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employed often in the low office of shaving, and as for the making of wigs, it is a branch of trade which hath no sort. of connection with chirurgery. It should seem, from ancient portraits, that the beard was suffered either to grow to its full length, or else to have been clipped in part only. There were anciently the same disputes between the French barbers and surgeons, in which the physicians interfered in order to support the barbers against the regular surgeons, who were supposed to encroach too nearly on the province of the physicians. See Pasquier's Recherches de la France, p. 866. et seq. It appears, in part of this controversy, that the barbers were very desirous of hearing lectures in anatomy. Glorieux comme un barbier is a French saying; and Du Chat imputes the origin of it to their very near contact of the faces of kings and great men. (Ducatiana, vol. ii. p. 458.) It appears, by an instrument in Rymer, intituled, Pro barbitonsore Regis,' that the king's palace, in the time of Henry the Sixth, was surrounded with little shops (opella,) which were to be entirely under the direction and controul of this great officer together with the clerk of the Ewry. As there were then no carriages, and the streets very dirty, it is not improbable that those who went to court were shaved, as likewise dressed, in these stalls or shops, before they appeared in the royal presence. (Rymer, vol. 5. part i. p. 180.) A considerable fee is also given to this barber for shaving every knight of the Bath on his creation, as well as forty shillings from every baron, 100 from every earl, and 101. from every duke, on the like occasion."

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1784, June.

XLVIII. On Avarice in Old Age.

MR. URBAN,

THE miser in the play is generally, I believe always, an old man, and we commonly use the expression, an old miser. Indeed there seems to be something extremely unnatural for young men to be guilty of this vice, though no doubt some are. However, the frailty is not so observable in them, because the gaiety, the vanity, usually incidental to that age, in some degree, and as it were by fits and starts, renders the foible much less conspicuous. I do not pretend,

Mr. Urban, to palliate or excuse this odious and unsociable vice in either oid or young. And yet something may be said in favour of old age, so far at least as to account for its being more peculiar to that time of life, and by way of assigning reasons why, from the nature of things, it may be so.

1st, Care naturally grows with years. Experience teaches the old stager the value of money, which, in the common way, is not generally apprehended by young men, who are apt to launch out into extravagance, and often to their hurt or ruin. Hence Virgil uses the expression tristisque Senectus, not so much, I apprehend, from the infirmities that commonly attend the decline of life, as from the black and corroding, the incessant and brow-wrinkling care, which in a manner always accompanies it, disposing the party to anxiety, to scraping, and the most penurious parsimony; cares, which generate money indeed, but bring their punishment along with them, and, therefore, are emphatically termed by the poets ultrices curæ.

But the principal thing, 2dly, is, that the old man has, in effect, should he come to want, nothing to have recourse to, but his money. Labour he cannot, for that day is passed. And he has little to recommend him any other way; his person is altered, and disgusting; his accomplishments, whatever he had formerly been possessed of, are all flown and gone; insomuch that want is a formidable, an insuperable evil to him, whilst a young man can cheerfully disregard it, can run any where to avoid it, and has a thousand remedies against it. One scarcely, methinks, can wonder, that an attention to money, though blamable enough, no doubt, when carried to excess and to a mistrust of God's providence, should so often be seen to assault the fearful breasts, and the helpless state of the aged, who think they have nothing else to trust to. Many, no doubt, on this very account, will not use the good things they are possessed of.

Is not, 3dly, the old man too often sensible, that money is the thing now, that makes him valued and esteemed, courted and attended? That were he once poor, contempt and neglect would immediately follow? whence it is, that the only method he has, as he thinks, of attaching people to him, is by the credit and reputation of his wealth, which consequently, and under this persuasion, he continues to preserve, and even to increase, though he has already one foot, as it were, in the grave.

We have known many a one, Mr. Urban, who has had the ambition of dying worth a certain sum; a plum, or perhaps

two plums. This he never dreamed of at first setting out, but now finds it within his reach, and so,

Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit;

and the consequences of such a view, whence once it enters a man's thoughts, must be perpetual avarice and rapacity, even to the last hour. The man's honour is at stake, and his reputation, he supposes, will suffer, if he acquires not so many, or so many, thousands; a scheme, that never invades the youthful mind.

It appears to me, from these considerations, that for a truly sordid mind, devoid of all religion (and it is scarcely possible, that such a disposition should be impressed with any right notion of religion, either towards God or man) to grow daily more and more anxious and solicitous about his pelf, is a thing so far from being an object of wonder, that on the contrary it is no other, though in itself so detestable, than what may be naturally expected and accounted for. I am, Sir, yours,

1771, July..

T.Row.

