A Book About Doctors

The ode continues:—

EPITAPH.

The vocation of fortune-teller was exercised not only by the quacks, but also by the apothecaries, of that period. Garth had ample foundation, in fact, for his satirical sketch of Horoscope's shop in the second canto of "The Dispensary."

Queen Anne's weak eyes caused her to pass from one empiric to another, for the relief they all promised to give, and in some cases even persuaded that they gave her. She had a passion for quack oculists; and happy was the advertising scoundrel who gained her Majesty's favour with a new collyrium. For, of course, if the greatest personage in the land said that Professor Bungalo was a wonderful man, a master of his art, and inspired by God to heal the sick, there was no appeal from so eminent an authority. How should an elderly lady with a crown on her head be mistaken? Do we not hear the same arguments every day in our own enlightened generation, when the new Chiropodist, or Rubber, or inventor of a specific for consumption, points to the social distinctions of his dupes as conclusive evidence that he is neither supported by vulgar ignorance, nor afraid to meet the most searching scrutiny of the educated? Good Queen Anne was so charmed with two of the many knaves who by turns enjoyed her countenance, that she had them sworn in as her own oculists in ordinary; and one of them she was even so silly as to knight. This lucky gentleman was William Reade, originally a botching tailor, and to the last a very ignorant man, as his "Short and Exact Account of all Diseases Incident to the Eyes" attests; yet he rose to the honour of knighthood, and the most lucrative and fashionable physician's practice of his period. Surely every dog has his day. Lazarus never should despair; a turn of fortune may one fine day pick him from the rags which cover his nakedness in the kennel, and put him to feast amongst princes, arrayed in purple and fine linen, and regarded as an oracle of wisdom. It was true that Sir William Reade was unable to read the book which he had written (by the hand of an amanuensis), but I have no doubt that many worthy people who listened to his sonorous voice, beheld his lace ruffles and gold-headed cane, and saw his coach drawn along to St. James's by superb horses, thought him in every respect equal, or even superior, to Pope and Swift.

When Sir William was knighted he hired a poet, who lived in Grub Street, to announce the fact to posterity and "the town," in decasyllabic verse. The production of this bard, "The Oculist, a Poem," was published in the year 1705, and has already (thanks to the British Museum, which like the nets of fishermen receiveth of "all sorts") endowed with a century and a half of posthumous renown; and no one can deny that so much fame is due, both to the man who bought, and the scribbler who sold the following strain:—

Queen Anne's other "sworn oculist," as he and Reade termed themselves, was Roger Grant, a cobbler and Anabaptist preacher. He was a prodigiously vain man, even for a quack, and had his likeness engraved in copper. Impressions of the plate were distributed amongst his friends, but were not in all cases treated with much respect; for one of those who had been complimented with a present of the eminent oculist's portrait, fixed it on a wall of his house, having first adorned it with the following lines:—

The charge of his being a tinker was preferred against him also by another lampoon writer. "In his stead up popped Roger Grant, the tinker, of whom a friend of mine once sung.—

This man, according to the custom of his class, was in the habit of publishing circumstantial and minute accounts of his cures. Of course his statements were a tissue of untruths, with just the faintest possible admixture of what was not altogether false. His plan was to get hold of some poor person of imperfect vision, and, after treating him with medicines and half-crowns for six weeks, induce him to sign a testimonial to the effect that he had been born stone-blind, and had never enjoyed any visual power whatever, till Providence led him to good Dr. Grant, who had cured him in little more than a month. This certificate the clergyman and churchwardens of the parish, in which the patient had been known to wander about the streets in mendicancy, were asked to attest; and if they proved impregnable to the cunning representations of the importunate suitors, and declined to give the evidence of their handwriting, either on the ground that they had reason to question the fact of the original blindness, or because they were not thoroughly acquainted with the particulars of the case, Dr. Grant did not scruple to sign their names himself, or by the hands of his agents. The modus operandi with which he carried out these frauds may be learned by the curious in a pamphlet, published in the year 1709, and entitled "A Full and True Account of a Miraculous Cure of a Young Man in Newington that was Born Blind."

But the last century was rife with medical quacks. The Rev. John Hancocke, D.D., Rector of St. Margaret's, Lothbury, London, Prebendary of Canterbury, and chaplain to the Duke of Bedford, preached up the water-cure, which Pliny the naturalist described as being in his day the fashionable remedy in Rome. He published a work in 1723 that immediately became popular, called "Febrifugum Magnum; or, Common Water the best Cure for Fevers, and probably for the Plague."

The good man deemed himself a genius of the highest order, because he had discovered that a draught of cold water, under certain circumstances, is a powerful diaphoretic. His pharmacopeia, however, contained another remedy—namely, stewed prunes, which the Doctor regarded as a specific in obstinate cases of blood-spitting. Then there was Ward, with his famous pill, whose praises that learned man, Lord Chief Baron Reynolds, sounded in every direction. There was also a tar-water mania, which mastered the clear intellect of Henry Fielding, and had as its principal advocate the supreme intellect of the age, Bishop Berkeley. In volume eighteen of the Gentleman's Magazine is a list of the quack-doctors then practising; and the number of those named in it is almost as numerous as the nostrums, which mount up to 202. These accommodating fellows were ready to fleece every rank of society. The fashionable impostor sold his specific sometimes at the rate of 2s. 6d. a pill, while the humbler knave vended his boluses at 6d. a box. To account for society tolerating, and yet more, warmly encouraging such a state of things, we must remember the force of the example set by eminent physicians in vending medicines the composition of which they kept secret. Sir Hans Sloane sold an eye-salve; and Dr. Mead had a favourite nostrum—a powder for the bite of a mad dog.

The close of the seventeenth century was not in respect of its quacks behind the few preceding generations. In 1789 Mr. and Mrs. Loutherbourg became notorious for curing people without medicine. God, they proclaimed, had endowed them with a miraculous power of healing the impoverished sick, by looking upon them and touching them. Of course every one who presumed to doubt the statement was regarded as calling in question the miracles of holy writ, and was exclaimed against as an infidel. The doctor's house was besieged with enormous crowds. The good man and his lady refused to take any fee whatever, and issued gratuitous tickets amongst the mob, which would admit the bearers into the Loutherbourgian presence. Strange to say, however, these tickets found their way into the hands of venal people, who sold them to others in the crowd (who were tired of waiting) for sums varying from two to five guineas each; and ere long it was discovered that these barterers of the healing power were accomplices in the pay of the poor man's friend. A certain Miss Mary Pratt, in all probability a puppet acting in obedience to Loutherbourg's instructions, wrote an account of the cures performed by the physician and his wife. In a dedicatory letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Miss Pratt says:—"I therefore presume when these testimonies are searched into (which will corroborate with mine) your Lordship will compose a form of prayer, to be used in all churches and chapels, that nothing may impede or prevent this inestimable gift from having its free course; and publick thanks may be offered up in all churches and chapels, for such an astonishing proof of God's love to this favoured land." The publication frankly states that "Mr. De Loutherbourg, who lives on Hammersmith Green, has received a most glorious power from the Lord Jehovah—viz. the gift of healing all manner of diseases incident to the human body, such as blindness, deafness, lameness, cancers, loss of speech, palsies." But the statements of "cases" are yet more droll. The reader will enjoy the perusal of a few of them.

