The Gold-Headed Cane

But I must descend from these high matters, and speak again of my master, and, I am sorry to say, of another disappointment which occurred in our house. Two years after the death of Prince George, when Radcliffe was in his sixtieth year, I was somewhat surprised, one morning after breakfast, to observe him attired with more than ordinary exactness. His full-bottomed wig was dressed with peculiar care; he had put on his best suit of lilac-coloured velvet with yellow basket buttons, and his air upon the whole was very commanding. He reminded me strongly of his appearance some ten or fifteen years before. He had an elevated forehead, hazel eyes, cheeks telling of the good cheer of former days, if any thing a little too ruddy; a double chin, a well-formed nose, and a mouth round which generally played an agreeable smile. When he sat in his easy chair, with his right hand expanded, and placed upon his breast, as if meditating a speech, and clearing his voice for the purpose of giving it utterance; his left wearing his glove, and resting on his side immediately above the hilt of his sword, which was a very usual attitude with him, he certainly had a most comely and well-favoured appearance.

I love to dwell upon these particulars of my old worthy master; for to him I owe my first introduction into the world, and whatever celebrity my memoirs may hereafter obtain. When fully equipped, he stepped into a gay gilt chariot, drawn by fresh prancing horses, the coachman wearing a new cockade, and our lacqueys looking with all the insolence of plenty in their countenances. We paraded the streets, passed through Covent Garden, and the most frequented parts of the town; but it grieved me to observe, that our glittering equipage served only to provoke the smiles and ridicule of the malicious. To speak out, it was now notorious that the Doctor was in love, and that all this parade was for the purpose of captivating the young lady of whom he was enamoured. Suffice it to say, he was lampooned, proved unfortunate in his suit, and was styled by the wicked wits of the day “the mourning Esculapius,” “the languishing hopeless lover of the divine Hebe, the emblem of youth and beauty.”

But more sober reflection and the busy duties of his profession soon withdrew his thoughts from these amorous toys, and he continued actively employed for a few years longer, though it was but too evident that his health and spirits were daily declining.

About this time that celebrated warrior, Prince Eugene, so distinguished for his campaigns in Hungary and Italy, where he had gained such splendid victories over the Turk and the King of France, arrived in England. The object of his visit was to try if it were possible to engage our court to go on with the war, which met with great obstruction. But the juncture was unfavourable to his project; for on the very day before his arrival, his great friend and companion in arms, the Duke of Marlborough, was turned out of all his places. The days of intimacy between the Queen and the Duchess were at an end; and the endearing appellations of the “poor, unfortunate, faithful Morley,” and Mrs. Freeman, no longer marked the extraordinary terms of friendly intercourse which had subsisted between Her Majesty and a subject. The Prince was, however, caressed by the courtiers for his own worth; and though his negotiations went slowly on, he was entertained by most of the nobility, and magnificently feasted by the city. My master invited His Highness to dinner; and a large party of the nobility, and several topping merchants, particularly some of those who had formerly contributed to the Silesian loan, were engaged to meet him. The enmity of the Prince to every thing French was known, and it had been rendered still more notorious by his admirable reply to an insolent threat of the minister of the Grand Monarque, which was at this time in the mouth of every one. Louvois had intimated to the Prince, that he must not think of returning to France; to which the warrior replied, “Eugene entrera un jour en France, en depit de Louvois et de Louis.” To do honour to such a guest was the ambition of Radcliffe; and in giving orders for dinner, “Let there be no ragouts,” said he; “no kickshaws of France; but let us treat the Prince as a soldier. He shall have a specimen of true English hospitality. I will have my table covered with barons of beef, jiggets of mutton, and legs of pork.” At the appointed hour the guests assembled, and the Prince charmed every one by his unassuming modesty, his easy address and behaviour. His aspect was erect and composed, his eye lively and thoughtful, yet rather vigilant than sparkling: but his manner was peculiarly graceful, and he descended to an easy equality with those who conversed with him. The shape of his person and composure of his limbs was remarkably erect and beautiful; still, with all his condescension, and though he was affable to every one, it was evident that he rather suffered the presence of much company, instead of taking delight in public gaze and popular applause. The entertainment of my master went off very well; all seemed to be pleased, though some of the courtiers indulged in a little pleasantry at the ample cheer with which the table groaned. The princely stranger expressed himself much satisfied, and was loud in his praise of some capital seven years old beer, which we happened at that time to have in tap.

I forgot to mention, that, a few years before the period of which I am now speaking, I saw, for the first time, Dr. Mead, who was then beginning to be known as a man rising in his profession, and into whose hands I was afterwards destined to fall. He lived then in Austyn friers; and we found him one morning in his library, reading Hippocrates; when the following dialogue took place between the two physicians:

Radcliffe (taking up the volume of the venerable Father of Physic). “What! my young friend, do you read Hippocrates in the original language? Well, take my word for it, when I am dead you will occupy the throne of physic in this great town.”

