A Book about Doctors Part 17

The royal prediction, though not fulfilled to the letter, soon proved substantially true. After a gay supper at St. Cloud, Monsieur, just as he was about to retire to bed, quitted the world. He was asking M. de Ventadour for a gla.s.s of liqueur sent him by the Duke of Savoy, when he dropped down dead. Anyhow Monsieur went out of this life thinking of something nice. The Marquis of Hertford, with all his deliberation, could not do more.

The excess to which the practice of venesection was carried in the last century is almost beyond belief. The _Mercure de France_ (April, 1728, and December, 1729) gives the particulars of the illness of a woman named Gignault. She was aged 24 years, was the wife of an hussar, and resided at St. Sauge, a town of the Nivernois. Under the direction of Monsieur Theveneau, Seigneur de Palmery, M.D., of St.

Sauge, she was bled three thousand nine hundred and four times in nine months (_i. e._ from the 6th of September, 1726, to the 3rd of June, 1727). By the 15th of July, in the same year, the bleedings numbered four thousand five hundred and fifty-five. From the 6th of September, 1726, to the 1st of December, 1729, the blood-lettings amounted to twenty-six thousand two hundred and thirty. Did this really occur? Or was the editor of the _Mercure de France_ the original Baron Munchausen?

Such an account as the above ranges us on the side of the German physician, who pet.i.tioned that the use of the lancet might be made penal. Garth's epigram runs:--

"Like a pert skuller, one physician plies, And all his art and all his skill he tries; But two physicians, like a pair of oars, Conduct you faster to the Stygian sh.o.r.es."

It would, however, be difficult to imagine a quicker method to destroy human life than that pursued by Monsieur Theveneau. A second adviser could hardly have accelerated his movements, or increased his determination not to leave his reduced patient a chance of recovery.

"A rascal," exclaimed a stout, asthmatic old gentleman, to a well-dressed stranger on Holborn Hill--"a rascal has stolen my hat. I tried to overtake him--and I'm--so--out of breath--I can't stir another inch." The stranger eyed the old gentleman, who was panting and gasping for hard life, and then pleasantly observing, "Then I'm hanged, old boy, if I don't have your wig," scampered off, leaving his victim bald as a baby. M. Theveneau was the two thieves in one. He first brought his victim to a state of helplessness, and then "carried out his little system." It would be difficult to a.s.sign a proper punishment to such a stupid destroyer of human life. Formerly, in the duchy of Wurtemberg, the public executioner, after having sent out of the world a certain number of his fellow-creatures, was dignified with the degree of doctor of physic. It would not be otherwise than well to confer on such murderous physicians as M. Theveneau the honorary rank of hangman extraordinary.

The incomes that have been realized by blood-letting alone are not less than those which, in the present day, are realized by the administration of chloroform. An eminent phlebotomist, not very many years since, made a thousand per annum by the lancet.

About blood-letting--by the lancet, leeches, and cupping (or _boxing_, as it was called in Elizabeth's days, and much later)--the curious can obtain many interesting particulars in our old friend Bulleyn's works.

To open a vein has for several generations been looked on as beneath the dignity of the leading professors of medicine or surgery. In some cases phlebotomy was practised as a sort of specialty by surgeons of recognised character: but generally, at the close of the last century, it was left, as a branch of practice, in the hands of the apothecary.

The occasions on which physicians have of late years used the lancet are so few, that it is almost a contribution to medical gossip to bring up a new instance. One of the more recent cases of a notability being let blood by a physician, was when Sir Lucas Pepys, on Oct. 2, 1806, bled the Princess of Wales. On that day, as her Royal Highness was proceeding to Norbury Park, to visit Mr. Locke, in a barouche drawn by four horses, the carriage was upset at Leatherhead. Of the two ladies who accompanied the Princess, one (Lady Sheffield) escaped without a bruise, but the other (Miss Cholmondley) was thrown to the ground and killed on the spot. The injuries sustained by the Princess were very slight, but Sir Lucas Pepys, who luckily happened to be in the neighbourhood at the time of the accident, bled her on his own responsibility, and with his own hand.