"Case of Thomas Robinson.—Thomas Robinson was sent home to his parents at the sign of the Ram, a public-house in Cow Cross, so ill with what is called the king's evil, that they applied for leave to bring him into St Bartholomew's Hospital." (Of course he was discharged as "incurable," and was eventually restored to health by Mr. Loutherbourg.) "But how," continues Miss Pratt, "shall my pen paint ingratitude? The mother had procured a ticket for him from the Finsbury Dispensary, and with a shameful reluctance denied having seen Mr De Loutherbourg, waited on the kind gentleman belonging to the dispensary, and, amazing! thanked them for relief which they had no hand in; for she told me and fifty more, she took the drugs and medicines and threw them away, reserving the phials, &c. Such an imposition on the public ought to be detected, as she deprived other poor people of those medicines which might have been useful; not only so—robbed the Lord of Life of the glory due to him only, by returning thanks at the dispensary for a cure which they had never performed. The lad is now under Mr De Loutherbourg's care, who administered to him before me yesterday in the public healing-room, amongst a large concourse of people, amongst whom was some of the first families in the kingdom."

"Case.—Mary Ann Hughes.—Her father is chairman to her Grace the Duchess of Rutland, who lives at No. 37, in Ogle Street. She had a most violent fever, fell into her knee, went to Middlesex Hospital, where they made every experiment in order to cure her—but in vain; she came home worse than she went in, her leg contracted and useless. In this deplorable state she waited on Mrs De Loutherbourg, who, with infinite condescension, saw her, administered to her, and the second time of waiting on Mrs De Loutherbourg she was perfectly cured."

"Case.—Mrs Hook.—Mrs Hook, Stableyard, St James's, has two daughters born deaf and dumb. She waited on the lady above-mentioned, who looked on them with an eye of benignity, and healed them. (I heard them both speak.)"

Mary Pratt, after enumerating several cases like the foregoing, concludes thus:

"Let me repeat, with horror and detestation, the wickedness of those who have procured tickets of admission, and sold them for five and two guineas apiece!—whereas this gift was chiefly intended for the poor. Therefore Mr De Loutherbourg has retired from the practice into the country (for the present), having suffered all the indignities and contumely that man could suffer, joined to ungrateful behaviour, and tumultuous proceedings. I have heard people curse him and threaten his life, instead of returning him thanks; and it is my humble wish that prayers may be put up in all churches for his great gifts to multiply."

"Finis.

"Report says three thousand persons have waited for tickets at a time."

Forming a portion of this interesting work by Miss Pratt is a description of a case which throws the Loutherbourgian miracles into the shade, and is apparently cited only for the insight it affords into the state of public feeling in Queen Anne's time, as contrasted with the sceptical enlightenment of George III.'s reign:—

"I hope the public will allow me to adduce a case which history will evince the truth of. A girl, whose father and mother were French refugees, had her hip dislocated from her birth. She was apprentice to a milliner, and obliged to go out about the mistress's business; the boys used to insult her for her lameness continually, as she limped very much.... Providence directed her to read one of the miracles performed by our blessed Saviour concerning the withered arm. The girl exclaimed, 'Oh, madam, was Jesus here on earth he would cure me.' Her mistress answered, 'If you have faith, his power is the same now.' She immediately cried, 'I have faith!' and the bone flew into its place with a report like the noise of a pistol. The girl's joy was ecstatic. She jumped about the room in raptures. The servant was called, sent for her parents, and the minister under whom she sat. They spent the night praising God. Hundreds came to see her, amongst whom was the Bishop of London, by the command of her Majesty Queen Anne (for in those days people were astonished at this great miracle.)"

Dr. Loutherbourg was not the first quack to fleece the good people of Hammersmith. In the 572nd paper of the Spectator, dated July 26, 1714, there is a good story of a consummate artist, who surrounded himself with an enormous crowd, and assured them that Hammersmith was the place of his nativity; and that, out of strong natural affection for his birth-place, he was willing to give each of its inhabitants a present of five shillings. After this exordium, the benevolent fellow produced from his cases an immense number of packets of a powder warranted to cure everything and kill nothing. The price of each packet was properly five shillings and sixpence; but out of love for the people of Hammersmith the good doctor offered to let any of his audience buy them at the rate of sixpence apiece. The multitude availed themselves of this proposition to such an extent that it is to be feared the friend of Hammersmith's humanity suffered greatly from his liberality.

Steele has transmitted to us some capital anecdotes of the empirics of his day. One doctor of Sir Richard's acquaintance resided in Moore Alley, near Wapping, and proclaimed his ability to cure cataracts, because he had lost an eye in the emperor's service. To his patients he was in the habit of displaying, as a conclusive proof of his surgical prowess, a muster-roll showing that either he, or a man of his name, had been in one of his imperial Majesty's regiments. At the sight of this document of course mistrust fled. Another man professed to treat ruptured children, because his father and grandfather were born bursten. But more humorous even than either of these gentlemen was another friend of Sir Richard's, who announced to the public that "from eight to twelve and from two till six, he attended for the good of the public to bleed for threepence."

The fortunes which pretenders to the healing art have amassed would justify a belief that empiricism, under favourable circumstances, is the best trade to be found in the entire list of industrial occupations. Quacks have in all ages found staunch supporters amongst the powerful and affluent. Dr. Myersbach, whom Lettsom endeavoured to drive back into obscurity, continued, long after the publication of the "Observations," to make a large income out of the credulity of the fashionable classes of English society. Without learning of any kind, this man raised himself to opulence. His degree was bought at Erfurth for a few shillings, just before that university raised the prices of its academical distinctions, in consequence of the pleasant raillery of a young Englishman, who paid the fees for a Doctor's diploma, and had it duly recorded in the Collegiate archives as having been presented to Anglicus Ponto; Ponto being no other than his mastiff dog. With such a degree Myersbach set up for a philosopher. Patients crowded to his consulting-room, and those who were unable to come sent their servants with descriptions of their cases. But his success was less than that of the inventor of Ailhaud's powders, which ran their devastating course through every country in Europe, sending to the silence of the grave almost as many thousands as were destroyed in all Napoleon's campaigns. Tissot, in his "Avis au Peuple," published in 1803, attacked Ailhaud with characteristic vehemence, and put an end to his destructive power; but ere this took place the charlatan had mounted on his slaughtered myriads to the possession of three baronies, and was figuring in European courts as the Baron de Castelet.