Mead. “No, Sir; when you are gone, your empire, like Alexander’s, will be divided amongst many successors.”

I felt that this courteous reply pleased my master mightily; and although Mead was even then known to be a man of great talent, had already written his treatise on Poisons, published several other works of merit, and was therefore in every respect deserving of the countenance and patronage of the eminent doctor of the day, yet I have myself no doubt that this well-timed compliment to Radcliffe’s eminence served to cement the intimate friendship of these two physicians.

The library of Mead was even at this time considerable. Many rooms of his small house were filled with books; and the two doctors indulged in a long chat. The conversation embraced many topics. Mead was very lively and entertaining; related several anecdotes of things which he had seen abroad; and described with great animation his joy on finding the Tabula Isiaca[9] in a lumber room at Florence. Upon this subject my master asked many questions, and appeared much struck with the advantage of foreign travel to a physician. On taking his leave, he again expressed his admiration of the literary attainments of Mead, and said in a tone of great earnestness and sincerity—“Some day or other, the Alma Mater where I was bred shall receive from me substantial proofs of the true concern I feel for the welfare of the cause of learning: for as I have grown older, every year of my life has convinced me more and more of the value of the education of the scholar and the gentleman, to the thoroughbred physician. But,” added he, “perhaps your friend here (pointing me to a folio edition of Celsus which stood on one of the shelves of the library) expresses my meaning better than I can myself, where he says, that this discipline of the mind, ‘quamvis non faciat medicum, aptiorem tamen medicinæ reddit.’” Radcliffe, as if unwilling to trust himself with any farther quotation, embraced Dr. Mead, and hastened to his carriage.

On the 1st of August, 1714, died Queen Anne; an event memorable in the life of Radcliffe. The domestic physicians of Her Majesty, assisted by Dr. Mead, had applied various remedies without success. It was reported that the privy council, as well as the Queen, had given orders that my master should be present at the consultation, and that he excused himself under pretence of indisposition. The truth is, he was not in town at that time, but down at his country-house at Carshalton in Surrey, ill himself of the gout, which had seized his head and stomach. Yet notwithstanding this, the enemies of Radcliffe imputed the death of the Queen to his absence, and he was accordingly threatened with assassination. This unpopularity, undeserved as it was, made him keep his house, where, on the 4th of August, three days after the death of Her Majesty, Dr. Mead and his brother the lawyer came down to dine with him at two o’clock. In spite of the ill state of his health, the conversation of two such good friends afforded him much pleasure and satisfaction. After dinner, his wonted good humour returned, and, taking me in his hand, he presented me, with the following discourse, to Dr. Mead:—

“Though my life is, I dare say, pretty well known to you, yet I will mention some of the leading circumstances of it, from which perhaps you may be able to derive some instruction. Since I began the study of medicine, I have devoted myself chiefly to a careful examination of the most valuable modern treatises. In this particular I differ, I know, from you, who are a profound scholar; but my books have always been few, though I hope well chosen. When I was at the university, a few vials, a skeleton, and an herbal, chiefly formed my library. By following the dictates of common sense, while I practised at Oxford after taking my bachelor of medicine’s degree, instead of stoving up my patients who were ill of the small-pox, as was done by the Galenists of those days, I gave them air and cooling emulsions, and thus rescued more than a hundred from the grave. I have always endeavoured to discountenance the attempts of quacks and intermeddlers in physic, and by the help of Providence I have succeeded most wonderfully. My good Dr. Mead, you must consider this conversation as quite confidential, and if I mention any thing that has the air of boasting, you will reflect that I unbosom myself to a friend, and what I am about to say is for your encouragement. In 1686, I was made principal physician to Her Royal Highness the Princess Anne of Denmark, and soon after His late Majesty King William’s arrival in England, he was graciously pleased to make me an offer of being sworn one of his physicians in ordinary, with a salary of two hundred pounds per annum more than any other. At the same time he generously ordered me five hundred guineas out of the privy purse for the cures of M. Bentinck and M. Zulestein. Though I begged to be permitted to refuse the post, yet the King was so frequently ill of rheum and asthma, that, for the first eleven years of his reign, I gained, one year with another, more than six hundred guineas per annum by my attendance upon His Majesty. My practice rapidly increased, and I was even credibly informed that Dr. Gibbons, who lived in my neighbourhood, got more than one thousand pounds a year by patients whom I really had not time to see, and who had therefore recourse to him. As my wealth increased, you will naturally ask me why I never married: it does not become me to speak of my good or ill fortune in that line, especially now when I ought to call my thoughts from all such vanities, and when the decays of nature tell me that I have only a short time to live. That time is, I am afraid, barely sufficient to repent me of the idle hours which I have spent in riotous living; for I now feel, in the pain which afflicts my nerves, that I am a martyr to excess, and am afraid that I have been an abettor and encourager of intemperance in others. Though by an indiscreet speech I lost the good graces of the Princess Anne, yet His Majesty King William still continued to have confidence in my skill. As a proof of it, I may mention that in 1695 I was sent for to Namur, to cure Lord Albemarle. After a week’s residence in the camp abroad, His Majesty generously gave me an order on the Treasury for £1200; and his Lordship presented me with four hundred guineas, and this diamond ring, which I have always worn since. As to honours, I have always refused them: a baronetcy was offered me, but of what use would a title have been to me, who have no descendants to inherit it? I have always lived in a state of celibacy, and have uniformly replied to those who formerly urged me to marry some young gentlewoman to get heirs by, that truly I had an old one to take care of, who I intended should be my executrix, as Oxford[10] will learn after my death. For, thanks to Providence, I have been very successful, from the very beginning of my professional life; and I had not been settled a year in London, when I got twenty guineas a day by my practice: and even Dandridge, the apothecary whom I patronised, died, as I am informed, worth more than £50,000. The liberality of my patients enabled me to live and act in a generous manner. My fees were good: of which you may form some notion when I mention, that to go from Bloomsbury Square to Bow, I received five guineas. I do not tell this to you, my good friend, out of ostentation, but that it may serve as an encouragement to you to hear how the practice of physic has been remunerated.”