CHAPTER XIII.

RICHARD MEAD.

"Dr. Mead," observed Samuel Johnson, "lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man."

Unquestionably the lot of Richard Mead was an enviable one. Without any high advantages of birth or fortune, or aristocratic connection, he achieved a European popularity; and in the capital of his own country had a social position that has been surpa.s.sed by no member of his profession. To the sunshine in which Mead basked, the lexicographer contributed a few rays; for when James published his Medicinal Dictionary, the prefatory letter to Mead, affixed to the work, was composed by Johnson in his most felicitous style.

"Sir,--That the Medicinal Dictionary is dedicated to you, is to be imputed only to your reputation for superior skill in those sciences which I have endeavoured to explain and to facilitate; and you are, therefore, to consider the address, if it be agreeable to you, as one of the rewards of merit; and, if otherwise, as one of the inconveniences of eminence.

"However you shall receive it, my design cannot be disappointed; because this public appeal to your judgment will show that I do not found my hopes of approbation upon the ignorance of my readers, and that I fear his censure least whose knowledge is the most extensive. I am, sir, your most obedient humble servant,--R. JAMES."

But the sunshine did not come to Mead. He attracted it. Polished, courtly, adroit, and of an equable temper, he seemed pleased with everybody, and so made everybody pleased with him. Throughout life he was a Whig--staunch and unswerving, notwithstanding the charges brought against him by obscure enemies of being a luke-warm supporter of the const.i.tutional, and a subservient worshipper of the monarchical, party. And yet his intimate friends were of the adverse faction. The overbearing, insolent, prejudiced Radcliffe forgave him his scholarship and politics, and did his utmost to advance his interests.

Mead's family was a respectable one in Buckinghamshire. His father was a theological writer, and one of the two ministers of Stepney, but was ejected from his preferment for non-conformity on the 24th of August, 1662. Fortunately the dispossessed clerk had a private fortune on which to maintain his fifteen children, of whom Richard, the eleventh, was born on the eleventh of August, 1673. The first years of Richard's life were spent at Stepney, where the Rev. Matthew Mead continued to minister to a noncomformist congregation, keeping in house Mr. John Nesbitt, afterwards a conspicuous nonconformist minister, as tutor to his children. In 1683 or 1684, it being suspected that Mr. Mead was concerned in certain designs against the government, the worthy man had to quit his flock and escape from the emissaries of power to Holland. During the father's residence abroad, Richard was sent to a cla.s.sical school kept in Clerkenwell Close, by the nonconformist, Thomas Singleton, who had formerly been second master of Eton. It was under this gentleman's tuition that the boy acquired a sound and extensive knowledge of Latin and Greek. In 1690 he went to Utrecht; and after studying there for three years, proceeded to Leyden, where he studied botany and physic. His academical studies concluded, he travelled with David Polhill and Dr. Thomas Pellet, afterwards President of the College of Physicians, through Italy, stopping at Florence, Padua, Naples, and Rome. In the middle of 1696 he returned to London, with stores of information, refined manners, and a degree of Doctor of Philosophy and Physic, conferred on him at Padua, on the sixteenth of August, 1695. Settling at Stepney, and uniting himself closely with the nonconformists, he commenced the practice of his profession, in which he rapidly advanced to success. On the ninth of May, 1703, before he was thirty years of age, he was chosen physician of St. Thomas's Hospital, in Southwark. On obtaining this preferment he took a house in Crutched Friars, and year by year increased the sphere of his operations. In 1711 he moved to Austin Friars, to the house just vacated by the death of Dr. Howe. The consequences of this step taught him the value, to a rising doctor, of a house with a good reputation. Many of Howe's patients had got into a habit of coming to the house as much as to the physician, and Mead was only too glad to feel their pulses and flatter them into good humour, sound health, and the laudable custom of paying double fees. He was appointed Lecturer on Anatomy to the Company of Barbers and Surgeons.

He kept himself well before the public, as an author, with his "Mechanical Account of Poisons," published in 1702; and his treatise (1704), "De Imperio Solis et Lun? in Corpora humana, et Morbis inde oriundis." He became a member of the Royal Society; and, in 1707, he received his M.D. diploma from Oxford, and his admission to the fellowship of the College of Physicians.