The tricks which these practitioners have had recourse to for the attainment of their ends are various. Dr. Katterfelto, who rose into eminence upon the evil wind that brought the influenza to England in the year 1782, always travelled about the country in a large caravan, containing a number of black cats. This gentleman's triumphant campaign was brought to a disastrous termination by the mayor of Shrewsbury, who gave him a taste of the sharp discipline provided at that time by the law for rogues and vagabonds.—"The Wise Man of Liverpool," whose destiny it was to gull the canny inhabitants of the North of England, used to traverse the country in a chariot drawn by six horses, attended by a perfect army of outriders in brilliant liveries, and affecting all the pomp of a prince of the royal blood.

The quacks who merit severe punishment the least of all their order are those who, while they profess to exercise a powerful influence over the bodies of their patients, leave nature to pursue her operations pretty much in her own way. Of this comparatively harmless class was Atwell, the parson of St. Tue, who, according to the account given of him by Fuller, in his English Worthies, "although he now and then used blood-letting, mostly for all diseases prescribed milk, and often milk and apples, which (although contrary to the judgments of the best-esteemed practitioners) either by virtue of the medicine, or fortune of the physician, or fancy of the patient, recovered many out of desperate extremities." Atwell won his reputation by acting on the same principle that has brought a certain degree of popularity to the homœopathists—that, namely, of letting things run their own course. The higher order of empirics have always availed themselves of the wonderful faculty possessed by nature of taking good care of herself. Simple people who enlarge on the series of miraculous cures performed by their pet charlatan, and find in them proofs of his honesty and professional worth, do not reflect that in ninety-and-nine cases out of every hundred where a sick person is restored to health, the result is achieved by nature rather than art, and would have been arrived at as speedily without as with medicine. Again, the fame of an ordinary medical practitioner is never backed up by simple and compound addition. His cures and half cures are never summed up to magnificent total by his employers, and then flaunted about on a bright banner before the eyes of the electors. 'Tis a mere matter of course that he (although he is quite wrong, and knows not half as much about his art as any great lady who has tested the efficacy of the new system on her sick poodle) should cure people. 'Tis only the cause of globules which is to be supported by documentary evidence, containing the case of every young lady who has lost a severe headache under the benign influence of an infinitesimal dose of flour and water.

Dumoulin, the physician, observed at his death that "he left behind him two great physicians, Regimen and River Water." A due appreciation of the truth embodied in this remark, coupled with that masterly assurance, without which the human family is not to be fleeced, enabled the French quack, Villars, to do good to others and to himself at the same time. This man, in 1723, confided to his friends that his uncle, who had recently been killed by an accident at the advanced age of one hundred years, had bequeathed to him the recipe for a nostrum which would prolong the life of any one who used it to a hundred and fifty, provided only that the rules of sobriety were never transgressed. Whenever a funeral passed him in the street he said aloud, "Ah! if that unfortunate creature had taken my nostrum, he might be carrying that coffin, instead of being carried in it." This nostrum was composed of nitre and Seine water, and was sold at the ridiculously cheap rate of five francs a bottle. Those who bought it were directed to drink it at certain stated periods, and also to lead regular lives, to eat moderately, drink temperately, take plenty of bodily exercise, go to and rise from bed early, and to avoid mental anxiety. In an enormous majority of cases the patient was either cured or benefitted. Some possibly died, who, by the ministrations of science, might have been preserved from the grave. But in these cases, and doubtless they were few, the blunder was set down to Nature, who, somewhat unjustly, was never credited with any of the recoveries. The world was charitable, and the doctor could say—

Anyhow Villars succeeded, and won the approbation not only of his dupes, but of those also who were sagacious enough to see the nature of his trick. The Abbe Pons declared him to be the superior of the marshal of the same name. "The latter," said he, "kills men—the former prolongs their existence." At length Villars' secret leaked out; and his patients, unwise in coming to him, unwisely deserted him. His occupation was gone.

The displeasure of Villars' dupes, on the discovery of the benevolent hoax played upon them, reminds us of a good story. Some years since, at a fashionable watering-place, on the south-east coast of England, resided a young surgeon—handsome, well-bred, and of most pleasant address. He was fast rising into public favour and a good practice, when an eccentric and wealthy maiden lady, far advanced in years, sent for him. The summons of course was promptly obeyed, and the young practitioner was soon listening to a most terrible story of suffering. The afflicted lady, according to her own account, had a year before, during the performance of her toilet, accidentally taken into her throat one of the bristles of her tooth-brush. This bristle had stuck in the top of the gullet, and set up an irritation which, she was convinced, was killing her. She had been from one surgeon of eminence to another, and everywhere in London and in the country the Faculty had assured her that she was only the victim of a nervous delusion—that her throat was in a perfectly healthy condition—that the disturbance existed only in her own imagination. "And so they go on, the stupid, obstinate, perverse, unfeeling creatures," concluded the poor lady, "saying there is nothing the matter with me, while I am—dying—dying—dying!" "Allow me, my dear lady," said the adroit surgeon in reply, "to inspect for myself—carefully—the state of your throat." The inspection was made gravely, and at much length. "My dear Miss ——," resumed the surgeon, when he had concluded his examination, "you are quite right, and Sir Benjamin Brodie and Sir James Clark are wrong. I can see the head of the bristle low down, almost out of sight; and if you'll let me run home for my instruments, I'll forthwith extract it for you." The adroit man retired, and in a few minutes re-entered the room, armed with a very delicate pair of forceps, into the teeth of which he had inserted a bristle taken from an ordinary tooth-brush. The rest can be imagined. The lady threw back her head; the forceps were introduced into her mouth; a prick—a scream! and 'twas all over; and the surgeon, with a smiling face, was holding up to the light, and inspecting with lively curiosity, the extracted bristle. The patient was in raptures at a result that proved that she was right, and Sir Benjamin Brodie wrong. She immediately recovered her health and spirits, and went about everywhere sounding the praises of "her saviour," as she persisted in calling the dexterous operator. So enthusiastic was her gratitude, she offered him her hand in marriage and her noble fortune. The fact that the young surgeon was already married was an insuperable obstacle to this arrangement. But other proofs of gratitude the lady lavishly showered on him. She compelled him to accept a carriage and horses, a service of plate, and a new house. Unfortunately the lucky fellow could not keep his own counsel. Like foolish Samson with Delilah, he imparted the secret of his cunning to the wife of his bosom; she confided it to Louise Clarissa, her especial friend, who had been her bridesmaid; Louise Clarissa told it under vows of inviolable secrecy to six other particular friends; and the six other particular friends—base and unworthy girls!—told it to all the world. Ere long the story came round to the lady herself. Then what a storm arose! She was in a transport of fury! It was of no avail for the surgeon to remind her that he had unquestionably raised her from a pitiable condition to health and happiness. That mattered not. He had tricked, fooled, bamboozled her! She would not forgive him, she would pursue him with undying vengeance, she would ruin him! The writer of these pages is happy to know that the surgeon here spoken of, whose prosperous career has been adorned by much genuine benevolence, though unforgiven, was not ruined.

