So strong was the feeling against the doctor, that a set of maniacs at large formed a plan for his assassination. Fortunately, however, the plot was made known to him in the following letter:—
"Doctor,—Tho' I am no friend of yours, but, on the contrary, one that could wish your destruction in a legal way, for not preventing the death of our most excellent Queen, whom you had it in your power to save, yet I have such an aversion to the taking away men's lives unfairly, as to acquaint you that if you go to meet the gentlemen you have appointed to dine with at the 'Greyhound,' in Croydon, on Thursday next, you will be most certainly murthered. I am one of the persons engaged in the conspiracy, with twelve more, who are resolved to sacrifice you to the Ghost of her late Majesty, that cries aloud for blood; therefore, neither stir out of doors that day, nor any other, nor think of exchanging your present abode for your house at Hammersmith, since there and everywhere else we shall be in quest of you. I am touched with remorse, and give you this notice; but take care of yourself, lest I repent of it, and give proofs of so doing, by having it in my power to destroy you, who am your sworn enemy.—N. G."
That thirteen men could have been found to meditate such a ridiculous atrocity is so incredible, that one is inclined to suspect a hoax in this epistle. Radcliffe, however, did not see the letter in that light. Panic-struck, he kept himself a close prisoner to his house and its precincts, though he was very desirous of paying another visit to London—the monotony of his rural seclusion being broken only by the customary visits of his professional associates who came down to comfort and drink with him. The end, however, was fast approaching. The maladies under which he suffered were exacerbated by mental disquiet; and his powers suddenly failing him, he expired on the 1st of November, 1714, just three months after the death of the murdered Queen, of whose vapours he had spoken so disrespectfully.
His original biographer (from whose work all his many memoirs have been taken) tells the world that the great physician "fell a victim to the ingratitude of a thankless world, and the fury of the gout."
Radcliffe was an ignorant man, but shrewd enough to see that in the then existing state of medical science the book-learning of the Faculty could be but of little service to him. He was so notoriously deficient in the literature of his profession, that his warmest admirers made merry about it. Garth happily observed that for Radcliffe to leave a library was as if a eunuch should found a seraglio. Nor was Radcliffe ashamed to admit his lack of lore. Indeed, he was proud of it; and on the inquiry being made by Bathurst, the head of Trinity College, Oxford, where his study was, he pointed to a few vials, a skeleton, and an herbal, and answered, "This is Radcliffe's library." Mead, who rose into the first favour of the town as the doctor retired from it, was an excellent scholar; but far from assuming on that ground a superiority to his senior, made it the means of paying him a graceful compliment. The first time that Radcliffe called on Mead when in town he found his young friend reading Hippocrates.
"Do you read Hippocrates in Greek?" demanded the visitor.
"Yes," replied Mead, timidly fearing his scholarship would offend the great man.
"I never read him in my life," responded Radcliffe, sullenly.
"You, sir," was the rejoinder, "have no occasion—you are Hippocrates himself."
A man who could manufacture flattery so promptly and courageously deserved to get on. Radcliffe swallowed the fly, and was glad to be the prey of the expert angler. Only the day before, Mead had thrown in his ground-bait. As a promising young man, Radcliffe had asked him to a dinner-party at Carshalton, with the hospitable resolve of reducing such a promising young man to a state of intoxication, in the presence of the assembled elders of his profession. Mead, however, was not to be so managed. He had strong nerves, and was careful to drink as little as he could without attracting attention by his abstinence. The consequence was that Mead saw magnate after magnate disappear under the table, just as he had before seen magnum after magnum disappear above it; and still he retained his self-possession. At last he and his host were the only occupants of the banqueting-room left in a non-recumbent position. Radcliffe was delighted with his youthful acquaintance—loved him almost as well as he had loved Billy Nutley.
"Mead," cried the enthusiastic veteran to the young man, who anyhow had not fallen from his chair, "you are a rising man. You will succeed me."
"That, sir, is impossible," Mead adroitly answered; "You are Alexander the Great, and no one can succeed Radcliffe; to succeed to one of his kingdoms is the utmost of my ambition."
Charmed with the reply, Radcliffe exclaimed,
"By ——, I'll recommend you to my patients."
The promise was kept; and Mead endeavoured to repay the worldly advancement with spiritual council. "I remember," says Kennett (vide Lansdowne MSS., Brit. Mus.), "what Dr Mede has told to several of his friends, that he fell much into the favour of Dr Radcliffe a few years before his death, and visited him often at Carshalton, where he observed upon occasion that there was no Bible to be found in the house. Dr Mede had a mind to supply that defect, without taking any notice of it; and therefore one day carried down with him a very beautiful Bible that he had lately bought, which had lain in a closet of King William for his Majesty's own use, and left it as a curiosity that he had picked up by the way. When Dr Mede made the last visit to him he found that Dr R. had read in it as far as the middle of the Book of Exodus, from whence it might be inferred that he had never before read the Scriptures; as I doubt must be inferred of Dr Linacre, from the account given by Sir John Cheke."