XLIX. Distillation of a Spirituous Liquor from Milk.

MR. URBAN, Blackbourton, Oxon, Dec. 23, 1771. BOERHAAVE, Shaw, and the chemical writers, all lay it down as an indisputable truth, that no vinous or spirituous liquor can be produced from any other than vegetable substances; notwithstanding which, the History of the Tartars is full of accounts of ebriety among them, from spirituous liquors distilled from cows' and mares' milk; and they also frequently put flesh into the milk, to increase the strength of it for distillation. And although flesh and vegetables are so very different in appearance, it may be worthy of observation, that the food of all terrestrial animals is of vegetables, or of such animals as feed on them; so that what is said in Scripture in a figurative sense, that all flesh is grass, is really and philosophically true; and that, by digestion and the operations of the body, the food is assimilated and transmuted into the body of the animal which receives it. And as there is such an analogy between terrestrial and marine animals, and such great quantities of vegetable ma

rine productions, it is natural to conclude, they are designed by Providence for the support of them, and that fish are sustained and nourished in the same manner that all other animals are.

That all animal and vegetable substances are ultimately the same, I think, may be strongly enforced, by observing, that, by putrefaction, they are both resolved into one uniform, undistinguished mass, the properties of which are exactly the same, be the subjects ever so different; so that the matter is originally the same, only modified into dif ferent forms.

Now, I should imagine, if spirituous liquors could be produced in any considerable quantities from milk, it would be a matter of important and beneficial consequence to the public, by increasing the number of cattle for that purpose, which must ultimately become provision, and thereby lessen the price of it, besides the increase of hides, tallow, &c. and as this would be a substitute for so much corn, now used in distillation, the price of that, in the same proportion, would be lessened; so that, on the whole, if this could be effected, it would be of the most extensive benefit in every point of view.

The manner in which milk is prepared by the Tartars for distillation, is thus related by Strahlenberg, in his Historical and Geographical Description of the North and East Parts of Europe and Asia, 332: "Ariki or Arki; thus the Tartars and Calmucks call the brandy which they distil from cows' or mares' milk. They put the milk in raw ox-hides sown into bags, and there let it grow sour and thick; they afterwards shake it so long till a thick cream settles upon it; this they take off, and dry it in the sun, and treat their guests with it; and the sour milk they either drink, or distil into brandy. The sour milk which they drink they call Kumise." So that this is really no more than letting the milk grow sour, and then doing what is in their manner equivalent to churning it, to separate the aqueous and serous, from the oleaginous parts of the milk; and which, perhaps, might be made use of, and preserved as some species of cheese, and thus no loss sustained.

And it may be worth trying, whether the whey from cheese, suffered to grow sour, and treated in the same manner, might not produce the same effect as by the Tartarian method; the design of the whole process seeming to be, to free the milk from its oleaginous parts before distillation, as those might prevent the uniting and coalescence of those particles, from which, by distillation, spirits are

formed: and this I am more inclined to think may be the case, as it is well known to the makers of sugar, that a small quantity of butter or fat thrown into the syrup will totally prevent its granulating, that is, the union and adhesion of its parts. 1771, Suppl.

P. E..

L. Wonderful Effects of a Sympathetic Powder. MR. URBAN, Kent, July 10, 1773. ON reading the account in the papers some time ago, of a man who pretended to open the head of any animal, and to cure it again in a very short time, it put me in mind of Sir Kenelm Digby's Sympathetic Powder, of which he gives the following remarkable account:

"Mr. James Howell," says Sir Kenelm, "well known for his public works, endeavouring to part two of his friends engaged in a duel, seized, with his left hand, the hilt of the sword of one of the combatants, and, with his right hand, laid hold of the blade of the other. They, being transported with fury one against the other, struggled to rid themselves of the hinderance their friend made to prevent mischief; and one of them, roughly drawing the blade of his sword, cut to the very bone the nerves and muscles of Mr. Howell's hand; and then the other disengaging his hilt, gave a cross blow at his adversary's head, which glanced towards his friend, who lifting up his wounded hand to save the blow, he was wounded on the back of his hand as he had been before on the inside. The two combatants, seeing Mr. Howell's face besmeared with blood, by lifting up his wounded hand, left off fighting at once, and ran to embrace him; and, having searched his hurts, they bound up his hand with one of his garters, to close the veins which were cut and which bled abundantly. They brought him home, and sent for a surgeon; but this being heard at court, the King sent one of his own surgeons, for his Majesty much respected Mr. Howell.

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"It was my chance to be lodged hard by him, and four or five days after, as I was making myself ready, he came to my house, and prayed me to view his wounds; for I understand,' said he, that you have extraordinary remedies upon such occasions, and my surgeons are apprehensive that my wound may grow to a gangrene, and so the hand must be cut off.' In effect, his countenance shewed D d

VOL. III.

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