The ignorant are remarkable alike for suspicion and credulity; and the quack makes them his prey by lulling to sleep the former quality, and artfully arousing and playing upon the latter. Whatever the field of quackery may be, the dupe must ever be the same. Some years since a canny drover, from the north of the Tweed, gained a high reputation throughout the Eastern Counties for selling at high prices the beasts intrusted to him as a salesman. At Norwich and Earl Soham, at Bury and Ipswich, the story was the same—Peter M'Dougal invariably got more per head for "a lot" than even his warmest admirers had calculated he would obtain. He managed his business so well, that his brethren, unable to compete with him, came to a conclusion not altogether supported by the facts of the case, but flattering to their own self-love. Clearly Peter could only surpass them by such a long distance, through the agency of some charm or witch's secret. They hinted as much; and Peter wisely accepted the suggestion, with a half-assenting nod of cunning, and encouraged his mates to believe in it. A year or so passed on, and it was generally allowed that Peter M'Dougal was in league on honourable terms with the unseen world. To contend with him was useless. The only line open to his would-be imitators was to buy from him participations in his mysterious powers. "Peter," at length said a simple southern, at the close of Halesworth cattle-fair, acting as spokesman for himself and four other conspirators, "lets us into yer secret, man. Yer ha' made here twelve pun a yead by a lot that aren't woth sex. How ded yer doo it? We are all owld friens. Lets us goo to 'Th' Alter'd Case,' an I an my mets ull stan yar supper an a dead drunk o' whiskey or rom poonch, so be yar jine hans to giv us the wink." Peter's eyes twinkled. He liked a good supper and plenty of hot grog at a friend's expense. Indeed, of such fare, like Sheridan with wine, he was ready to take any given quantity. The bargain was made, and an immediate adjournment effected to the public-house rejoicing in the title of "The Case is Altered." The supper was of hot steak-pudding, made savoury with pepper and onions. Peter M'Dougal ate plentifully and deliberately. Slowly also he drank two stiff tumblers of whiskey punch, smoking his pipe meanwhile without uttering a word. The second tumbler was followed by a third, and as he sipped the latter half of it, his entertainers closed round him, and intimated that their part of the contract being accomplished, he, as a man of honour, ought to fulfill his. Peter was a man of few words, and without any unnecessary prelude or comment, he stated in one laconic speech the secret of his professional success. Laying down his pipe by his empty glass, and emitting from his gray eyes a light of strange humour, he said drily, "Ye'd knoo hoo it was I cam to mak sae guid a sale o' my beasties? Weel, I ken it was joost this—I fund a fule!"

The drover who rises to be a capitalist, and the lawyer who mounts to the woolsack, ascend by the same process. They know how to find out fools, and how to turn their discoveries to advantage.

It is told of a Barbadoes physician and slaveholder, that having been robbed to a serious extent in his sugar-works, he discovered the thief by the following ingenious artifice. Having called his slaves together, he addressed them thus:—"My friends, the great serpent appeared to me during the night, and told me that the person who stole my money should, at this instant—this very instant—have a parrot's feather at the point of his nose." On this announcement, the dishonest thief, anxious to find out if his guilt had declared itself, put his finger to his nose. "Man," cried the master instantly, "'tis thou who hast robbed me. The great serpent has just told me so."

Clearly this piece of quackery succeeded, because the quack had "fund a fule."

CHAPTER VII.

JOHN RADCLIFFE.

Radcliffe, the Jacobite partisan, the physician without learning, and the luxurious bon-vivant, who grudged the odd sixpences of his tavern scores, was born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, in the year 1650. His extraction was humble, his father being only a well-to-do yeoman. In after life, when he lived on intimate terms with the leading nobility of the country, he put in a claim for aristocratic descent; and the Earl of Derwentwater recognized him as a kinsman deriving his blood from the Radcliffes of Dilston, in the county of Northumberland, the chiefs of which honourable family had been knights, barons, and earls, from the time of Henry IV. It may be remembered that a similar countenance was given to Burke's patrician pretensions, which have been related by more than one biographer, with much humorous pomp. In Radcliffe's case the Heralds interfered with the Earl's decision; for after the physician's decease they admonished the University of Oxford not to erect any escutcheon over or upon his monument. But though Radcliffe was a plebeian, he contrived, by his shrewd humour, arrogant simplicity, and immeasurable insolence, to hold both Whigs and Tories in his grasp. The two factions of the aristocracy bowed before him—the Tories from affection to a zealous adherent of regal absolutism; and the Whigs, from a superstitious belief in his remedial skill, and a fear that in their hours of need he would leave them to the advances of Death.

At the age of fifteen he became a member of the University College, Oxford; and having kept his terms there, he took his B. A. degree in 1669, and was made senior-scholar of the college. But no fellowship falling vacant there, he accepted one on the foundation of Lincoln College. His M. B. degree he took in 1675, and forthwith obtained considerable practice in Oxford. Owing to a misunderstanding with Dr. Marshall, the rector of Lincoln College, Radcliffe relinquished a fellowship, which he could no longer hold, without taking orders, in 1677. He did not take his M. D. degree till 1682, two years after which time he went up to London, and took a house in Bow Street, next that in which Sir Godfrey Kneller long resided; and with a facility which can hardly be credited in these days, when success is achieved only by slow advances, he stept forthwith into a magnificent income.

The days of mealy-mouthed suavity had not yet come to the Faculty. Instead of standing by each other with lip-service, as they now do in spite of all their jealousies, physicians and surgeons vented their mutual enmities in frank, honest abuse. Radcliffe's tongue was well suited for this part of his business; and if that unruly member created for him enemies, it could also contend with a legion of adversaries at the same time. Foulks and Adams, then the first apothecaries in Oxford, tried to discredit the young doctor, but were ere long compelled to sue for a cessation of hostilities. Luff, who afterwards became Professor of Physic in the University, declared that all "Radcliffe's cures were performed only by guesswork"; and Gibbons, with a sneer, said, "that it was a pity that his friends had not made a scholar of the young man." In return Radcliffe always persisted in speaking of his opponent as Nurse Gibbons—because of his slops and diet drinks, whereas he (Radcliffe the innovator) preached up the good effects of fresh air, a liberal table, and cordials. This was the Dr. Gibbons around whom the apothecaries rallied, to defend their interests in the great Dispensarian contest, and whom Garth in his poem ridicules, under the name of "Mirmillo," for entertaining drug-venders:—

Gibbons was not the only dangerous antagonist that Radcliffe did battle with in London. Dr. Whistler, Sir Edmund King, Sir Edward Hannes, and Sir Richard Blackmore were all strong enough to hurt him and rouse his jealousy. Hannes, also an Oxford man, was to the last a dangerous and hated rival. He opened his campaign in London with a carriage and four horses. The equipage was so costly and imposing that it attracted the general attention of the town. "By Jove! Radcliffe," said a kind friend, "Hannes's horses are the finest I have ever seen." "Umph!" growled Radcliffe savagely, "then he'll be able to sell them for all the more."