The allusion to "the kingdom of Alexander the Great" reminds one of Arbuthnot's letter to Swift, in which the writer concludes his sketch of the proposed map of diseases for Martinus Scriblerus with—"Then the great diseases are like capital cities, with their symptoms all like streets and suburbs, with the roads that lead to other diseases. It is thicker set with towns than any Flanders map you ever saw. Radcliffe is painted at the corner of the map, contending for the universal empire of this world, and the rest of the physicians opposing his ambitious designs, with a project of a treaty of partition to settle peace."
As a practitioner, Radcliffe served the public as well as he did his own interests. The violent measures of bleeding, and the exhibition of reducing medicines, which constituted the popular practice even to the present generation, he regarded with distrust in some cases and horror in others. There is a good story told of him, that well illustrates his disapproval of a kill-or-cure system, and his hatred of Nurse Gibbons. John Bancroft, the eminent surgeon, who resided in Russell Street, Covent Garden, had a son attacked with inflammation of the lungs. Gibbons was called in, and prescribed the most violent remedies, or rather the most virulent irritants. The child became rapidly worse, and Radcliffe was sent for. "I can do nothing, sir," observed the doctor, after visiting his patient, "for the poor little boy's preservation. He is killed to all intents and purposes. But if you have any thoughts of putting a stone over him, I'll help you to an inscription." The offer was accepted, and over the child's grave, in Covent Garden churchyard, was placed a stone sculptured with a figure of a child laying one hand on his side, and saying, "Hic dolor," and pointing with the other to a death's head on which was engraved, "Ibi medicus." This is about the prettiest professional libel which we can point to in all the quarrels of the Faculty.
The uses to which the doctor applied his wealth every one knows. Notwithstanding his occasional acts of munificence, and a loss of £5000 in an East Indian venture, into which Betterton, the tragedian, seduced him, his accumulations were very great. In his will, after liberally providing for the members of his family and his dependents, he devoted his acquisitions to the benefit of the University of Oxford. From them have proceeded the Radcliffe Library, the Radcliffe Infirmary, the Radcliffe Observatory, and the Radcliffe Travelling Fellowships. It is true that nothing has transpired in the history of these last-mentioned endowments to justify us in reversing the sentiment of Johnson, who remarked to Boswell: "It is wonderful how little good Radcliffe's Travelling Fellowships have done. I know nothing that has been imported by them."
After lying in state at his own residence, and again in the University, Radcliffe's body was interred, with great pomp, in St. Mary's Church, Oxford. The royal gift of so large an estate (which during life he had been unable thoroughly to enjoy) to purchase a library, the contents of which he at no time could have read, of course provoked much comment. It need not be said that the testator's memory was, for the most part, extolled to the skies. He had died rich—a great virtue in itself. He was dead; and as men like to deal out censure as long as it can cause pain, and scatter praise when it can no longer create happiness, Radcliffe, the physician, the friend of suffering humanity, the benefactor of ancient and Tory Oxford, was spoken of in "most handsome terms." One could hardly believe that this great good man, this fervent Christian and sublime patriot, was the same man as he whom Steele had ridiculed for servile vanity, and to bring whom into contempt a play was written, and publicly acted, only ten years before, to the intense delight of the Duchess of Marlborough, and the applauding maids of honour.
The philosophic Mandeville, far from approving the behaviour of the fickle multitude, retained his old opinion of the doctor, and gave it to the world in his "Essay on Charity and Charity Schools." "That a man," writes Mandeville, "with small skill in physic, and hardly any learning, should by vile arts get into practice, and lay up great wealth, is no mighty wonder; but that he should so deeply work himself into the good opinion of the world as to gain the general esteem of a nation, and establish a reputation beyond all his contemporaries, with no other qualities but a perfect knowledge of mankind, and a capacity of making the most of it, is something extraordinary.
"If a man arrived to such a height of glory should be almost distracted with pride—sometime give his attendance on a servant, or any mean person, for nothing and at the same time neglect a nobleman that gives exhorbitant fees—at other times refuse to leave his bottle for his business, without any regard to the quality of the persons that sent for him, or the danger they are in; if he should be surly and morose, affect to be an humourist, treat his patients like dogs, though people of distinction, and value no man but what would deify him, and never call in question the certainty of his oracles; if he should insult all the world, affront the first nobility, and extend his insolence even to the royal family; if to maintain, as well as to increase, the fame of his sufficiency, he should scorn to consult his betters, on what emergency soever, look down with contempt on the most deserving of his profession, and never confer with any other physician but what will pay homage to his genius, creep to his humour, and ever approach him with all the slavish obsequiousness a court flatterer can treat a prince with; if a man in his life-time should discover, on the one hand, such manifest symptoms of superlative pride, and an insatiable greediness after wealth at the same time; and, on the other, no regard to religion or affection to his kindred, no compassion to the poor, and hardly any humanity to his fellow-creatures; if he gave no proofs that he loved his country, had a public spirit, or was a lover of the arts, of books, or of literature—what must we judge of his motive, the principle he acted from, when, after his death, we find that he has left a trifle among his relations who stood in need of it, and an immense treasure to a University that did not want it.