It has already been stated how Radcliffe engaged to introduce Mead to his patients. When Queen Anne was on her death-bed, the young physician was of importance enough to be summoned to the couch of dying royalty. The physicians who surrounded the expiring queen were afraid to say what they all knew. The Jacobites wanted to gain time, to push off the announcement of the queen's state to the last possible moment, so that the Hanoverians should not be able to take steps for quietly securing the succession which they desired. Mead, however, was too earnest a Whig to sacrifice what he believed to be the true interests of the country to any considerations of the private advantage that might be derived by currying favour with the Tory magnates, who, hovering about the Court, were debating how they could best make their game. Possibly his hopes emboldened him to speak the truth. Anyhow, he declared, on his first visit, that the queen would not live an hour. Charles Ford, writing to Swift, said, "This morning when I went there before nine, they told me she was just expiring.

That account continued above three hours, and a report was carried to town that she was actually dead. She was not prayed for even in her own chapel at St. James's; and, _what is more infamous (!)_ stocks arose three _per cent._ upon it in the city. Before I came away, she had recovered a warmth in her breast and one of her arms; and all the doctors agreed she would, in all probability, hold out till to-morrow--_except Mead, who p.r.o.nounced, several hours before, she could not live two minutes, and seems uneasy it did not happen so_."

This was the tone universally adopted by the Jacobites. According to them, poor Queen Anne had hard measure dealt out to her by her physicians;--the Tory Radcliffe negatively murdered her by not saving her; the Whig Mead earnestly desired her death. Certainly the Jacobites had no reason to speak well of Mead, for the ready courage with which he stated the queen's demise to be at hand gave a disastrous blow to their case, and did much to seat George I. quietly on the throne. Miss Strickland observes, "It has always been considered that the prompt boldness of this political physician (_i.

e._ Mead) occasioned the peaceable proclamation of George I. The queen's demise in one hour was confidently predicted by her Whig doctor. He was often taunted afterwards with the chagrin his countenance expressed when the royal patient, on being again blooded, recovered her speech and senses."

On the death of Radcliffe, the best part of his empire descended to Mead, who, having already reaped the benefit of occupying the nest which Howe vacated at the summons of death, wisely resolved to take possession of Radcliffe's vacated mansion in Bloomsbury Square. This removal from Austin Friars to the more fashionable quarter of town was effected without delay. Indeed, Radcliffe was not buried when Mead entered his house. As his practice lay now more in the West than the East end of town, the prosperous physician resigned his appointment at St. Thomas's, and, receiving the thanks of the grand committee for his services, was presented with the staff of a governor of the charity.

Radcliffe's practice and house were not the only possessions of that sagacious pract.i.tioner which Mead contrived to acquire. Into his hands also pa.s.sed the doctor's gold-headed cane of office. This wand became the property successively of Radcliffe, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie, the arms of all which celebrated physicians are engraved on its head.

On the death of Dr. Baillie, Mrs. Baillie presented the cane, as an interesting professional relic, to the College of Physicians, in the library of which august and learned body it is now preserved. Some years since the late respected Dr. Macmichael made the adventures of this stick the subject of an agreeable little book, which was published under the t.i.tle of "The Gold-Headed Cane."

The largest income Mead ever made in one year was ?7000. For several years he received between ?5000 and ?6000 per annum. When the great depreciation of the currency is taken into account, one may affirm, with little fear of contradiction, that no living physician is at the present time earning as much. Mead, however, made his income without any avaricious or stingy practices. In every respect he displayed that generosity which has for generations been the glorious distinction of his profession. At home his fee was a guinea. When he visited a patient of good rank and condition, in consultation or otherwise, he expected to have two guineas, or even more. But to the apothecaries who waited on him at his coffee-houses, he charged (like Radcliffe) only half-a-guinea for prescriptions, written without seeing the patient. His evening coffee-house was Batson's, frequented by the profession even down to Sir William Blizard; and in the forenoons he received apothecaries at Tom's, near Covent Garden. In Mead's time the clergy, as a body, were unable to pay the demands which professional etiquette would have required the physician to make on them if he had any. It is still the humane custom of physicians and eminent surgeons not to accept fees from curates, half-pay officers in the army and navy, and men of letters; and no one has more reason than the writer of these pages to feel grateful for the delicacy with which they act on this rule, and the benevolent zeal with which they seem anxious to drown the sense of obligation (which a gratuitous patient necessarily experiences) in increased attention and kindness, as if their good deeds were a peculiar source of pleasure to themselves.