Here Radcliffe paused, and appeared exhausted by speaking so long at a time.

Dr. Mead—“I feel infinitely obliged to you for your kind and confidential communication. No one in the least acquainted with the liberality of your conduct can for a moment accuse you of an ostentatious display of your wealth. The subject upon which you last touched, is one that has often excited my curiosity. I should like of all things to know, what Linacre got by his profession; how much Caius, Harvey, Sydenham, and other worthies of medicine received yearly for their professional labour. The honorarium or fee of a doctor, one would suppose, must always have been in proportion to the rarity of professional skill, though we must take into account the greater value of money in former times. There may be notices of this kind to be met with in different books, but the only instances that occur at present to my memory are mentioned by that great benefactor of our College, Baldwin Hamey. In the valuable and entertaining account left by him of his contemporaries, he mentions, that about the year 1644, Dr. Rob. Wright, who died at the early age of twenty-eight years, was very successful in practice. The Latin expression (for his MS.[11] is written most elegantly in that language), is, I believe, as follows: ‘Wrightus vixdum trimulus doctor, mille admodum coronatos, annuo spacio lucraretur.’ Now, the coronatus, usually called a broad-piece, was about twenty-two shillings in value, and the receipt of a thousand of these by so young a physician, who had only been settled three years in the metropolis, is an instance of very singular good fortune indeed.

“The next, is an account of a fee received by Hamey himself, and is thus related in the MS. life of that excellent man:—

“It was in the time of the civil wars when it pleased God to visit him with a severe fit of sickness, or peripneumonia, which confined him a great while to his chamber, and to the more than ordinary care of his tender spouse. During this affliction, he was disabled from practice; but the very first time he dined in his parlour afterwards, a certain great man in high station came to consult him on an indisposition—(ratione vagi sui amoris)—and he was one of the godly ones too of those times. After the doctor had received him in his study, and modestly attended to his long religious preface, with which he introduced his ignominious circumstances, and Dr. Hamey had assured him of his fidelity, and gave him hopes of success in his affair, the generous soldier (for such he was) drew out of his pocket a bag of gold, and offered it all at a lump to his physician. Dr. Hamey, surprised at so extraordinary a fee, modestly declined the acceptance of it; upon which the great man, dipping his hand into the bag himself, grasped up as much of his coin as his fist could hold, and generously put it into the doctor’s coat pocket, and so took his leave. Dr. Hamey returned into his parlour to dinner, which had waited for him all that time, and smiling (whilst his lady was discomposed at his absenting so long), emptied his pocket into her lap. This soon altered the features of her countenance, who telling the money over, found it to be thirty-six broad pieces of gold: at which she being greatly surprised, confessed to the doctor that this was surely the most providential fee he ever received; and declared to him that, during the height of his severe illness, she had paid away (unknown to him) on a state levy towards a public supply, the like sum in number and value of pieces of gold; lest under the lowness of his spirits, it should have proved a matter of vexation, unequal to his strength at that time to bear; which being thus so remarkably reimbursed to him by Providence, it was the properest juncture she could lay hold on to let him into the truth of it. It may be said,” continued Mead, “that this was an extraordinary case, and the fee a most exorbitant one, which the patient paid as the price of secrecy: but the precaution was unnecessary (as it ought always to be in a profession whose very essence is honour and confidence); for the name of the generous soldier is never once mentioned in the life of Hamey, though I have good reason to believe he was no other than Ireton, the son-in-law of Cromwell.”