"Let a man be as charitable as it is possible for him to be, without forfeiting his reason or good sense, can he think otherwise, but that this famous physician did, in the making of his will, as in everything else, indulge his darling passion, entertaining his vanity with the happiness of the contrivance?"
This severe portrait is just about as true as the likeness of a man, painted by a conscientious enemy, usually is. Radcliffe was not endowed with a kindly nature. "Mead, I love you," said he to his fascinating adulator; "and I'll tell you a sure secret to make your fortune—use all mankind ill." Radcliffe carried out his rule by wringing as much as possible from, and returning as little as possible to, his fellowmen. He could not pay a tradesman's bill without a sense of keen suffering. Even a poor pavior, who had been employed to do a job to the stones before the doctor's house in Bloomsbury Square (whither the physician removed from Bow Street), could not get his money without a contest. "Why, you rascal!" cried the debtor, as he alighted from his chariot, "do you pretend to be paid for such a piece of work! Why, you have spoiled my pavement, and then covered it over with earth to hide the bad work."
"Doctor," responded the man, dryly, "mine is not the only bad work the earth hides."
Of course, the only course to pursue with a creditor who could dun in this sarcastic style was to pay, and be rid of him. But the doctor made up for his own avarice by being ever ready to condemn it in others.
Tyson, the miser, being near his last hour, magnanimously resolved to pay two of his 3,000,000 guineas to Radcliffe, to learn if anything could be done for his malady. The miserable old man came up with his wife from Hackney, and tottered into the consulting-room in Bloomsbury Square, with two guineas in his hand—
"You may go, sir," exclaimed Radcliffe, to the astonished wretch, who trusted he was unknown—"you may go home, and die, and be ——, without a speedy repentance; for both the grave and the devil are ready for Tyson of Hackney, who has grown rich out of the spoils of the public and the tears of orphans and widows. You'll be a dead man, sir, in ten days."
There are numerous stories extant relative to Radcliffe's practice; but nearly all those which bear the stamp of genuineness are unfit for publication in the present polite age. Such stories as the hasty-pudding one, re-edited by the pleasant author of "The Gold-headed Cane," can be found by the dozen, but the cumbrous workmanship of Mr. Joseph Miller is manifest in them all.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DOCTOR AS A BON-VIVANT.
"What must I do, sir!" inquired an indolent bon-vivant of Abernethy.
"Live on sixpence a day, and earn it, sir," was the stern answer.
Gabriel Fallopius, who has given his name to a structure with which anatomists are familiar, gave the same reproof in a more delicate manner. With a smile he replied in the words of Terence,
"Otio abundas Antipho,"—"Sir, you're as lazy as Hall's dog."
But, though medical practitioners have dealt in sayings like these, to do them bare justice, it must be admitted that their preaching has generally been contradicted by the practice. When medicine remained very much in the hands of the ladies, the composition of remedies, and the making of dinners, went on in the same apartment. Indeed hunger and thirst were but two out of a list of diseases that were ministered to by the attendants round a kitchen table. The same book held the receipts for dishes and the recipes for electuaries. In many an old hall of England the manual still remains from which three centuries ago the lady of the house learned to dress a boar's head or cure a cold. Most physicians would now disdain to give dietetic instruction to a patient beyond the most general directions; but there are cases where, even in these days, they stoop to do so, with advantage to themselves and their patients.
"I have ordered twelve dinners this morning," a cheery little doctor said to the writer of these pages, on the white cliffs of a well-known sea-side town.
"Indeed—I did not know that was your business."
"But it is. A host of rich old invalids come down here to be medicinally treated. They can't be happy without good living, and yet are so ignorant of the science and art of eating, that they don't know how to distinguish between a luxurious and pernicious diet, and a luxurious and wholesome one. They flock to the 'Duke's Hotel,' and I always tell the landlord what they are to have. Each dinner costs three or four guineas. They'd grudge them, and their consciences would be uneasy at spending so much money, if they ordered their dinners themselves. But when they regard the fare as medicine recommended by the doctor, there is no drawback to their enjoyment of it. Their confidence in me is unbounded."
The bottle and the board were once the doctor's two favourite companions. More than one eminent physician died in testifying his affection for them. In the days of tippling they were the most persevering of tavern-haunters. No wonder that some of them were as fat as Daniel Lambert, and that even more died sudden deaths from apoplexy. The obesity of Dr. Stafford was celebrated in an epitaph:—
For here lies Dr. Stafford in all this churchyard."
Dr. Beddoes was so stout that the Clifton ladies used to call him their "walking feather-bed."
Dr. Flemyng weighed twenty stone and eleven pounds, till he reduced his weight by abstinence from the delicacies of the table, and by taking a quarter of an ounce of common Castile soap every night.
Dr. Cheyne's weight was thirty-two stone, till he cured himself by persevering in a temperate diet. Laughing at two unwieldly noblemen whose corpulence was the favourite jest of all the wits in the court, Louis XV. said to one of them, "I suppose you take little or no exercise."
