MEDICAL MISCELLANY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20602, 28 June 1930, Page 8 (Supplement)

MEDICAL MISCELLANY.

QUIPS AND CRANKS.

Sir James Crich ton-Browne, In tho course of his long career as a physician and mental specialist, has had many odd and interesting experiences. Somo of these ho relates in " What the Doctor Thought-,'" but for the most part these jottings aro attempts to escape from " the dailv round, tho common task." Sir James is tho author of several medical works, and it was to ono of these that an after-dinner speaker referred when ho said "I see his address is the Royal Courts of Justice, and it is probably his study of tho judges there that has enabled him to write an illuminating work on ' Dreamy Mental States.' " An amusing medical story relates of a certain highly-qualified medical assistant that ho onco prescribed a gargle for an infant two months old. Two Irish judges were discussing nepotism, One said, "I told that, ceteris paribus, tho claims of relationship should count." " Yes," said tho other, " I agree, but damn tho ceteris paribus,*' Among tho few literary recollections in the book is a pen-picture of de Morgan, " that strangely bifurcated genius, artist and romancer, and of his beautiful and intensely interesting wife. I see him in his showroom in Great Marlborough Strcot, surrounded by plates, vases and titles that had, under his magic touch, taken on glorious colours and an inimitable lustre, and in tho dining-room of his homo at The Vale, Chelsea, where, with some of his wifo's lovely allegorical paintings so chaste in conception, _so sump tuons In tint, so richly decorativo ou the walls, it seemed almost a desecration to partake of anything short of ambrosia." Another literary note concerns the lines from Kubla Khan: A damsel with R dulcimer In a vision once I bhw. It is probablo that Colerirlgo was misled by the musical quality of the word and was not uwaro that dulcimer wa3 meroly another name for tho bag-pipes! Sir James comments from a medical point of view on Rossotti's paintings. All Rossotti's women, he points out, have long necks and suffer from an enlargement of the thyroid gland. "In the Roman woman a slight degree of goitre was thought to enhance beauty; with Rossetti it seems to have been almost essential to his conception of it." No commonplace book would be complete without its howler. Sir James favourite appears to bo that of the Eton boy who, asked what he knew of Milton wroto: "He was a great poot who wrote • Paradiso. Lost." Then his wife died and ho wrote ' Paradise Regained." " " what tho Doctor Thought," by Sir James Crich ton-Browne (Bonn).