Radcliffe. “These are curious particulars, and I thank you for them. To speak once more of my own good fortune, I found that, even seven years ago, to say nothing of what I have acquired since, upon inquiry into the bulk of my estate, both land and money, I was worth more than £80,000, which I then resolved to devote, all or most of it, to the service of the public. I hope, however, notwithstanding what I shall leave behind me, no one can accuse me of having been sordid in my lifetime, or in case of the private distress of my friends, not to have instantly relieved them. I have never been such a niggard as to have preferred mountains of gold to the conversation and charms of society. Perhaps there was selfishness in this: for I never recollect to have spent a more delightful evening than that in the old room at the Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street, when my good friend Billy Nutley, who was indeed the better half of me, had been prevailed upon to accept of a small temporary assistance, and joined our party, the Earl of Denbigh, Lords Colpeper and Stawel, and Mr. Blackmore. But enough of this affair of money. To one so well skilled as yourself, I have not much to say on the subject of practice; but recollect, I beg of you, the treatment of small-pox. Combat the prejudices of mankind on that point. By insisting upon this, I lately saved the life of the young Duke of Beaufort. You have done much, by showing the advantage of employing aperient medicines in the decline of that distemper; and I much regret that the letter you wrote to Dr. Freind upon that matter, and which you permitted me to inform him he might publish, has not yet seen the light. Go on as you have begun; and I confidently hope that something more may still be introduced into general practice by a physician of your good sense and liberal views, to mitigate the violence of that most formidable disease.

“But I am now drawing to a close. Last year, upon my being returned member of parliament for the town of Buckingham, I retired from practice, and I have recommended you to all my patients. Your own merit and acquirements will insure you success; but perhaps your career may be facilitated by what I have done for you. Recollect that the fame of a physician is subject to the caprices of fortune. I know the nature of attending crowned heads very well. But continue as you have commenced. Nothing could be better than the method you took for the preservation of her late gracious Majesty’s health; though the people about her (the plagues of Egypt fall upon them!) put it out of the power of physic to be of use to her. But I was sorry to hear the other day, that your enemies have spread a report that, during the last days of the Queen’s illness, you had pronounced that her Majesty could not live two minutes, and that you seemed uneasy it did not so happen. Tell me, I beg, the real state of the case.”

“You very well know,” said Dr. Mead, “that her Majesty had been long corpulent; and that, in her latter years, the habit of her body became gross and unwieldy. For the most part she had a good stomach, and ate heartily. But by reason of her immoderate fatness, and her weakness, occasioned by the gout, she became so inactive that she used but little exercise. In the beginning of her Majesty’s illness, there was a difference of opinion among the doctors as to the propriety of giving the jesuits’ bark; but I will not enter into all the disputes which took place on that occasion. It is enough to state, that after the appearance of the imposthume on the left leg, and the coming on of the doziness which seized her on Thursday the 28th July, there was no doubt about the propriety of cupping her; and blisters were ordered, but not applied, for what reason I know not. The next morning her Majesty was seized with an apoplectic fit, attended with convulsions. After two hours and a half she recovered her senses, but lost them again next day, and died the following morning.”

Radcliffe. “Well, I will inquire no further. I see your own modesty will not allow you to find fault with the injudicious practice and fatal security of your colleagues. I cannot but applaud your good feeling and liberality of sentiment; and wish you most heartily success in your future professional life. Accept this cane. It has accompanied me now for many years in my visits to the sick, and been present at many a consultation. Receive it as a token of my friendship, and prosper. ‘Te nunc habet ista secundum.’”

Here a twinge of the gout interrupted the speech of my old master; and Dr. Mead shortly after left for London, taking me with him.

Dr. Radcliffe died on the first of November, 1714, three months after the Queen; and it was said that the dread he had of the populace, and the want of company in the country village where he had retired, and which he did not dare to leave, shortened his life.

CHAPTER II.

From the possession of a physician who was kind, generous, and social in the highest degree, but who was certainly more remarkable for strong good sense and natural sagacity than for literary attainments, I passed into the hands of an accomplished scholar. Dr. Mead was allowed even by his antagonists, themselves men of great erudition, to be artis medicæ decus, vitæ revera nobilis, and one who excelled all our chief nobility in the encouragement he afforded to the fine arts, polite learning, and the knowledge of antiquity. But though I had changed masters, it was no small satisfaction to me to return to the old House, for Mead not only succeeded Radcliffe in the greater part of his business, but removed to the residence which he had formerly occupied in Bloomsbury-square[12]. My present master, on commencing his profession, had first settled at Stepney, had then resided in Crutched, and afterwards in Austin Friers, for the purpose of being near St. Thomas’ Hospital; but now the distance of his new abode obliged him to resign the situation of physician to that charitable establishment.

