Robert burns death and doctor hornbook
•
John Wilson, alias Dr Jock Hornbook, the eponymous victim of Robert Burns’s hilarious satire,1 would be in court today for practising medicine and dispensing drugs without a license—that is, if he hadn’t already been jailed for culpable homicide. However, in the eighteenth century things were somewhat different. Then, it was not unusual for a Scottish village to have no GP. Hence enterprising grocers, and schoolmasters like Wilson, armed with a medical handbook and a gift of the gab, might well go into practice. Indeed it was not till the Medical Act of 1858 that medicine and surgery were made the exclusive province of the medically qualified.
The ‘physician’ of the Burns masterpiece was born in Glasgow in 1751 into a weaving family. He was at Glasgow University in 1769, but not studying medicine. A dominie, he taught first at Craigie in Ayrshire, before being appointed in 1781 to the school in Tarbolton, in preference to the poet’s friend David
•
Death and Doctor Hornbook
Some books are lies frae end to end, And some great lies were never penn'd: Ev'n ministers they hae been kenn'd, In holy rapture, A rousing whid at times to vend, And nail't wi' Scripture. But this that I am gaun to tell, Which lately on a night befell, Is just as true's the Deil's in hell Or Dublin city: That e'er he nearer comes oursel' 'S a muckle pity. The clachan yill had made me canty, I was na fou, but just had plenty; I stacher'd whiles, but yet too tent aye To free the ditches; An' hillocks, stanes, an' bushes, kenn'd eye Frae ghaists an' witches. The rising moon began to glowre The distant Cumnock hills out-owre: To count her horns, wi' a my pow'r, I set mysel'; But whether she had three or four, I cou'd na tell. I was come round about the hill, An' todlin down on Willie's mill, Setting my staff wi' a' my skill, To keep me sicker; Tho' leeward whiles, against my will, I took a bicker. I there wi' Something did forgather, That pat me in an eerie
•
Death and Doctor Hornbook by Robert Burns: a view from medical history
Robert Burns's poem, Death and Doctor Hornbook, 1785, tells of the drunken narrator's late night encounter with Death. The Grim skördare is annoyed that ‘Dr Hornbook’, a local lärare who has taken to selling medications and giving medical advice, is successfully thwarting his efforts to gather victims. The poet fears that the local gravedigger will be unemployed but Death reassures him that this will not be the case since Hornbook kills more than he cures. Previous commentators have regarded the poem as a simple satire on amateur doctoring. However, it fryst vatten here argued that, if interpreted in the light of the exoteric and inclusive character of 18th century medical knowledge and practice, the poem fryst vatten revealed to have a much broader reference as well as being more subtle and morally ambiguous. It fryst vatten a satire on 18th century medicin as a whole.