"Your Majesty will pardon me," replied the bulky duke, "for I generally walk two or three times round my cousin every morning."
Sir Theodore Mayerne, who, though he was the most eminent physician of his time, did not disdain to write "Excellent and Well-Approved Receipts in Cookery, with the best way of Preserving," was killed by tavern wine. He died, after returning from supper in a Strand hotel; his immediate friends attributing his unexpected death to the quality of the beverage, but others, less charitable, setting it down to the quantity.
Not many years ago, about a score surgeons were dining together at a tavern, when, about five minutes after some very "particular port" had been sent round for the first time, they all fell back in their chairs, afflicted in various degrees with sickness, vertigo, and spasm. A more pleasant sight for the waiters can hardly be conceived. One after one the gentlemen were conveyed to beds or sofas. Unfortunately for the startling effect which the story would otherwise have produced, they none of them expired. The next day they remembered that, instead of relishing the "particular port," they had detected a very unpleasant smack in it. The black bottles were demanded from the trembling landlord, when chemical analysis soon discovered that they had been previously used for fly-poison, and had not been properly cleansed. A fine old crust of such a kind is little to be desired.
It would perhaps have been well had old Butler (mentioned elsewhere in these volumes) met with a similar mishap, if it had only made him a less obstinate frequenter of beer-shops. He loved tobacco, deeming it
Good both for sound and sickly;
'Tis a hot perfume
That expels cold Rheume,
And makes it flow down quickly."
It is on record that he made one of his patients smoke twenty-five pipes at a sitting. But fond though he was of tobacco, he was yet fonder of beer. He invented a drink called "Butler's Ale," afterwards sold at the Butler's Head, in Mason's Alley, Basinghall Street. Indeed, he was a sad old scamp. Nightly he would go to the tavern, and drink deeply for hours, till his maid-servant, old Nell, came between nine and ten o'clock and fetched him home, scolding him all the way for being such a sot. But though Butler liked ale and wine for himself, he thought highly of water for other people. When he occupied rooms in the Savoy, looking over the Thames, a gentleman afflicted with an ague came to consult him. Butler tipped the wink to his servants, who flung the sick man, in the twinkling of an eye, slap out of the window into the river. We are asked to believe that "the surprise absolutely cured" the patient of his malady.
The physicians of Charles the Second's day were jolly fellows. They made deep drinking and intrigue part of their profession as well as of their practice. Their books contain arguments in favour of indulgence, which their passions suggested and the taste of the times approved. Tobias Whitaker and John Archer, both physicians in ordinary to the merry monarch, were representative men of their class. Whitaker, a Norfolk man, practised with success at Norwich before coming up to London. He published a discourse upon waters, that proved him very ignorant on the subject; and a treatise on the properties of wine, that is a much better testimony to the soundness of his understanding. Prefixed to his "Elenchus of opinions on Small-Pox," is a portrait that represents him as a well-looking fellow. That he was a sincere and discerning worshipper of Bacchus, is shown by his "Tree of Humane Life, or the Bloud of the Grape. Proving the possibilitie of maintaining humane life from infancy to extreame old age without any sicknesse by the use of Wine." In this work (sold, by the way, in the author's shop, Pope's Head Alley) we read of wine,—"This is the phisick that doth not dull, but sets a true edge upon nature, after operation leaveth no venomous contact. Sure I am this was ancient phisick, else what meant Avicenna, Rhasis, and Averroes, to move the body twice every month with the same; as it is familiar to Nature, so they used it familiarly. As for my own experience, though I have not lived yet so long as to love excesse, yet have I seene such powerful effects, both on my selfe and others, as if I could render no other reason, they were enough to persuade me of its excellencie, seeing extenuate withered bodies by it caused to be faire, fresh, plumpe, and fat, old and infirme to be young and sound, when as water or small-beer drinkers looke like apes rather than men."
John Archer, the author of "Every Man his own Doctor," and "Secrets Disclosed," was an advocate of generous diet and enlightened sensuality. His place of business was "a chamber in a Sadler's howse over against the Black Horse nigh Charing-cross," where his hours of attendance for some years were from 11 A. M. to 5 P. M. each day. On setting up a house at Knightsbridge, where he resided in great style, he shortened the number of hours daily passed in London. In 1684 he announced in one of his works—"For these and other Directions you may send to the Author, at his chamber against the Mews by Charing-cross, who is certainly there from twelve to four, at other times at his house at Knightsbridge, being a mile from Charing-cross, where is good air for cure of consumptions, melancholy, and other infirmities." He had also a business established in Winchester Street, near Gresham College, next door to the Fleece Tavern. Indeed, physician-in-ordinary to the King though he was, he did not think it beneath him to keep a number of apothecaries' shops, and, like Whitaker, to live by the sale of drugs as well as fees. His cordial dyet drink was advertised as costing 2s. 6d. per quart; for a box containing 30 morbus pills, the charge was 5s.; 40 corroborating pills were to be had for the same sum. Like Dr. Everard, he recommended his patients to smoke, saying that "tobacco smoke purified the air from infectious malignancy by its fragrancy, sweetened the breath, strengthened the brain and memory, and revived the sight to admiration." He sold tobacco, of a superior quality to the ordinary article of commerce, at 2s. and 1s. an ounce. "The order of taking it is like other tobacco at any time; its virtues may be perceived by taking one pipe, after which you will spit more, and your mouth will be dryer than after common tobacco, which you may moisten by drinking any warm drink, as coffee, &c., or with sugar candy, liquorish, or a raisin, and you will find yourself much refreshed."
