A Surgeon

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Title:     A Surgeon
Author: John Earle [More Titles by Earle]

Is one that has some business about this building or little house of man, whereof nature is as it were the tiler, and he the plaisterer. It is ofter out of reparations than an old parsonage, and then he is set on work to patch it again. He deals most with broken commodities, as a broken head or a mangled face, and his gains are very ill got, for he lives by the hurts of the commonwealth. He differs from a physician as a sore does from a disease, or the sick from those that are not whole, the one distempers you within, the other blisters you without. He complains of the decay of valour in these days, and sighs for that slashing age of sword and buckler; and thinks the law against duels was made meerly to wound his vocation. He had been long since undone if the charity of the stews had not relieved him, from whom he has his tribute as duly as the pope; or a wind-fall sometimes from a tavern, if a quart pot hit right. The rareness of his custom makes him pitiless when it comes, and he holds a patient longer than our [spiritual] courts a cause. He tells you what danger you had been in if he had staid but a minute longer, and though it be but a pricked finger, he makes of it much matter. He is a reasonable cleanly man, considering the scabs he has to deal with, and your finest ladies are now and then beholden to him for their best dressings. He curses old gentlewomen and their charity that makes his trade their alms; but his envy is never stirred so much as when gentlemen go over to fight upon Calais sands,[1] whom he wishes drowned e'er they come there, rather than the French shall get his custom.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Calais sands were chosen by English duellists to decide their quarrels on, as being out of the jurisdiction of the law. This custom is noticed in an Epigram written about the period in which this book first appeared.

"When boasting Bembus challeng'd is to fight,
He seemes at first a very Diuell in sight:

Till more aduizde, will not defile [his] hands,
Vnlesse you meete him vpon Callice sands."

The Mastive or Young Whelpe of the olde Dog. Epigrams and Satyrs. 4to. Lond. (Printed, as Warton supposes, about 1600.)

A passage in The Beau's Duel: or a Soldier for the Ladies, a comedy, by Mrs. Centlivre, 4to. 1707, proves, that it existed so late as at that day. "Your only way is to send him word you'll meet him on Calais sands; duelling is unsafe in England for men of estates," &c. See also other instances in Dodsley's Old Plays, edit. 1780. vii. 218.--xii. 412.

[The end]
John Earle's essay: Surgeon

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