Part 17 (1/2)
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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 wors.h.i.+pper of the monarchical, party. And yet his intimate friends were of the adverse faction. The overbearing, insolent, prejudiced Radcliffe forgave him his scholars.h.i.+p and politics, and did his utmost to advance his interests.
Mead's family was a respectable one in Buckinghams.h.i.+re. 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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.