Whilst Whitaker and Archer were advising men to smoke and drink, another physician of the Court was inventing a stomach-brush, in some respects much like the bottle-brush with which fly-poison ought to be taken from the interior of black bottles before wine is committed to them. This instrument was pushed down the gullet, and then poked about and turned round, much in the same way as a chimney-sweeper's brush is handled by a dexterous operator on soot. It was recommended that gentlemen should thus sweep out their insides not oftener than once a week, but not less frequently than once a month. The curious may find not only a detailed description but engraved likeness of this remarkable stomach-brush in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xx., for the year 1750.
It would be unfair to take leave of Dr. Archer without mentioning his three inventions, on which he justly prided himself not a little. He constructed a hot steam-bath, an oven "which doth with a small faggot bake a good quantity of anything," and "a compleat charriot that shall with any ordinary horse run swift with four or five people within, and there is place for more without, all which one horse can as easily draw as two horses." In these days of vapour baths, bachelors' kettles, and broughams, surely Dr. Archer ought to have a statue by the side of Jenner in Trafalgar Square.
The doctors of Anne's time were of even looser morals than their immediate predecessors. In taverns, over wine, they received patients and apothecaries. It became fashionable (a fashion that has lasted down to the present day) for a physician to scratch down his prescriptions illegibly; the mode, in all probability, arising from the fact that a doctor's hand was usually too unsteady to write distinctly.
Freind continually visited his patients in a state of intoxication. To one lady of high rank he came in such a state of confusion that when in her room he could only grumble to himself, "Drunk—drunk—drunk, by God!" Fortunately the fair patient was suffering from the same malady as her doctor, who (as she learnt from her maid on returning to consciousness) had made the above bluff comment on her case, and then had gone away. The next day, Freind was sitting in a penitent state over his tea, debating what apology he should offer to his aristocratic patient, when he was relieved from his perplexity by the arrival of a note from the lady herself enclosing a handsome fee, imploring her dear Dr. Freind to keep her secret, and begging him to visit her during the course of the day.
On another occasion Freind wrote a prescription for a member of an important family, when his faculties were so evidently beyond his control that Mead was sent for. On arriving, Mead, with a characteristic delicacy towards his professional friend, took up the tipsy man's prescription, and having looked at it, said, "'Pon my honour, Dr. Freind can write a better prescription when drunk than I can when sober."
Gibbons—the "Nurse Gibbons" of our old friend Radcliffe—was a deep drinker, disgusting, by the grossness of his debaucheries, the polite and epicurean Garth. But Gibbons did something for English dinner-tables worth remembering. He brought into domestic use the mahogany with which we have so many pleasant associations. His brother, a West Indian Captain, brought over some of the wood as ballast, thinking it might possibly turn to use. At first the carpenters, in a truly conservative spirit, refused to have anything to do with the "new wood," saying it was too hard for their tools. Dr. Gibbons, however, had first a candle-box and then a bureau made for Mrs. Gibbons out of the condemned material. The bureau so pleased his friends, amongst whom was the Duchess of Buckingham, that her Grace ordered a similar piece of furniture, and introduced the wood into high life, where it quickly became the fashion.
Of Radcliffe's drunkenness mention is made elsewhere. As an eater, he was a gourmand, not a gourmet. When Prince Eugene of Savoy came over to England on a diplomatic mission, his nephew, the Chevalier de Soissons, fell into the fashion of the town, roaming it at night in search of frays—a roaring, swaggering mohock. The sprightly Chevalier took it into his head that it would be a pleasant thing to thrash a watchman; so he squared up to one, and threatened to kill him. Instead of succumbing, the watchman returned his assailant's blows, and gave him an awful thrashing. The next day, what with the mauling he had undergone, and what with delirium tremens, the merry roisterer was declared by his physician, Sieur Swartenburgh, to be in a dying state. Radcliffe was called in, and acting on his almost invariable rule, told Prince Eugene that the young man must die, because Swartenburgh had maltreated him. The prophecy was true, if the criticism was not. The Chevalier died, and was buried amongst the Ormond family in Westminster Abbey—it being given out to the public that he had died of small-pox.
Prince Eugene conceived a strong liking for Radcliffe, and dined with him at the Doctor's residence. The dinner Radcliffe put before his guest is expressive of the coarseness both of the times and the man. On the table the only viands were barons of beef, jiggets of mutton, legs of pork, and such other ponderous masses of butcher's stuff, which no one can look at without discomfort, when the first edge has been taken off the appetite. Prince Eugene expressed himself delighted with "the food and liquors!"
