In a rickety old three story house, the lower part of which was occupied
as a butcher's shop and trader's room, and the upper stories as a
dwelling-house, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1721, was born Mark Akenside.
His father was a butcher, and one day, as the boy Mark was assisting at
the menial occupation of cutting up a calf, a cleaver fell from the shop
block upon another "calf,"--that of young Akenside's leg,--which lamed him
for life.
[Illustration: THE YOUNG SURGEON'S FIRST EXPERIENCE.]
Akenside was a Nonconformist, and by the aid of the Dissenters' Society
young Mark was sent to Edinburgh to study theology. From theology he went
to physic, his honest parent refunding the money to the society paid for
his studies under their patronage, and he subsequently obtained his degree
at Cambridge, and became a fellow of the R. S.
Like Davy, Akenside became ashamed of his plebeian origin. His lameness,
like Lord Byron's, was a continual source of mortification to him.
He became a physician to St. Thomas; and, as he went with the students the
rounds of the hospital, the fastidiousness of the little bunch of dignity
at having come so closely in contact with the vulgar rabble, induced him,
at times, to make the strongest patients precede him with _brooms_, to
clear a way for him through the crowd of diseased wretches, who,
nevertheless, had wonderful faith in his wisdom, and would cry out,
"_Bravo for the butcher boy with a game leg!_" as they fell back before
the fearful charge of corn brooms.
By the assistance of friends, and his ever extensive practice, Akenside
was enabled, to the day of his death, in 1770, to keep his carriage, wear
his gold-hilted sword, and his huge well-powdered wig.