About six months after the death of Radcliffe, I was present at a consultation between Sir Hans Sloane, Dr. Cheyne, and Mead. It was held on the case of Bishop Burnet, the prelate so celebrated for the “History of his own Time,” and for the active part he had taken in the great transactions of that eventful period.

He had been taken ill of a violent cold, which soon turned to a pleurisy; and this increasing, and baffling all remedies, his worthy friend and relation Dr. Cheyne called in the assistance of the two other doctors. Up to this time Burnet had enjoyed uninterrupted good health, which he attributed, not without reason, to his temperate habits. “I will give you,” said the venerable patient to Dr. Mead (for the Bishop was now 72 years old), “a short outline of my course of life. In summer I have been in the habit of rising at five in the morning, in the winter at six; and I have always officiated myself at prayer, though my chaplains may have been present. I then took my tea in company with my children, and read the Scriptures with them. I have generally spent six or eight hours a day in my study. The rest of the day has been passed by me in taking exercise, making friendly visits or cheerful meals. But now, to use an expression of my late gracious master King William, whom I knew well for sixteen years, I feel ‘que je tire vers ma fin.’”

The Doctors listened to the melancholy presage of the Bishop, and having put the necessary questions to him, withdrew into the adjoining apartment, for the purpose of consultation. I was now in company with two physicians of great eminence, though of very different characters. On the one side of me stood Sir Hans Sloane, who had shortly before been created a baronet by His Majesty George the First, being the first physician upon whom an hereditary title of honour had ever been conferred; in his person tall and well made, sprightly in conversation, easy, polite and engaging in his manners, by birth an Irishman. On the other was Dr. Cheyne, a Scotchman, with an immense broad back, taking snuff incessantly out of a ponderous gold box, and thus ever and anon displaying to view his fat knuckles: a perfect Falstaff, for he was not only a good portly man and a corpulent[13], but was almost as witty as the knight himself, and his humour being heightened by his northern brogue, he was exceeding mirthful. Indeed he was the most excellent banterer of his time, a faculty he was often called upon to exercise, to repel the lampoons which were made by others upon his extraordinary personal appearance. Nothing could be more striking than the contrast of the two celebrated men before me.

Sir Hans began by observing, that the age of the Bishop might throw a doubt over the propriety of more bleeding, but he had so often seen the advantage of repeated venesection, that he had the greatest faith in that mode of treatment. “In one case particularly which I saw abroad”—but here let me interrupt the Baronet for a moment, to make an observation, which in the many consultations at which I have been present, has more than once occurred to me. These deliberations are generally proposed either because the attending physician is at a loss what further to suggest, or that he wishes naturally enough to divide the responsibility of the management of a dangerous disease. They are held for the most part upon ailments of a chronic nature, that is upon such disorders as afford time and opportunity to form the judgment, and decide upon a method of practice; for it is lucky that in urgent diseases, or those which are called acute, the remedies are simple, and that where delay would be dangerous, the means of relief are obvious. In consultations, there is of course much scope for diversity of opinion, but in the whole range of the plausible reasoning which the conjectural science of medicine admits of, there is nothing so imposing as a case; it bears down all before it. One of the consulting Doctors, after hearing the history of the previous treatment, advances that he has seen a case similar to the one, now under consideration, in which he did so and so with manifest advantage; the argument is irresistible——

But this by way of parenthesis. “In one case particularly (said Sir Hans Sloane) which I saw abroad, I saved a man’s life, who complained extremely of a great pain in his shoulder, or rather inside of his pleura answering to that part, which increased on breathing high, sighing or coughing, for the patient was troubled with a short cough. The man was on board a ship bound for England, and it was taken by all for sea sickness, but I told them, they were all deceived, and forthwith ordered him to be bled in the arm to about ten ounces, and gave him an emulsion, and a pectoral decoction of barley, liquorish and raisins. I immediately found him much better, and ordered him to continue this, and to take of crab’s eyes and sal prunellæ, of each half a drachm, and to swallow morning and evening the half on’t, drinking afterwards a pectoral draught, and in case of relapse I ordered him to be bled again; which was necessary to be done, for the ship chirurgeon, contrary to my desire, gave him a vomit: the patient, poor fellow! knowing nothing of it, till it was down. His pains thus returned, and I bled him twice on two several days, and with an emulsion he was cured. I have found also (added Sir Hans), in similar cases great advantage in applying a hot bag of parched salt to the side; but bleeding is the main remedy. I have bled a patient five times in her foot and arm in twelve hours.” Whilst the baronet was speaking, the countenance of Dr. Cheyne underwent various changes, and when mention was made of the emulsion, which if I am not mistaken, was a compound of linseed oil, sugar-candy, and decoction of barley, it assumed a very decided expression of disgust, for he was a bon vivant of the first order. To the further employment of venesection, he was rather averse, and insisted much upon the advanced age of the Bishop. “An old man’s body (observed Dr. Cheyne), is like a plant dried by the sun, its fibres are stiff, and juices decayed, and not as in youth able to prepare new nutriment, to repair the loss of solids and fluids. For this decay of the humours, the cure of the cacochymia is necessary; and to renovate the solids, we find no help like warm bathing and unctions, and you yourself (said he archly to Sir Hans) must have remarked, in your own native country, that the Irish live long, who anoint themselves with salt butter.” What the remedies were which were ultimately ordered for the aged Prelate, I do not now recollect, but his own prediction was soon after fulfilled, and he died on the 17th of March 1715.