George Fordyce, like Radcliffe, was fond of substantial fare. For more than twenty years he dined daily at Dolly's Chop-house. The dinner he there consumed was his only meal during the four-and-twenty hours, but its bulk would have kept a boa-constrictor happy for a twelvemonth. Four o'clock was the hour at which the repast commenced, when, punctual to a minute, the Doctor seated himself at a table specially reserved for him, and adorned with a silver tankard of strong ale, a bottle of port-wine, and a measure containing a quarter of a pint of brandy. Before the dinner was first put on, he had one light dish of a broiled fowl, or a few whitings. Having leisurely devoured this plate, the doctor took one glass of brandy, and asked for his steak. The steak was always a prime one, weighing one pound and a half. When the man of science had eaten the whole of it, he took the rest of his brandy, then drank his tankard of heady ale, and, lastly, sipped down his bottle of port. Having brought his intellects, up or down, to the standard of his pupils, he rose and walked down to his house in Essex Street to give his six o'clock lecture on Chemistry.
Dr. Beauford was another of the eighteenth-century physicians who thought temperance a vice that hadn't even the recommendation of transient pleasure. A Jacobite of the most enthusiastic sort, he was not less than Freind a favourite with the aristocracy who countenanced the Stuart faction. As he was known to be very intimate with Lord Barrymore, the Doctor was summoned, in 1745, to appear before the Privy-Council, and answer the questions of the custodians of his Majesty's safety and honour.
"You know Lord Barrymore?" said one of the Lords of Council.
"Intimately—most intimately,"—was the answer.
"You are continually with him?"
"We dine together almost daily when his Lordship is in town."
"What do you talk about?"
"Eating and drinking."
"Oh, my lord, we never talk of anything except eating and drinking—drinking and eating."
A good deal of treasonable sentiment might have been exchanged in these discussions of eating and drinking. "God send this crum-well down!" was the ordinary toast of the Cavalier during the glorious Protectorate of Oliver. And long afterwards, English gentlemen of Jacobite sympathies, drinking "to the King," before they raised the glass to their lips, put it over the water-bottle, to indicate where the King was whose prosperity they pledged.
At the tavern in Finch Lane, where Beauford received the apothecaries who followed him, he drank freely, but never was known to give a glass from his bottle to one of his clients. In this respect he resembled Dr. Gaskin of Plymouth, a physician in fine practice in Devonshire at the close of the last century, who once said to a young beginner in his profession, "Young man, when you get a fee, don't give fifteen shillings of it back to your patient in beef and port-wine."
Contemporary with Beauford was Dr. Barrowby—wit, scholar, political partisan, and toper. Barrowby was the hero of an oft-told tale, recently attributed in the newspapers to Abernethy. When canvassing for a place on the staff of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Barrowby entered the shop of one of the governors, a grocer on Snow-hill, to solicit his influence and vote. The tradesman, bursting with importance, and anticipating the pleasure of getting a very low bow from a gentleman, strutted up the shop, and, with a mixture of insolent patronage and insulting familiarity, cried, "Well, friend, and what is your business?"
Barrowby paused for a minute, cut him right through with the glance of his eye, and then said, quietly and slowly, "I want a pound of plums."
Confused and blushing, the grocer did up the plums. Barrowby put them in his pocket, and went away without asking the fellow for his vote.
A good political story is told of Barrowby, the incident of which occurred in 1749, eleven years after his translation of Astruc's "Treatise" appeared. Lord Trentham (afterwards Lord Gower) and Sir George Vandeput were contesting the election for Westminster. Barrowby, a vehement supporter of the latter, was then in attendance on the notorious Joe Weatherby, master of the "Ben Jonson's Head," in Russell Street, who lay in a perilous state, emaciated by nervous fever. Mrs. Weatherby was deeply afflicted at her husband's condition, because it rendered him unable to vote for Lord Trentham. Towards the close of the polling days the Doctor, calling one day on his patient, to his great astonishment found him up, and almost dressed by the nurse and her assistants.
"Hey-day! what's the cause of this?" exclaims Barrowby. "Why are you up without my leave?"
"Dear Doctor," says Joe, in a broken voice, "I am going to poll."
"To poll!" roars Barrowby, supposing the man to hold his wife's political opinions, "you mean going to the devil! Get to bed, man, the cold air will kill you. If you don't get into bed instantly you'll be dead before the day is out."
"I'll do as you bid me, doctor," was the reluctant answer. "But as my wife was away for the morning, I thought I could get as far as Covent Garden Church, and vote for Sir George Vandeput."
"How, Joe, for Sir George?"
"Oh, yes, sir, I don't go with my wife. I am a Sir George's man."
Barrowby was struck by a sudden change for the better in the man's appearance, and said, "Wait a minute, nurse. Don't pull off his stockings. Let me feel his pulse. Humph—a good firm stroke! You took the pills I ordered you?"