But in the last century the beneficed clergy were in a very different pecuniary condition from that which they at present enjoy. Till the t.i.the Communication Act pa.s.sed, the parson (unless he was a sharp man of business, shrewd and unscrupulous as a horse-jobber, and ready to have an unintermittent war with his parishioners) never received anything like what he was ent.i.tled to of the produce of the land.

Often he did not get half his dues; and even when he did obtain a fair t.i.the, his receipts were small compared with what his successor in the present generation has from the same source. Agriculture was then in such a backward state, and land was so ill-cultivated, that the rector of a large parish of good land was justly ent.i.tled only to a sum that a modern rent-charge holder would regard with painful surprise if told that he might take nothing more for his share in the fruits of the earth. The beneficed clergy were a comparatively poor body. The curate perhaps was not in a worse state than he is in now, for the simple reason that a worse can hardly be. To add to the impoverished appearance of the clerical profession, there existed in every capital and country town the luckless nonconforming clergy, bereft of the emoluments of their vocation, and often reduced to a condition scarcely--if at all--removed from begging. The t.i.tle of _Reverend_ was still affixed to their names--their costume was still that of their order--and by large ma.s.ses of the people they were regarded with more reverence and affection than the well-fed Vicars of Bray, who, with mealy mouths and elastic consciences, saw only the b.u.t.ter on one side of their bread, and not the dirt on the other. Archbishop Sancroft died on his little farm in Suffolk, having for years subsisted on about fifty pounds a-year. When such was the fate of an Archbishop of Canterbury, the straits to which the ejected vicars or disabled curates were brought can be imagined--but scarcely described. In the great towns these unfortunate gentlemen swarmed, gaining a wretched subsistence as ushers in schools, tutors, secretaries--not unfrequently as domestic servants.

In such a condition of the established church, the rule of never taking money from "the cloth" was almost invariably observed by the members of the medical profession.

Mead once--and only once--departed from this rule. Mr. Robert Leake, a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, called on the doctor and sought his advice. The patient's ill-health had been in a great degree effected by doctoring himself--that is, exhibiting, according to his own notions of medical practice, some of Dr. Cheyne's prescriptions.

"Do as I tell you," said Mead, "and I'll set you up again."

For a time Leake cheerfully obeyed; but soon--although his case was progressing most favourably--he had the bad taste to suggest that a recurrence to some of Cheyne's prescriptions would be advisable. Mead, of course, was not pleased with such folly, but continued his attendance till his patient's health was restored. Leake then went through the form of asking to what amount he was in the physician's debt.

"Sir," answered Mead, "I have never yet, in the whole course of my practice, taken or demanded the least fee from any clergyman; but, since you have been pleased, contrary to what I have met with in any other gentleman of your profession, to prescribe to me rather than follow my prescriptions, when you had committed the care of your recovery to my skill and trust, you must not take it amiss, nor will, I hope, think it unfair, if I demand ten guineas of you."

With much reluctance, and a wry face, Leake paid the money, but the doctor subsequently returned him more than half of it.

Of course Mead did not gain the prize of his profession without a few rough contests with compet.i.tors in the race of honour. Woodward, the Professor of Physic at the Gresham College, attacked him with bitterness in his "State of Physic and Diseases," and made himself even more obnoxious in his personal demeanour to him in public. Some insult offered to him by Woodward so infuriated Mead, that the latter drew his sword and ordered his adversary to defend himself. The duel terminated in Mead's favour, as far as martial prowess was concerned, for he disarmed Woodward and ordered him to beg for his life.

"Never, till I am your patient," answered Woodward, happily.