Of Sir Hans Sloane, I shall have occasion to speak again more than once, and I can do it with confidence, for I had many opportunities of studying his peculiarities, and being in his company, particularly at the conversaziones which were held at his house in Great Russell-street, by Bloomsbury. It was observed of him, that he was on these occasions rather a precise gentleman, and used to go out of temper, when his guests spilled the coffee over his carpets. But he was very lively in discourse, nor did he lack topics, and having been much abroad, loved to talk of his travels. When only in his twenty-eighth year, he had accompanied the Duke of Albemarle[14], on his appointment to the government of the Island of Jamaica, in the quality of physician to his Excellency, being chiefly induced by his attachment to natural history, to undertake a voyage, which was not thought at that time of day to be altogether free from danger. As he was the first man of learning whom the love of science alone had led from England to that distant part of the globe, and was besides of an age when both activity of body, and ardour of mind concur to vanquish difficulties, his travels were eminently successful. To say nothing of the other curiosities with which he enriched his native country, he brought home from Jamaica, and the other islands at which he touched, no fewer than 800 different species of plants, a number much greater than had ever been imported into England before by any individual. His stay in Jamaica did not exceed fifteen months, for the Governor died, and the Doctor returned home, and settled in London. About seven years before the scene at the Bishop’s, he had published the first volume of his Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbadoes, Nieves, St. Christophers, and Jamaica, with the natural history of the herbs, and trees, four-footed beasts, fishes, birds, insects, reptiles, &c., illustrated with the figures of the things described, which had not heretofore been engraved. In large copper-plates, as big as the life.

This was his first contribution to the general stock of knowledge, and when questioned on the subject of his voyage, he was used to say, that independently of the gratification of a laudable curiosity, he deemed it a sort of duty in a medical man to visit distant countries, for that the ancient and best physicians were wont to travel to the places whence their drugs were brought, to inform themselves concerning them. Speaking of the part of the globe which he had visited, he never ceased to deplore the irreparable loss of fame which this country had suffered, in not being the first to partake in the glory of its discovery. When Bartholomew Columbus, said Sir Hans, was sent to England by his brother Christopher, in 1488, to persuade Henry the Seventh to fit him out for this expedition, a sea chart of the parts of the world then known was produced, and a proposal made to the King, but after much delay and many untoward circumstances, both the map and the proposal were disregarded, and the money that had at first been set apart for the purpose, and thought sufficient for the discovery of the New World, was ultimately expended in the purchase of a suit of fine tapestry hangings, brought from Antwerp, and afterwards used for the decoration of Hampton Court.

The scene I have endeavoured to describe at the Bishop’s may serve as a specimen of a consultation of that day, and has given me an opportunity of introducing to the reader a very distinguished person, for such certainly must Sir Hans Sloane be allowed to have been. About four years after the time I now speak, he was elected President of the College of Physicians; on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, was chosen to fill the chair of the Royal Society; and after his own decease gave origin to the British Museum.

It is not, however, my intention to follow Mead into all the details of his private practice, but I will point out some of the material improvements introduced by him in his art, and the progress which the science of physic made in his hands.—Mr. Secretary Craggs applied to him, in 1719, to find out the most effectual method to prevent the spreading of the plague, which had proved so fatal that year at Marseilles. My master accordingly published a discourse on that subject, which was so well received as to go through no less than seven editions in a twelvemonth. The kingdom was at this time governed by Lords Justices, during the absence of His Majesty George the First, who was then in Hanover. An act of parliament was passed, in consequence of the advice given by Mead; but the Opposition of the day, chiefly with the view to thwart the Ministry, caused two of its wisest clauses to be given up the following year. These related to the removing of sick persons from their habitations, and the making of lines of demarcation about infected places. Against the adoption of these prudent precautions an outcry was raised, that persons in office intrusted with such powers might be tempted to abuse them, and exercise their authority in a manner grievous to the subjects of the kingdom. Dr. Mead, on the other hand, contended, that Salus populi supremo lex est; and said that, if the plague should unhappily be brought again into England, he was sure the people themselves would cry out for help, notwithstanding wrong notions of liberty may sometimes overpossess their minds, and make them, under the best of governments, impatient of restraint. A clamour like this will probably be always renewed whenever this subject comes to be discussed by the public; the bold and the ignorant will excite it for the purposes of gainful notoriety, and the selfish trader from a short-sighted view of his own immediate interest. “But suppose for a moment,” said Mead in conversation with a friend, “that the laws of quarantine were useless, and that the fears entertained of the contagious nature of the plague were without foundation, how can the commerce of this country be benefited by the abolition of these regulations here, unless the rest of civilized Europe adopt the same measure, and agree, at a sort of general congress, to remove all restraints from their trade with the Levant? But,” continued he, in an earnest manner, which had all the air of prophecy, “depend upon it, whenever the doctrine of non-contagion is revived in England (and it will be, even a hundred years hence), it will always excite alarm among the nations who are more prudent than ourselves, and less eager to entertain every kind of wild and visionary speculation. Incalculable mischief will be done by the broaching of this pernicious doctrine[15]: the speculators who adopt such opinions should at least keep them to themselves, or if they will continue their experiments, let them make them in corpore vili, and not upon subjects which involve the general welfare of the community.”