"Yes, sir, but they made me feel very ill."
"Ay, so much the better; that's what I wished. Nurse, how did he sleep?"
"Charmingly, sir."
"Well, Joe," said Barrowby, after a few seconds' consideration, "if you are bent on going to this election, your mind ought to be set at rest. It's a fine sunny day, and a ride will very likely do you good. So, bedad, I'll take you with me in my chariot."
Delighted with his doctor's urbanity, Weatherby was taken off in the carriage to Covent Garden, recorded his vote for Sir George Vandeput, was brought back in the same vehicle, and died two hours afterwards, amidst the reproaches of his wife and her friends of the Court party.
Charles the Second was so impressed with the power of the Medical Faculty in influencing the various intrigues of political parties, that he averred that Dr. Lower, Nell Gwynn's physician, did more mischief than a troop of horse. But Barrowby was prevented, by the intrusion of death, from rendering effectual service to his party. Called away from a dinner-table, where he was drinking deeply and laughing much, to see a patient, he got into his carriage, and was driven off. When the footman opened the door, on arriving at the house of sickness, he found his master dead. A fit of apoplexy had struck him down, whilst he was still a young man, and just as he was ascending to the highest rank of his profession.
John Sheldon was somewhat addicted to the pleasures of the table. On one occasion, however, he had to make a journey fasting. The son of a John Sheldon, an apothecary who carried on business in the Tottenham Court Road, a few doors from the Black Horse Yard, Sheldon conceived in early life a strong love for mechanics. At Harrow he was birched for making a boat and floating it. In after life he had a notable scheme for taking whales with poisoned harpoons; and, to test its merit, actually made a voyage to Greenland. He was moreover the first Englishman to make an ascent in a balloon. He went with Blanchard, and had taken his place in the car, when the aeronaut, seeing that his machine was too heavily weighted, begged him to get out.
"If you are my friend, you will alight. My fame, my all, depends on success," exclaimed Blanchard.
"I won't," bluntly answered Sheldon, as the balloon manifested symptoms of rising.
In a furious passion, the little air-traveller exclaimed, "Then I starve you! Point du chicken, by Gar, you shall have no chicken." So saying, he flung the hamper of provisions out of the car, and, thus lightened, the balloon went up.
Abernethy is said to have reproved an over-fed alderman for his excesses at table in the following manner. The civic footman was ordered to put a large bowl under the sideboard, and of whatever he served his master with to throw the same quantity into the bowl as he put on the gourmand's plate. After the repast was at an end, the sated feaster was requested to look into the bowl at a nauseous mess of mock turtle, turbot, roast-beef, turkey, sausages, cakes, wines, ale, fruits, cheese.
Sir Richard Jebb showed little favour to the digestion thinking it was made to be used—not nursed. Habitually more rough and harsh than Abernethy in his most surly moods, Jebb offended many of his patients. "That's my way," said he to a noble invalid, astonished at his rudeness. "Then," answered the sick man, pointing to the door, "I beg you'll make that your way."
To all questions about diet Jebb would respond tetchily or carelessly.
"Pray, Sir Richard, may I eat a muffin?" asked a lady.
"Yes, madam, 'tis the best thing you can take."
"Oh, dear! Sir Richard, I am glad of that. The other day you said it was the worst thing in the world for me."
"Good, madam, I said so last Tuesday. This isn't a Tuesday—is it?"
To another lady who asked what she might eat he said contemptuously, "Boiled turnips."
"Boiled turnips!" was the answer; "you forget, Sir Richard—I told you I could not bear boiled turnips."
"Then, madam," answered Sir Richard, sternly, as if his sense of the moral fitness of things was offended, "you must have a d——d vitiated appetite."
Sir Richard's best set of dietetic directions consisted of the following negative advice, given to an old gentleman who put the everlasting question, "What may I eat?" "My directions, sir, are simple. You must not eat the poker, shovel, or tongs, for they are hard of digestion; nor the bellows; but anything else you please."
Even to the King, Sir Richard was plain-spoken. George the Third lamented to him the restless spirit of his cousin, Dr. John Jebb, the dissenting minister. "And please your Majesty," was the answer, "if my cousin were in heaven he would be a reformer."
Dr. Babington used to tell a story of an Irish gentleman, for whom he prescribed an emetic, saying, "My dear doctor, it is of no use your giving me an emetic. I tried it twice in Dublin, and it would not stay on my stomach either time." Jebb's stomach would have gone on tranquilly, even when entertaining an emetic.
Jebb, with all his bluntness, was a mean lover of the atmosphere of the Court. His income was subject to great fluctuations, as the whims of his fashionable employers ran for or against him. Sir Edward Wilmont's receipts sank from £3000 to £300, in consequence of his having lost two ladies of quality at the Court. Jebb's revenue never varied so much as this, but the £15,000 (the greatest sum he ever made in one year) often fell off by thousands. This fact didn't tend to lessen his mortification at the loss of a great patient. When George the Third dismissed him, and took Sir George Baker in his place, he nearly died of chagrin. And when he was recalled to attend the royal family in the measles, he nearly died of delight. This ruling passion exhibited itself strongly in death. When he was on his death-bed, the Queen, by the hand of a German lady, wrote to inquire after his condition. So elated was the poor man with this act of royal benignity, that he grasped the letter, and never let go his hold of it till the breath of life quitted his attenuated body.