To make his name known Hannes used to send his liveried footmen running about the streets with directions to put their heads into every coach they met and inquire, with accents of alarm, if Dr. Hannes was in it. Acting on these orders, one of his fellows, after looking into every carriage between Whitehall and the Royal Exchange, without finding his employer, ran up Exchange Alley into Garraway's Coffee-house, which was one of the great places of meeting for the members of the medical profession. (Apothecaries used regularly to come and consult the physicians, while the latter were over their wine, paying only half fees for the advice so given, without the patients being personally examined. Batson's coffee-house in Corn-hill was another favourite spot for these Galenic re-unions, Sir William Blizard being amongst the last of the medical authorities who frequented that hostelry for the purpose of receiving apothecaries.) "Gentlemen, can your honours tell me if Dr. Hannes is here?" asked the man, running into the very centre of the exchange of medicine-men. "Who wants Dr. Hannes, fellow?" demanded Radcliffe, who happened to be present. "Lord A—— and Lord B——, your honour!" answered the man. "No, no, friend," responded the doctor slowly, and with pleasant irony, "you are mistaken. Those lords don't want your master—'tis he who wants them."

But Hannes made friends and a fine income, to the deep chagrin of his contemptuous opponent. An incessant feud existed between the two men. The virulence of their mutual animosity may be estimated by the following story. When the poor little Duke of Gloucester was taken ill, Sir Edward Hannes and Blackmore (famous as Sir Richard Blackmore, the poet) were called in to attend him. On the case taking a fatal turn, Radcliffe was sent for; and after roundly charging the two doctors with the grossest mismanagement of a simple attack of rash, went on, "It would have been happy for this nation had you, sir, been bred up a basket-maker—and you, sir, had remained a country schoolmaster, rather than have ventured out of your reach, in the practice of an art which you are an utter stranger to, and for your blunders in which you ought to be whipped with one of your own rods." The reader will not see the force of this delicate speech if he is not aware that Hannes was generally believed to be the son of a basket-maker, and Sir Richard Blackmore had, in the period of his early poverty, like Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, been a teacher of boys. Whenever the "Amenities of the Faculty" come to be published, this consultation, on the last illness of Jenkin Lewis's little friend, ought to have its niche in the collection.

Towards the conclusion of his life, Radcliffe said that, "when a young practitioner, he possessed twenty remedies for every disease; and at the close of his career he found twenty diseases for which he had not one remedy." His mode of practice, however, as far as anything is known about it, at the outset was the same as that which he used at the conclusion of his career. Pure air, cleanliness, and a wholesome diet were amongst his most important prescriptions; though he was so far from running counter to the interests of the druggists, that his apothecary, Dandridge, whose business was almost entirely confined to preparing the doctor's medicines, died worth 50,000l. For the imaginary maladies of his hypochondriacal male and fanciful female patients he had the greatest contempt, and neither respect for age or rank, nor considerations of interest, could always restrain him from insulting such patients. In 1686 he was appointed physician to Princess Anne of Denmark, and was for some years a trusted adviser of that royal lady; but he lacked the compliant temper and imperturbable suavity requisite for a court physician. Shortly after the death of Queen Mary, the Princess Anne, having incurred a fit of what is by the vulgar termed "blue devils," from not paying proper attention to her diet, sent in all haste to her physician. Radcliffe, when he received the imperative summons to hurry to St. James's was sitting over his bottle in a tavern. The allurements of Bacchus were too strong for him, and he delayed his visit to the distinguished sufferer. A second messenger arrived, but by that time the physician was so gloriously ennobled with claret, that he discarded all petty considerations of personal advantage, and flatly refused to stir an inch from the room where he was experiencing all the happiness humanity is capable of. "Tell her Royal Highness," he exclaimed, banging his fist on the table, "that her distemper is nothing but the vapours. She's in as good state of health as any woman breathing—only she can't make up her mind to believe it."

The next morning prudence returned with sobriety; and the doctor did not fail to present himself at an early hour in the Princess's apartment in St. James's Palace. To his consternation he was stopped in the ante-room by an officer, and informed that he was dismissed from his post, which had already been given to Dr. Gibbons. Anne never forgave the sarcasm about "the vapours." It so rankled in her breast, that, though she consented to ask for the Doctor's advice both for herself and those dear to her, she never again held any cordial communication with him. Radcliffe tried to hide the annoyance caused him by his fall, in a hurricane of insolence towards his triumphant rival: Nurse Gibbons had gotten a new nursery—Nurse Gibbons was not to be envied his new acquisition—Nurse Gibbons was fit only to look after a woman who merely fancied herself ill.

Notwithstanding this rupture with the Court, Radcliffe continued to have the most lucrative practice in town, and in all that regarded money he was from first to last a most lucky man. On coming to town he found Lower, the Whig physician, sinking in public favour—and Thomas Short, the Roman Catholic doctor, about to drop into the grave. Whistler, Sir Edmund King, and Blackmore had plenty of patients. But there was a "splendid opening," and so cleverly did Radcliffe slip into it, that at the end of his first year in town he got twenty guineas per diem. The difference in the value of money being taken into consideration, it may be safely affirmed that no living physician makes more. Occasionally the fees presented to him were very large. He cured Bentinck, afterwards Earl of Portland, of a diarrhœa, and Zulestein, afterwards Earl of Rochford, of an attack of congestion of the brain. For these services William III. presented him with 500 guineas out of the privy-purse, and offered to appoint him one of his physicians, with £200 per annum more than he gave any other of his medical officers. Radcliffe pocketed the fee, but his Jacobite principles precluded him from accepting the post. William, however, notwithstanding the opposition of Bidloe and the rest of his medical servants, held Radcliffe in such estimation that he continually consulted him; and during the first eleven years of his reign paid him, one year with another, 600 guineas per annum. And when he restored to health William, Duke of Gloucester (the Princess of Denmark's son), who in his third year was attacked with severe convulsions, Queen Mary sent him, through the hand of her Lord Chamberlain, 1000 guineas. And for attending the Earl of Albemarle at Namur he had 400 guineas and a diamond ring, 1200 guineas from the treasury, and an offer of a baronetcy from the King.