Two or three years after this, my master’s attention was called to another matter of equal, or perhaps greater importance than the one just mentioned; and I had the satisfaction of witnessing another prodigious step made towards the improvement of physic. This was no less than the mitigation of that loathsome disease the small-pox, a malady more formidable, and infinitely more fatal than the plague itself. Lady Mary Wortley Montague having returned to England in 1722, was determined to introduce the practice of inoculating for the small-pox, which she had witnessed in the East, and having before had the operation performed successfully upon her son at Constantinople, desired her family surgeon to engraft her daughter also with that disease. The process was witnessed by three physicians and the family apothecary; but though the success was complete, the profession still remained in suspense, and caution prevented the repetition of the experiment. But Caroline Princess of Wales, having nearly lost the life of one of her daughters, the Princess Anne, by small-pox, was desirous of having her children inoculated; and obtained from His Majesty George the First, that six condemned felons should be pardoned for the good of the public, on condition of their submitting to be inoculated. Five of the felons contracted the disease favourably; the sixth, who concealed having previously had the small-pox, was not infected—but all escaped hanging. At the suggestion of my master, the Chinese method was practised upon a seventh criminal, who was a young girl of eighteen years of age. He accordingly introduced into her nostrils a tent, wetted with matter taken out of ripe pustules, which nearly approaches to the practice of the Chinese, who take the skins of some of the dried pustules which have fallen from the body, and put them into a porcelain bottle, stopping the mouth of it very closely with wax. When they have a mind to infect any one, they make up three or four of these skins (inserting between them one grain of musk) into a tent with cotton, which they put up the nostrils. In the case of the girl whom my master treated as above related, she, like those who were inoculated by incisions made in the skin, fell sick and perfectly recovered.

The attention of the medical world was naturally much engrossed by this new method, and every one was discussing the nature of the small-pox, of which the contagious quality was one of the most remarkable properties. “How strange!” said Mead, “that this property, apparently so obvious, should not have been noticed by every writer on the subject, from the very first appearance of this dangerous malady among us. Yet Sydenham, discerning, as he has been called, does not take the slightest notice of it, and perhaps even at this very day, had it not been for the introduction of this novel method of communicating it, its infectious quality might not have been universally admitted. One would suppose that the merest tyro in an apothecary’s shop could not have seen half a dozen cases of the small-pox without being convinced that one person caught it from another. An additional striking example of what has often been observed before, that the most plain and obvious truths lie undiscovered till accident bring them to light.”—More than twenty years after this, Dr. Mead published a treatise on the small-pox and measles, which contained many valuable observations on both these diseases, and also strong recommendations of the practice of inoculation. To this treatise, which is written in a pure Latin style, he subjoined a translation of Rhazes’ commentary on the small-pox into the same language, a copy of which he had obtained from Leyden, through the assistance of his friend and fellow-student Boerhaave, with whom my master maintained a constant correspondence.

The ingenuity of mankind is exercised upon no subjects with so much pertinacity and acuteness as upon those connected with medicine, and it has often been disputed whether inoculation has lessened the number of deaths by small-pox.—One thing however is certain, that it has contributed to the comfort and security of all prudent individuals and families; for though it cannot admit of a doubt that many formerly passed through a long life without the disease, yet such a situation must have proved a constant source of uneasiness to themselves and friends, of restraint from many desirable pursuits, and at times of absolute seclusion from the world.

The next improvement which Dr. Mead introduced into the practice of medicine was entirely of his own invention, and serves to show that his mind was not only capable of the extended views of philosophy, but was alive to the most minute circumstances that could contribute towards the perfection of his art. For the skill of a physician, though it assume a more exalted character when displayed in the pursuit of general science, is equally conspicuous, and perhaps more immediately useful, when exerted in the discovery and employment of ingenious contrivances for the relief of suffering humanity.