This chapter has been for the most part on the feasting of physicians. We'll conclude it with a few words on their fasts. In the house of a Strand grocer there used to be a scientific club, of which the principal members were—W. Heberden, M.D., J. Turton, M.D., G. Baker, M.D., Sir John Pringle, Sir William Watson, and Lord C. Cavendish who officiated as president. Each member paid sixpence per evening for the use of the grocer's dining-room. The club took in one newspaper, and the only refreshment allowed to be taken at the place of meeting was—water.
The most abstemious of eminent physicians was Sir Hans Sloane, the president of the Royal Society and of the College of Physicians, and (in a certain sense) the founder of the British Museum. A love of money made him a hater of all good things, except money and his museum. He gave up his winter soirées in Bloomsbury Square, in order to save his tea and bread and butter. At one of these scientific entertainments Handel offended the scientific knight deeply by laying a muffin on one of his books. "To be sure it was a gareless trick," said the composer, when telling the story, "bud it tid no monsdrous mischief; pode it but the old poog-vorm treadfully oud of sorts. I offered my best apologies, but the old miser would not have done with it. If it had been a biscuit, it would not have mattered; but muffin and pudder. And I said, Ah, mine Gotd, that is the rub!—it is the pudder! Now, mine worthy friend, Sir Hans Sloane, you have a nodable excuse, you may save your doast and pudder, and lay it to that unfeeling gormandizing German; and den I knows it will add something to your life by sparing your burse."
The eccentric Dr. Glyn of Cambridge, rarely dined, but used to satisfy his hunger at chance times by cutting slices off a cold joint (a constant ornament of the side-table in his study), and eating them while standing. To eat such a dinner in such an attitude would be to fare little better than the ascetic physician who used twice a week to dine off two Abernethy biscuits, consumed as he walked at the pace of four miles an hour. However wholesome they may be, the hard biscuits, known as Abernethies (but in the construction of which, by-the-by, Abernethy was no more concerned than were Wellington and Blucher in making the boots that bear their names), are not convivial cates, though one would rather have to consume them than the calomel sandwiches which Dr. Curry (popularly called Dr. Calomel Curry) used to give his patients.
CHAPTER IX.
FEES.
From the earliest times the Leech (Leighis), or healer, has found, in the exercise of his art, not only a pleasant sense of being a public benefactor, but also the means of private advancement. The use the churchmen made of their medical position throughout Christendom (both before and after that decree of the council of Tours, A.D. 1163, which forbade priests and deacons to perform surgical operations in which cauteries and incisions were employed), is attested by the broad acres they extracted, for their religious corporations, as much from the gratitude as from the superstition of their patients. And since the Reformation, from which period the vocations of the spiritual and the bodily physician have been almost entirely kept apart, the practitioners of medicine have had cause to bless the powers of sickness. A good story is told of Arbuthnot. When he was a young man (ere he had won the patronage of Queen Anne, and the friendship of Swift and Pope), he settled at Dorchester, and endeavoured to get practice in that salubrious town. Nature obviated his good intentions: he wished to minister to the afflicted, if they were rich enough to pay for his ministrations, but the place was so healthy that it contained scarce half-a-dozen sick inhabitants. Arbuthnot determined to quit a field so ill-adapted for a display of his philanthropy. "Where are you off to?" cried a friend, who met him riding post towards London. "To leave your confounded place," was the answer, "for a man can neither live nor die there." But to arrive at wealth was not amongst Arbuthnot's faculties; he was unable to use his profession as a trade; and only a few weeks before his death he wrote, "I am as well as a man can be who is gasping for breath, and has a house full of men and women unprovided for."
Arbuthnot's ill-luck, however, was quite out of the ordinary rule. Fuller says (1662), "Physic hath promoted many more, and that since the reign of King Henry VIII. Indeed, before his time, I find a doctor of physic, father to Reginald, first and last Lord Bray. But this faculty hath flourished much the three last fifty years; it being true of physic, what is said of Sylla, 'suos divitiis explevit.' Sir William Butts, physician to King Henry VIII., Doctor Thomas Wendy, and Doctor Hatcher, Queen Elizabeth's physician, raised worshipful families in Norfolk, Cambridge, and Lincolnshire, having borne the office of Sheriff in this county." Sir William Butts was rewarded for his professional services by Henry VIII. with the honour of Knighthood, and he attended that sovereign when the royal confirmation was given, in 1512, to the charter of the barber-surgeons of London. Another eminent physician of the same period, who also arrived at the dignity of knighthood, was John Ayliffe, a sheriff of London, and merchant of Blackwell-Hall. His epitaph records:—