For many years he was the neighbour of Sir Godfrey Kneller, in Bow Street. A dispute that occurred between the two neighbours and friends is worth recording. Sir Godfrey took pleasure in his garden, and expended large sums of money in stocking it with exotic plants and rare flowers. Radcliffe also enjoyed a garden, but loved his fees too well to expend them on one of his own. He suggested to Sir Godfrey that it would be a good plan to insert a door into the boundary wall between their gardens, so that on idle afternoons, when he had no patients to visit, he might slip into his dear friend's pleasure-grounds. Kneller readily assented to this proposition, and ere a week had elapsed the door was ready for use. The plan, however, had not been long acted on when the painter was annoyed by Radcliffe's servants wantonly injuring his parterres. After fruitlessly expostulating against these depredations, the sufferer sent a message to his friend, threatening, if the annoyance recurred, to brick up the wall. "Tell Sir Godfrey," answered Radcliffe to the messenger, "that he may do what he likes to the door, so long as he does not paint it." When this vulgar jeer was reported to Kneller, he replied, with equal good humour and more wit, "Go back and give my service to Dr. Radcliffe, and tell him, I'll take anything from him—but physic."

Radcliffe was never married, and professed a degree of misogyny that was scarcely in keeping with his conduct on certain occasions. His person was handsome and imposing, but his manners were little calculated to please women. Overbearing, truculent, and abusive, he could not rest without wounding the feelings of his companions with harsh jokes. Men could bear with him, but ladies were like Queen Anne in vehemently disliking him. King William was not pleased with his brutal candour in exclaiming, at the sight of the dropsical ancles uncovered for inspection, "I would not have your Majesty's legs for your three kingdoms"; but William's sister-in-law repaid a much slighter offence with life-long animosity. In 1693, however, the doctor made an offer to a citizen's daughter, who had beauty and a fortune of £15,000. As she was only twenty-four years of age, the doctor was warmly congratulated by his friends when he informed them that he, though well advanced in middle age, had succeeded in his suit. Before the wedding-day, however, it was discovered that the health of the lady rendered it incumbent on her honour that she should marry her father's book-keeper. This mishap soured the doctor's temper to the fair sex, and his sarcasms at feminine folly and frailty were innumerable.

He was fond of declaring that he wished for an Act of Parliament entitling nurses to the sole and entire medical care of women. A lady who consulted him about a nervous singing in the head was advised to "curl her hair with a ballad." His scorn of women was not lessened by the advances of certain disorderly ladies of condition, who displayed for him that morbid passion which medical practitioners have often to resist in the treatment of hysterical patients. Yet he tried his luck once again at the table of love. "There's no fool so great as an old fool." In the summer of 1709, Radcliffe, then in his sixtieth year, started a new equipage; and having arrayed himself in the newest mode of foppery, threw all the town into fits of laughter by paying his addresses, with the greatest possible publicity, to a lady who possessed every requisite charm—(youth, beauty, wealth)—except a tenderness for her aged suitor. Again was there an unlucky termination to the doctor's love, which Steele, in No. 44 of The Tatler, ridiculed in the following manner:—

"This day, passing through Covent Garden, I was stopped in the Piazza by Pacolet, to observe what he called The Triumph of Love and Youth. I turned to the object he pointed at, and there I saw a gay gilt chariot, drawn by fresh prancing horses, the coachman with a new cockade, and the lacqueys with insolence and plenty in their countenances. I asked immediately, 'What young heir, or lover, owned that glittering equipage!' But my companion interrupted, 'Do not you see there the mourning Æsculapius?' 'The mourning!' said I. 'Yes, Isaac,' said Pacolet, 'he is in deep mourning, and is the languishing, hopeless lover of the divine Hebe, the emblem of Youth and Beauty. That excellent and learned sage you behold in that furniture is the strongest instance imaginable that love is the most powerful of all things.

"'You are not so ignorant as to be a stranger to the character of Æsculapius, as the patron and most successful of all who profess the Art of Medicine. But as most of his operations are owing to a natural sagacity or impulse, he has very little troubled himself with the Doctrine of Drugs, but has always given Nature more room to help herself than any of her learned assistants; and consequently has done greater wonders than in the power of Art to perform; for which reason he is half deified by the people, and has ever been courted by all the world, just as if he were a seventh son.

"'It happened that the charming Hebe was reduc'd, by a long and violent fever, to the most extreme danger of Death; and when all skill failed, they sent for Æsculapius. The renowned artist was touched with the deepest compassion, to see the faded charms and faint bloom of Hebe; and had a generous concern, too, in beholding a struggle, not between Life, but rather between Youth, and Death. All his skill and his passion tended to the recovery of Hebe, beautiful even in sickness; but, alas! the unhappy physician knew not that in all his care he was only sharpening darts for his own destruction. In a word, his fortune was the same with that of the statuary who fell in love with an image of his own making; and the unfortunate Æsculapius is become the patient of her whom he lately recovered. Long before this, Æsculapius was far gone in the unnecessary and superfluous amusements of old age, in the increase of unwieldy stores, and the provision in the midst of an incapacity of enjoyment, of what he had for a supply of more wants than he had calls for in Youth itself. But these low considerations are now no more; and Love has taken place of Avarice, or rather is become an Avarice of another kind, which still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the metamorphosis: the anxious mean cares of an usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover. "Behold," says the aged Æsculapius, "I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on Pills? Yet, O Fate! for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned in gold, clasp'd in gold, without having any value for that beloved metal, but as it adorns the person and laces the hat of the dying lover. I ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me but gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia! that is all I implore."' When Æsculapius had finished his complaint, Pacolet went on in deep morals on the uncertainty of riches, with this remarkable explanation—'O wealth! how impatient art thou! And how little dost thou supply us with real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee, for the love of what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!'"

Seven days after the Tatler resumed the attack, but with less happy effect. In this picture, the justice of which was not questioned, even by the Doctor's admirers, the avarice of the veteran is not less insisted on as the basis of his character, than his amorousness is displayed as a ludicrous freak of vanity. Indeed, love of money was the master-defect of Radcliffe's disposition. Without a child, or a prospect of offspring, he screwed and scraped in every direction. Even his debaucheries had an alloy of discomfort that does not customarily mingle in the dissipations of the rich. The flavour of the money each bottle cost gave ungrateful smack to his wine. He had numerous poor relations, of whom he took, during his life, little or no notice. Even his sisters he kept at arm's distance, lest they should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his pockets. It is true, he provided liberally for them at his death—leaving to the one (a married lady—Mrs. Hannah Redshaw) a thousand a year for life, and to the other (a spinster lady) an income of half that amount as long as she lived. But that he treated them with unbrotherly neglect there is no doubt.

After his decease, a letter was found in his closet, directed to his unmarried sister, Millicent Radcliffe, in which, with contrition, and much pathos, he bids her farewell. "You will find," says he, in that epistle, "by my will that I have taken better care of you than perhaps you might expect from my former treatment of you; for which, with my dying breath, I most heartily ask pardon. I had indeed acted the brother's part much better, in making a handsome settlement on you while living, than after my decease; and can plead nothing in excuse, but that the love of money, which I have emphatically known to be the root of all evil, was too predominant over me. Though, I hope, I have made some amends for that odious sin of covetousness, in my last dispositions of those worldly goods which it pleased the great Dispenser of Providence to bless me with."