My master had often considered what could be the reason that, in cases of persons labouring under dropsy, when the water is suddenly drawn off, the patient swoons and frequently dies on the spot. A simple expedient occurred to him, which was this: during the operation of tapping, to make external pressure by the hands, and afterwards to apply a bandage to the belly. I was present when this method was first tried in the hospital, and afterwards frequently saw it used, more especially in the case of Dame Mary Page, wife of Sir Gregory Page, Bart., who was afflicted with this disease, and died March 4th, 1728, in the fifty-sixth year of her age. In sixty-seven months she was tapped sixty-six times and had two hundred and forty gallons of water taken away, without ever once fearing the operation[16]. This was certainly a most valuable discovery, and shows the advantage derivable from the exercise of good sense and sound judgment; for Mead naturally reflected, that the removal of the pressure of the accumulated water caused the fibres suddenly to lose the extension which they had previously acquired; and it as naturally occurred to him, that the tendency to faint could only be obviated by substituting an external support to the parts.

But it is now time, after having related the benefits he conferred upon mankind by enlarging the boundaries of medical science, to revert to some details of a more domestic character. It has been mentioned before, when speaking of the first experiment of inoculation made in this country, that zeal for his profession had on one occasion brought my master acquainted with the veriest outcasts of society, and in contact with convicted felons: it remains for me to relate how the calls of friendship and generous sympathy led him again within the walls of a prison.

In politics Mead was a hearty Whig, but he reckoned amongst his friends many whose sentiments differed widely from his own. Garth, Arbuthnot, and Freind were among his chief associates: with the latter particularly he had always been on terms of the most friendly intercourse. Recently the intimacy of these two distinguished physicians had been much increased by a controversy in which they were embarked in support of their own enlightened views on the subject of the cooling treatment of the small-pox, against the attacks of the ignorant and malevolent.

About this time Dr. Freind had been elected member of parliament for Launceston in Cornwall, and acting in his station as a senator with that warmth and freedom which was natural to him, he distinguished himself by some able speeches against measures which he disapproved. He was supposed to have had a hand in Atterbury’s plot, as it was then called, for the restoration of the Stuart family; and having been also one of the speakers in favour of the Bishop, this drew upon him so much resentment that (the Habeas Corpus Act being at that time suspended) he was, on March 15, 1722-3, committed to the Tower. Here he lay a prisoner for some months, and my master did all he could to procure his liberation: during his confinement his practice fell chiefly into the hands of Mead. As soon as permission could be obtained, which was not till he had been some time in prison, we paid a visit to Freind, and entered that building whose low and sombre walls and bastions have frowned on many an innocent and many a guilty head.

When his room door opened, we found him in the act of finishing a Latin letter to my master, “On certain kinds of the Small-pox;” and, as he perceived our approach, he came forward with an expression of great delight in his countenance. “I was writing a letter to you, with the permission of the governor of the Tower; and you are indebted,” he added in a low whisper, “to my companion (looking at the warder, who was in the same chamber with his prisoner) for its brevity: for I don’t find that his presence assists me much in composition.”—During our interview, Freind told Mead that he passed his time not unpleasantly, for that he had begun to write the History of Physic, from the time of Galen to the commencement of the sixteenth century; but that at present he felt the necessity of consulting more books than the circumstances in which he was now placed would give him an opportunity of perusing—“Though I ought not to repine,” said he, “while I have this book (pointing to a Greek Testament, which was lying on the table), the daily and diligent perusal of which solaces my confinement. I have lately been reading the Gospel of St. Luke, and I need not point out to a scholar like yourself, and one who has paid so much attention to what I may call the medical history of the Bible[17], how much nearer the language of St. Luke, who was by profession a physician, comes to the ancient standard of classical Greek than that of the other Evangelists. To be sure it has a mixture of the Syriac phrase, which may be easily allowed in one who was born a Syrian; yet the reading the Greek authors, while he studied medicine, made his language without dispute more exact. His style is sometimes even very flowing and florid—as when, in the Acts of the Apostles, he describes the voyage of St. Paul; and when he has occasion to speak of distempers or the cure of them, you must have observed that he makes use of words more proper for the subject than the others do. It is besides remarkable that St. Luke is more particular in reciting all the miracles of our Saviour in relation to healing than the other Evangelists are; and that he gives us one history which is omitted by the rest, viz. that of raising the widow’s son at Nain.”

My master left the prisoner, with an assurance that he would use all the influence he possessed to procure his liberty: “For,” said he, smiling, “however much your cultivated mind is enabled to amuse itself by reading and writing, I presume you will have no sort of objection to resign your newly-acquired office of Medicus Regius ad Turrim[18].”