.s, or the Frees, or 
 the Residuaries, or the Baptists, or the New Jeru- 
 salem people — nor among us in the Canongate, or 
 in Biggar, or even in old Scotland, but ^ among all 
 nations ;’ then, and only then, will the people 
 praise Thee, O God ; will all the people praise 
 Thee. Then, and then only, will the earth yield 
 her increase, and God, even our own God, will 
 bless us. God will bless us, and all the ends of 
 the earth shall fear Him. 
 
 And now, my dear and patient friends, we must 
 say good-night. You have been very attentive, 
 and it has been a great pleasure to me as we went 
 on to preach to you. We came to understand one 
 
Medical Odds and Ends. 
 
 87 
 
 another. You saw through my jokes, and that 
 they were not always nothing but jokes. You 
 bore with my solemnities, because I am not alto- 
 gether solemn \ and so good-night, and God bless 
 you, and may you, as Don Quixote, on his death- 
 bed, says to Sancho, May you have your eyes 
 closed by the soft fingers of your great-grandchil- 
 dren. But no, I must shake hands with you, and 
 kiss the bairns — why shouldn’t I ? if their mouths 
 are clean and their breath sweet ? As for you, 
 AiVie^ you are wearying for the child ; and he is 
 tumbling and fretting in his cradle, and wearying 
 for you; good-bye, and away you go on your 
 milky way. I wish I could (unseen) see you two 
 enjoying each other. And good-night, my bonnie 
 wee wifie ; you are sleepy, and you must be up to 
 make your father’s porridge ; and Master William 
 Winkie^ will you be still for one moment while I 
 address you ? Well, Master William, wamble not 
 off your mother’s lap, neither rattle in your excru- 
 ciating way in an aim jug wi’ an aim spoon; no 
 more crawing like a cock, or skirlin’ like a ken-na- 
 what. I had much more to say to you, sir, but 
 you will not bide still ; off with you, and a blessing 
 with you. 
 
 Good-night, Hugh Cleland^ the best smith of 
 any smiddy ; with your bowly back, your huge 
 arms, your big heavy brows and eyebrows, your 
 clear eye and warm unforgetting heart. And you, 
 yohn Noble ^ let me grip your horny hand, and 
 
88 
 
 Health. 
 
 count the queer knobs made by the perpetual mell. 
 I used, when I was a Willie Winkie, and wee, to 
 think that you were born with them. Never mind, 
 you were born for them, and of old you handled 
 the trowel well, and built to the plumb. Thomas 
 Bertram.^ your loom is at a discount, but many’s 
 the happy day I have watched you and your shuttle, 
 and the interweaving treddles, and all the mysteries 
 of setting the ^ wab.’ You are looking well, and 
 though not the least of an ass, you might play 
 Bottom most substantially yet. Andrew Wilson., 
 across the waste of forty years and more I snuff 
 the fragrance of your shop ; have you forgiven me 
 yet for stealing your paint-pot (awful joy !) for ten 
 minutes to adorn my rabbit-house, and for blunting 
 your pet farmer? Wise you were always, and in 
 the saw-pit you spoke little, and wore your crape. 
 Yourself wears well, but take heed of swallowing 
 your shavings unawares, as is the trick of you 
 ^wrights;’ they confound the interior and perplex 
 the Doctor. 
 
 Roh Rough., you smell of rosin, and your look 
 is stern, nevertheless, or all the rather, give me 
 your hand. What a grip ! You have been the 
 most sceptical of all my hearers ; you like to try 
 everything, and you hold fast only what you con- 
 sider good ; and then on your crepida or stool, you 
 have your own think about everything human and 
 divine, as you smite down errors on the lapstane, 
 and ^yerk’ your arguments with a well-rosined 
 
Medical Odds and Ends, 89 
 
 lingle ; throw your window open for yourself as 
 well as for your blackbird ; and make your shoes 
 not to pinch. I present you, sir, with a copy of 
 the book of the wise Switzer. 
 
 And nimble Pillans,^ the clothier of the race, and 
 quick as your needle, strong as your corduroys, I 
 bid you good-night. May you and the cooper be 
 like him of Fogo, each a better man than his 
 father ; and you, Mungo the mole-catcher, and 
 Tod Laurie,^ and Sir Robert the cadger, and all the 
 other odd people, I shake your fists twice, for I 
 like your line. I often wish I had been a mole- 
 catcher, with a brown velveteen, or (fine touch of 
 tailoric fancy !) a moleskin coat, — not that I dislike 
 moles, I once ate the fore-quarter of one, having 
 stewed it in a Florence flask, some forty years ago, 
 and liked it ; but I like the killing of them, and the 
 country bye-ways, and the regularly irregular life, 
 and the importance of my trade. 
 
 And good-night to you all, you women folks. 
 Marion Graham the milkwoman ; Tibbie Meek 
 the single servant ; Jenny Muir the sempstress ; 
 Mother Johnston the howdie, thou consequential 
 Mrs. Gamp, presiding at the 'gates of life ; and 
 you in the corner there, Nancy Cairns,^ grey-haired, 
 meek and old, with your crimped mutch as white 
 as snow \ the shepherd’s widow, the now childless 
 mother, you are stepping home to your bein and 
 lonely room, where your cat is now ravelling a’ her 
 thrums, wondering where ‘ she ’ is. 
 
90 
 
 Health. 
 
 Good-night to you all, big and little, young and 
 old ; and go home to your bedside, there is Some 
 One waiting there for you, and His Son is here 
 ready to take you to Him. Yes, He is waiting 
 for every one of you, and you have only to say, 
 ‘ Father, I have sinned — make me ’ — and He sees 
 you a great way off. But to reverse the parable ; 
 it is the first-born, your elder brother, who is at 
 your side, and leads you to your Father, and says, 
 ‘ I have paid his debt that Son who is ever with 
 Him, whose is all that He hath. 
 
 I need not say more. You know what I mean. 
 You know who is waiting, and you know who it 
 is who stands beside you, having the likeness of the 
 Son of Man. Good-night ! The night cometh in 
 which neither you nor I can work — may we work 
 while it is day ; whatsoever thy hand findeth to 
 do, do it with thy might, for there is no work or 
 device in the grave, whither we are all of us 
 hastening ; and when the night is spent, may we all 
 enter on a healthful, a happy, an everlasting to- 
 morrow ! 
 
 Edinburgh : T. Constable, 
 
 Printer to the Queen, and to the University. 
 

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