What made this meanness of disposition in money matters the more remarkable was, that he was capable of occasional munificence, on a scale almost beyond his wealth, and also of a stoical fortitude under any reverse of fortune that chanced to deprive him of some of his beloved guineas.

In the year 1704, at a general collection for propagating the Gospel in foreign parts, he settled on the Society established for that purpose £50 per annum for ever. And this noble gift he unostentatiously made under an assumed name. In the same year he presented £520 to the Bishop of Norwich, to be distributed among the poor non-juring clergy; and this donation he also desired should be kept a secret from the world.

His liberality to Oxford was far from being all of the post-mortem sort. In 1687 he presented the chapel of University College with an east window, representing, in stained glass, the Nativity, and having the following inscription:—"D.D. Johan Radcliffe, M.D., hujus Collegii quondam Socius, Anno Domini MDCLXXXVII." In 1707 he gave Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, bills for £300, drawn under the assumed name of Francis Andrews, on Waldegrave the goldsmith, of Russell Street, Covent Garden, for the relief of distressed Scotch Episcopal clergy.

As another instance of how his niggard nature could allow him to do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame, his liberality to James Drake, the Tory writer, may be mentioned. Drake was a physician, as well as a political author. As the latter, he was well liked, as the former he was honestly hated by Radcliffe. Two of a trade—where one of the two is a John Radcliffe—can never agree. Each of the two doctors had done his utmost to injure the reputation of the other. But when Drake, broken in circumstances by a political persecution, was in sore distress from want of money, Radcliffe put fifty guineas into a lady's hands, and begged her to convey it to Drake. "Let him," said Radcliffe, with the delicacy of a fine heart, "by no means be told whence it comes. He is a gentleman, and has often done his best to hurt me. He could, therefore, by no means brook the receipt of a benefit from a person whom he had used all possible means to make an enemy."

After such instances of Ratcliffe's generosity, it may seem unnecessary to give more proofs of the existence of that quality, disguised though it was by miserly habits. His friend Nutley, a loose rollicking gentleman about town, a barrister without practice, a man of good family, and no fortune, a jovial dog, with a jest always on his lips, wine in his head, and a death's-head grinning over each shoulder [such bachelors may still be found in London], was in this case the object of the doctor's benevolence. Driven by duns and tippling to the borders of distraction, Nutley crept out of his chambers under the cover of night to the "Mitre Tavern," and called for "a bottle." "A bottle" with Nutley meant "many bottles." The end of it was that the high-spirited gentleman fell down in a condition of —— well! in a condition that Templars, in this age of earnest purpose and decent morals, would blush to be caught in. Mr. Nutley was taken hold of by the waiters, and carried up-stairs to bed.

The next morning the merry fellow is in the saddest of all possible humours. The memory of a few little bills, the holders of which are holding a parliament on his stair-case in Pump-court; the recollection that he has not a guinea left—either to pacify those creditors with, or to use in paying for the wine consumed over night; a depressing sense that the prominent features of civilized existence are tax-gatherers and sheriff's officers; a head that seems to be falling over one side of the pillow, whilst the eyes roll out on the other;—all these afflict poor Mr. Nutley! A knock at the door, and the landlady enters. The landlady is the Widow Watts, daughter of the widow Bowles, also in the same line. As now, so a hundred and fifty years ago, ladies in licensed victualling circles played tricks with their husbands' night-caps—killed them with kindness, and reigned in their stead. The widow Watts has a sneaking fondness for poor Mr. Nutley, and is much affected when, in answer to her inquiry how "his honour feels his-self," he begins to sob like a child, narrate the troubles of his infancy, the errors of his youth, and the sorrows of his riper age. Mistress Watts is alarmed. Only to think of Mr. Nutley going on like that, talking of his blessed mother who had been dead these twenty years, and vowing he'd kill himself, because he is an outcast, and no better than a disgrace to his family. "To think of it! and only yesterday he were the top of company, and would have me drink his own honourable health in a glass of his own wine." Mistress Watts sends straightway for Squire Nutley's friend, the Doctor. When Radcliffe makes his appearance, he sees the whole case at a glance, rallies Billy Nutley about his rascally morals, estimates his assertion that "it's only his liver a little out of order" exactly at its worth, and takes his leave shortly, saying to himself, "If poor Billy could only be freed from the depression caused by his present pecuniary difficulties, he would escape for this once a return of the deliri...." At the end of another half hour, a goldsmith's man enters the bed-room, and puts into Nutley's hand a letter and a bag of gold containing 200 guineas. The epistle is from Radcliffe, begging his friend to accept the money, and to allow the donor to send him in a few days 300 more of the same coins. Such was the physician's prescription, in dispensing which he condescended to act as his own apothecary. Bravo, doctor!—who of us shall say which of the good deeds—thy gift to Billy Nutley or thy princely bequest to Oxford—has the better right to be regarded as the offspring of sincere benevolence? Some—and let no "fie!" be cried upon them—will find in this story more to make them love thy memory than they have ever found in that noble library whose dome stands up amidst the towers, and steeples, and sacred walls of beloved Oxford.

It would not be hard to say which of the two gifts has done the greater good. Poor Will Nutley took his 500 guineas, and had "more bottles," went a few more times to the theatres in lace and velvet and brocade, roared out at a few more drinking bouts, and was carried off by [his biographer calls it "a violent fever"] in the twenty-ninth year of his age. And possibly since Willy Nutley was Willy Nutley, and no one else, this was the best possible termination for him. That Radcliffe, the head of a grave profession, and a man of fifty-seven years of age, should have conceived an enthusiastic friendship for a youngster of half his age, is a fact that shows us one of the consequences of the tavern life of our great-grandfathers. It puts us in mind of how Fielding, ere he had a beard, burst into popularity with the haunters of coffee-houses. When roistering was in fashion, a young man had many chances which he no longer possesses. After the theatres were closed, he reeled into the hostels of the town, singing snatches with the blithe, clear voice of youth, laughing and jesting with all around, and frequently amongst that "all" he came in contact with the highest and most powerful men of the time. A boy-adventurer could display his wit and quality to statesmen and leaders of all sorts; whereas now he must wait years before he is even introduced to them, and years more ere he gets an invitation to their formal dinners, at which Barnes Newcome cuts as brilliant a figure as the best and the strongest.

