- while. She came back to him six or eight weeks later
quite cured. He thought the remedy acted by passing into the colon and, becoming blended with the faeces, served as a local application.
The Whitworth Doctors
are almost forgotten now, but a century ago they were famous all over England. The Whitworth red bottle and the Whitworth drops are still more or less popular reminiscences of their pharmacy. The former was an embrocation, and the second an antispasmodic tincture. Both contained oil of thyme. Formulas are given in "Pharmaceutical Formulas," published at 42, Cannon Street.
The founder of the family of the Whitworth Doctors was John Taylor, originally a farrier, of Whitworth, then a village about three miles from Rochdale. He died in 1802 at the age of sixty-two. John Taylor had a younger brother and two sons, and the younger brother also had sons, all of whom practised surgery. A third and even a fourth generation of surgeons, some of whom were fully qualified, likewise practised at Whitworth, and the last of the race died in 1876.
The original brothers Taylor were both farriers, but they became famous for their treatment of human patients. Their methods were of the most vigorous character. They were in the habit of buying a ton of Glauber's salts from their wholesale druggists, Ewbank and Wallis, of York, and they dispensed it to those who sought their medical advice with no niggard hands, and without any formality of weighing. The two brothers provided free bleeding for poor
