STRANGE BUT TRUE

Consulting the cow doctor

Vets treat animals and doctors care for people and that is the way it was meant to be but there have been cases where the demarcation line between the professions has been crossed and in some cases with tragic results.

Such was the situation at Manthorpe, near Bourne, almost 170 years ago when a young lady, Elizabeth Taylor, who had been living in the village for several years with her uncle and aunt, fell ill. The cause was unknown and rather than incur the expense of calling a doctor, the nearest living in Bourne several miles away, she consulted the local veterinary surgeon, John Knipe, of Northorpe, with disastrous results.

A few days later, the young lady died and because of the suddenness of her demise, an inquest was convened in the village under the jurisdiction of the coroner, Mr R A White. But the hearing turned out to be a lengthy one because the victim’s aunt and uncle, Mr and Mrs Taylor, tried to conceal the events leading up to their niece’s death, no doubt because they were reluctant to reveal the extraordinary means they had adopted to obtain treatment.

“Instead of applying for advice to some medical practitioner regularly educated and authorised, they confided her life to the care of an ignorant cow doctor”, reported the Stamford Mercury on Friday 5th May 1848, “and with a view to keeping this fact from the knowledge of the coroner and jury, did not hesitate to make false statements.”

But after some painstaking questioning by the coroner, the facts slowly emerged, that a week after their niece became unwell they consulted Mr Knipe at her request and he prescribed some pills and a decoction of witch mullein, a herbal remedy made from plants of the snapdragon family, often used to treat ailments in horses and so called because of an old superstition that claimed witches used it to make wicks for their candles and lamps when making incantations, thus earning it the name of hag’s taper. Some of the many physical conditions for which it was used included varicose veins, phlebitis, kidney stones, pain, swelling, injuries, and inflammation.

“Although very effectual in farriery”, reported the newspaper, “he ventured to prescribe it for her, although he did not know the extent or even the nature of the disease under which she was labouring. But, fortunately for him, it appeared upon dissection of the body that death was occasioned by extensive internal inflammation and extravasation [leakage] of blood, and had not been accelerated by the doses she had taken, so that he was not legally implicated in the cause of death, though there is no doubt that, if he had not interfered by undertaking her cure, and skilful medical aid had been obtained, the disease might have been arrested and her life would have been saved.”

When the hearing ended, Knipe was severely reprimanded by the coroner, and the newspaper added: “It is hoped this case may be a warning to the public not to trust their lives to the treatment of uneducated quacks.”

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