The memory of this ?sculapian battle is preserved in an engraving in Ward's "Lives of the Gresham Professors." The picture is a view of Gresham Street College, with a gateway entering from Broad Street, marked 25, within which Woodward is represented as kneeling and submissively yielding his sword to Mead. Ward was one of Mead's warmest friends, and certainly on this occasion displayed his friendship in a very graceful and effective manner.

The doctor would gladly have never had to deal with a more dangerous antagonist than Woodward; but the time came when he had to run for safety, and that too from a woman. He was in attendance by the bed-side of the Duke of Marlborough, who was suffering from indisposition, when her Grace--the celebrated Sarah--flew into a violent rage at some remark which the physician had dared to make. She even threatened him with personal chastis.e.m.e.nt, and was proceeding to carry out her menaces, when Mead, recognizing the peril of his position, turned and fled from the room. The d.u.c.h.ess ran after him, and, pursuing him down the grand staircase, vowed she would pull off his wig, and dash it in his face. The doctor luckily was a better runner than her Grace, and escaped.

Envy is the shadow of success, and detraction is the echo of its voice. A host of pamphleteers, with just courage enough to print lies, to which they had not the spirit to affix their obscure names, hissed their malignity at the fortunate doctor. The members of the Faculty, accustomed though they are to the jealousies and animosities which are important undercurrents in every fraternity, would in these days scarcely credit the accounts which could be given of the coa.r.s.eness and baseness of the anonymous rascals who lampooned Mead. It is painful to know that some of the worst offenders were themselves physicians. In 1722, appeared "The Art of getting into Practice in Physick, here at present in London. In a letter to that very ingenious and most learned Physician (Lately come to Town), Dr Timothy Vanbustle, M.D.--A.B.C.," the writer of this satire attributes to the dead Radcliffe the practices to which Hannes was accused of having resorted. "Thus the famous R----fe, 'tis said, on his first arrival, had half the porters in town employed to call for him at all the coffee-houses and public places, so that his name might be known." The sting of the publication, the authorship of which by a strange error has been attributed _to_ Mead, is throughout directed _at_ him. It is more than suggested that he, to creep up into practice, had a.s.sociated in early life with "women, midwives, nurses, and apothecaries," and that he had interested motives for being very gentle "in taking fees of the clergy, of whatsoever sect or opinion." Here is a stab that the reader of the foregoing pages can appreciate: "As to _Nostrums_, I cannot much encourage you to trade in these if you would propose to get universal business; for though they may serve to make you known at first, particularly in such a way, yet it will not promote general business, but on the contrary. _I rather therefore would advise you to court, flatter, and chime in with the chief in Play, and luckily a noted pract.i.tioner should drop, do you be as sure and ready to get into his house as he is into his coffin._"

More scandal of this sort may be found in "An account of a Strange and Wonderful Dream. Dedicated to Doctor M----d," published 1719. It is insinuated in the dream that his Latin writings were not his own composition. The troubles of his domestic life are dragged before the public. "It unluckily happen'd that, just as Mulso discovered his wife's intrigues, his effects were seized on by his creditors, his chariot and horses were sold, and he himself reduced to the state of a foot-quack. In this condition he had continued to this day, had he not been retrieved from poverty and contempt by the recommendation of a physician of great note. Upon this he spruced up, looked gay, roll'd about in a chariot. At this time he fell ill of the _scribendi cacoethes_, and, by the help of two mathematicians and an usher, was delivered of a book in a learned language."

Mead did not long occupy Radcliffe's house in Bloomsbury Square. In 1719 he moved to the imposing residence in Ormond Street, to which in 1732 he added a gallery for the accommodation of his library and museum.

Of Mead's various contributions to medical literature it is of course not the province of this work to speak critically. The _Medica Sacra_ is a literary curiosity, and so is the doctor's paper published in 1735, in which he recommends a compound of pepper and _lichen cinereus terrestris_ as a specific against the bite of a mad dog. Dampier, the traveller, used this lichen for the same purpose. The reader need not be reminded of the popularity attained by this antidote, dividing the public favour, as it did, with Dr. James's _Turpeth Mineral_, and the _Musk_ and _Cinnabar_.

