4 DR. BENJAMIN ALLEN, OF BRAINTREE.
the result. The whole leaves us in no doubt that Allen was an
exceptionally-careful and observant physician, with a keen
interest in his profession. His advice to take certain medicines
at certain stages of the moon, his constant talk of electuaries,
linctuses, bitter drinks, and the like, and his prescription of milli-
pedes, solutions of peacocks' dung, and other nasty medicines
(as noticed in my former paper), may seem to us now as the
merest childishness; but the fact remains that his remedies
were based on the best medical knowledge of his day. It is clear,
too, that he had a very good and extensive practice, extending
for many miles around Braintree, and that it included all classes
of the community. Thus, we find notes showing that, on the
one hand, he attended the Duke of Manchester and his family,
at Leez Priory; Mr. Ruggles, of Spains Hall, Finchingfield;
Squire Western, of Felix Hall; the Tabors, the Maysents, and
other leading gentry of the neighbourhood. On the other
hand, he also attended Goodman Hawkins, the saddler, of Bock-
ing, and Mr. So-and-So the butcher his boy, of (say) Coxall.
Indeed, the chances are that anyone whose family has long
resided in the Braintree district would find in Allen's pages a
note in reference to some disease from which some one or other
of his ancestors suffered a couple of centuries ago, and exactly
how that disease was treated. One or two selected notes on
medical matters may be quoted.
In discussing the remedies to be used for the cure of those who
have been bitten by a mad dog, Allen says (p. 47):—
" It is certain many have been cur'd by eating the mad dog's liver
(as people have told me) fry'd. I know a gentleman of quality [who]
cures his dogs when bit . . . by cauterising. Some give hounds that
are bitten box-leaves and [box-]wood scrapt and chopt. . . . Some
(and they many) cure dogs by charms writ on paper and given to the dogs
[to eat] in butter—a plain proof of the operation of evil spirits being here
no imagination; and it is matter of fact, as Sir William Barker assur'd
me [it] was customary in Ireland, and Mr. Carter sayd it was often done
here by many that kept hounds."
A somewhat-similar disquisition is that (p. 271) entitled—
The Bite of an Adder.—The head of an Adder—[the head] of the same
that bitt, if it can be had, is best—bruised [and] lay'd to the place, is
what the man that catcht them used. Anything that draws, lay'd to the
place, doth it, as a red-hot iron held as near to the place as may be, without
touching it. Mr. Boyle saw [—?] do it. A captain of a ship told
me he had four men bit by cutting cabbages at Italy. One dy'd presently,