Throughout his life Radcliffe was a staunch and manly Jacobite. He was for "the king"; but neither loyalty nor interest could bind him to higher considerations than those of attachment to the individual he regarded as the rightful head of the realm. In 1688, when Obadiah Walker tried to wheedle him into the folly of becoming a Romanist, the attempt at perversion proved a signal failure. Nothing can be more truly manly than his manner of rejecting the wily advances of the proselytizing pervert. "The advantages you propose to me," he writes, "may be very great, for all that I know; God Almighty can do very much and so can the king; but you'll pardon me if I cease to speak like a physician for once, and, with an air of gravity, am very apprehensive that I may anger the one in being too complaisant to the other. You cannot call this pinning my faith to any man's sleeve; those that know me are too well apprized of my quite contrary tendency. As I never flattered a man myself, so 'tis my firm resolution never to be wheedled out of my real sentiments—which are, that since it has been my good fortune to be educated according to the usage of the Church of England, established by law, I shall never make myself so unhappy as to shame my teachers and instructors by departing from what I have imbibed from them."

Thus was Walker treated when he abused his position as head of University College. But when the foolish man was deprived of his office, he found a good friend in him whom he had tried to seduce from the Church in which he had been reared. From the time of his first coming to London from Oxford, on the abdication of James the Second, up to the time of his death, Walker subsisted on a handsome allowance made to him out of Radcliffe's purse. When, also, the discarded principal died, it was the doctor who gave him an honourable interment in Pancras churchyard, and years afterwards erected a monument to his memory.

As years passed on, without the restitution of the proscribed males of the Stuart House, Radcliffe's political feelings became more bitter. He was too cautious a man to commit himself in any plot having for its object a change of dynasty; but his ill-humour at the existing state of things vented itself in continual sarcasms against the chiefs of the Whig party with whom he came in contact. He professed that he did not wish for practice amongst the faction to which he was opposed. He had rather only preserve the lives of those citizens who were loyal to their king. One of the immediate results of this affectation was increased popularity with his political antagonists. Whenever a Whig leader was dangerously ill, his friends were sure to feel that his only chance of safety rested on the ministrations of the Jacobite doctor. Radcliffe would be sent for, and after swearing a score of times that nothing should induce him to comply with the summons, would make his appearance at the sick-bed, where he would sometimes tell the sufferer that the devil would have no mercy on those who put constitutional governments above the divine right of kings. If the patient recovered, of course his cure was attributed to the Tory physician; and if death was the result, the same cause was pointed to.

It might be fancied that, rather than incur a charge of positively killing his political antagonists, Radcliffe would have left them to their fates. But this plan would have served him the reverse of well. If he failed to attend a Whig's death-bed to which he had been summoned, the death was all the same attributed to him. "He might," exclaimed the indignant survivors, "have saved poor Tom if he had liked; only poor Tom was a Whig, and so he left him to die." He was charged alike with killing Queen Mary, whom he did attend in her dying illness—and Queen Anne, whom he didn't.

The reader of the Harleian MS. of Burnet's "History" is amused with the following passage, which does not appear in the printed editions:—"I will not enter into another province, nor go out of my own profession, and so will say no more of the physician's part, but that it was universally condemned; so that the Queen's death was imputed to the unskilfulness and wilfulness of Dr. Radcliffe, an impious and vicious man, who hated the Queen much, but virtue and religion more. He was a professed Jacobite, and was, by many, thought a very bad physician; but others cried him up to the highest degree imaginable. He was called for, and it appeared but too evident that his opinion was depended on. Other physicians were called when it was too late; all symptoms were bad, yet still the Queen felt herself well."

Radcliffe's negative murder of Queen Anne was yet more amusing than his positive destruction of Mary. When Queen Anne was almost in extremis, Radcliffe was sent for. The Queen, though she never forgave him for his drunken ridicule of her vapours, had an exalted opinion of his professional talents, and had, more than once, winked at her ladies, consulting him about the health of their royal mistress. Now that death was at hand, Lady Masham sent a summons for the doctor; but he was at Carshalton, sick of his dying illness, and returned answer that it would be impossible for him to leave his country-seat and wait on her Majesty. Such was the absurd and superstitious belief in his mere presence, that the Queen was popularly pictured as having died because he was not present to see her draw her last breath. Whom he liked he could kill, and whom he liked could keep alive and well. Even Arbuthnot, a brother physician, was so tinctured with the popular prejudice, that he could gravely tell Swift of the pleasure Radcliffe had "in preserving my Lord Chief Justice Holt's wife, whom he attended out of spite to her husband, who wished her dead."

It makes one smile to read Charles Ford's letter to the sarcastic Dean on the subject of the Queen's last illness. "She continued ill the whole day. In the evening I spoke to Dr Arbuthnot, and he told me that he did not think her distemper was desperate. Radcliffe was sent for to Carshalton about noon, by order of council; but said he had taken physic and could not come. In all probability he had saved her life; for I am told the late Lord Gower had been often in the condition with the gout in the head, and Radcliffe kept him alive many years after." The author of Gulliver must have grinned as he read this sentence. It was strange stuff to write about "that puppy Radcliffe" (as the Dean calls the physician in his journal to Stella) to the man who coolly sent out word to a Dublin mob that he had put off an eclipse to a more suitable time. The absurdity of Ford's letter is heightened by the fact that it was written before the Queen's death. It is dated July 31, 1714, and concludes with the following postscript:—"The Queen is something better, and the council again adjourned till eight in the morning." Surely the accusation, then, of negative womanslaughter was preferred somewhat prematurely. The next day, however, the Queen died; and then arose a magnificent hubbub of indignation against the impious doctor. The poor man himself sinking into the grave, was at that country-seat where he had entertained his medical friends with so many noisy orgies. But the cries for vengeance reached him in his retreat. "Give us back our ten days!" screamed the rabble of London round Lord Chesterfield's carriage. "Give us back our Queen!" was the howl directed against Radcliffe. The accused was a member of the House of Commons, having been elected M.P. for the town of Buckingham in the previous year; and positively a member (one of Radcliffe's intimate personal acquaintances) moved that the physician should be summoned to attend in his place and be censured for not attending her late Majesty. To a friend the doctor wrote from Carshalton on August 7, 1714:—"Dear Sir,—I could not have thought so old an acquaintance, and so good a friend as Sir John always professed himself, would have made such a motion against me. God knows my will to do her Majesty any service has ever got the start of my ability, and I have nothing that gives me greater anxiety and trouble than the death of that great and glorious Princess. I must do that justice to the physicians that attended her in her illness, from a sight of the method that was taken for her preservation, transmitted to me by Dr Mead, as to declare nothing was omitted for her preservation; but the people about her (the plagues of Egypt fall upon them!) put it out of the power of physick to be of any benefit to her. I know the nature of attending crowned heads to their last moments too well to be fond of waiting upon them, without being sent for by a proper authority. You have heard of pardons signed for physicians before a sovereign's demise. However, as ill as I was, I would have went to the Queen in a horse-litter, had either her Majesty, or those in commission next to her, commanded me so to do. You may tell Sir John as much, and assure him, from me, that his zeal for her Majesty will not excuse his ill usage of a friend who has drunk many a hundred bottles with him, and cannot, even after this breach of good understanding, that was ever preserved between us, but have a very good esteem for him."