Mead was married twice. His first wife was Ruth Marsh, the daughter of a pious London tradesman. She died in 1719, twenty years after her marriage, leaving behind her four children--three daughters, who all married well, and one son, William Mead. If any reliance is to be placed on the statements of the lampoon writers, the doctor was by no means fortunate in this union. He married, however, a second time--taking for his bride, when he was more than fifty years old, Anne, the daughter of Sir Rowland Alston, of Odell, a Bedfordshire baronet.

One of the pleasant episodes in Mead's life is his conduct towards his dear friend and political antagonist, Freind--the Jacobite physician, and Member of Parliament for Launceston. On suspicion of being concerned in the Atterbury plot, Freind was committed to the Tower.

During his confinement, that lasted some months, he employed himself calmly on the composition of a Latin letter, "On certain kinds of Small-Pox," and the "History of Physic, from the time of Galen to the Commencement of the Sixteenth Century." Mead busied himself to obtain his friend's release; and, being called to attend Sir Robert Walpole, pleaded so forcibly for the prisoner, that the minister allowed him to be discharged on bail--his sureties being Dr. Mead, Dr. Hulse, Dr.

Levet, and Dr. Hale. To celebrate the termination of Freind's captivity, Mead called together on a sudden a large party in Ormond Street, composed of men of all shades of opinion. Just as Freind was about to take his leave for his own residence in Albemarle Street, accompanied by Arbuthnot, who resided in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, Mead took him aside into a private room, and presented him with a case containing the fees he had received from the Tory doctor's patients during his imprisonment. They amounted to no less than five thousand guineas.

Mead's style of living was very liberal. From the outset to the close of his career he was the companion of men whom it was an honour to treat hospitably. He was the friend of Pope, Newton, and Bentley. His doors were always open to every visitor who came from a foreign country to these sh.o.r.es, with any claim whatever on the goodwill of society. To be at the same time a patron of the arts, and a liberal entertainer of many guests, demands no ordinary expenditure. Mead died comparatively poor. The sale of his library, pictures, statues, and curiosities, realized about ?16,000, and he had other property amounting to about ?35,000; but, after the payment of his debts, not more than ?20,000 remained to be divided amongst his four children.

His only son, however, was amply provided for, having entered into the possession of ?30,000 under will of Dr. Mead's unmarried brother Samuel, an eminent barrister, and a Commissioner of the Customs.

Fortunate beyond fortunate men, Mead had the great misfortune of living too long. His sight failed, and his powers underwent that gradual decay which is the saddest of all possible conclusions to a vigorous and dignified existence. Stories might be ferreted up of the indignities to which he submitted at the hands of a domineering valet.

Long, however, before he sunk into second childhood, he excited the ridicule of the town by his vanity, and absurd pretensions to be a lady-killer. The extravagances of his amorous senility were whispered about; and, eventually, some hateful fellow seized hold of the unpleasant rumours, and published them in a scandalous novelette, called "The Cornutor of Seventy-five; being a genuine narrative of the Life, Adventures, and Amours of _Don Ricardo Honeywater_, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians at Madrid, Salamanca, and Toledo, and President of the Academy of Sciences in Lapland; containing, amongst other most diverting particulars, his intrigue with Donna Maria W----s, of Via Vinculosa--_anglice_, Fetter Lane--in the city of Madrid. Written, originally, in Spanish, by the Author of Don Quixot, and translated into English by a Graduate of the College of Mecca, in Arabia." The "Puella fabri," as Greenfield designates the damsel who warmed the doctor's aged heart, was the daughter of a blacksmith in Fetter Lane; and to please her, Mead--long past threescore years and ten--went to Paris, and learnt dancing, under Dupr?, giving as an excuse that his health needed active muscular exercise.

Dr. Mead died on February 16, 1754, in his eighty-first year. He was buried in the Temple Church, by the side of his brother Samuel. His memory has been honoured with busts and inscriptions--in Westminster Abbey, and the College of Physicians.

Mead was not the first of his name to enter the medical profession.