[Illustration: SIR ANDREW CLARK.]
With a heartfelt pang, hundreds read in an evening paper on October 20th
of the serious illness of Sir Andrew Clark, so truly spoken of by George
Eliot as "the beloved physician." Only the previous day he had presided
at the Annual Harveian Oration as President of the College of
Physicians.
He had more than one warning by severe attacks of illness, and by the
recurrence of very painful symptoms, that he was over-taxing his
strength, but they were unheeded. A patient once told him he had a
horror of having a fit. "Put it away," said Sir Andrew; "I always do."
There was only one person to whose fatigue and exhaustion he was
indifferent that was himself.
It is said that he always hoped to die in his carriage or
consulting-room, and it was in the latter, while talking with a lady
(the Hon. Miss Boscawen) about some charity, that he was seized with the
illness which ended so fatally. In his case it is no morbid curiosity
which makes thousands interested in every detail concerning him.
On one day as many as six hundred people, several of whom were quite
poor patients, called to ask how he was, and daily inquiries from all
parts, including the Royal Family were a proof how much he was
respected. Very peacefully, on Monday, November 6th, about five o'clock,
he passed away, and on the following Saturday, after a service at
Westminster Abbey, he was buried at Essendon, near Camfield, the
property he had so lately bought and where he spent his last holiday.
The world has already been told how the English nation showed their
respect for the President of the College of Physicians, and in him the
profession he so dearly loved was honoured.
What was the reason of this demonstration of respect? Because
individuals seem to have felt a sense of irreparable _loss_. Very many
have the idea that there are few others with his gifts who would respond
in the same way to their demand for sympathy and help; for Sir Andrew's
interest in each patient was real. There was an attractive force about
him, difficult to describe, and which only those who knew him could
understand, for he was nothing if not original. It is impossible in this
brief sketch to give an adequate portrait of a great personality and to
tell the story of his life's work. I shall but try to mention some of
his distinctive qualities and characteristics, illustrated by a few
facts. Two or three real incidents sometimes give a better idea of a
man's character than pages of generalities.
[Illustration: THE GRAVE IN ESSENDON CHURCHYARD.
_From a Photo. by Mavor & Meredith._]
Sir Andrew was born at Aberdeen in October, 1826. His father died when
he was seven years old, and his mother at his birth. To the end of his
life he regretted never having known a mother's love. His childhood,
spent with two uncles, does not seem to have been very happy, and he had
no brother or sister. He was educated at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and at
the former place took his degree.
As a young man he gained first medals in anatomy, physiology, chemistry,
botany, materia medica, surgery, pathology, and practice of physic.
At twenty-two, in very delicate health, he entered the Royal Navy as
assistant-surgeon, and was appointed to the hospital at Haslar. His
subsequent medical career is pretty generally known. He obtained almost
every possible honour, culminating in the Presidency of the College of
Physicians for the lengthy term of six years.
Sir Andrew was devoted to the College. He made an excellent President,
and a dignified, courteous, and just chairman. His successor will find
it no easy task to fill his place.
He took an intense interest in all that concerned the welfare of the
College, and gave many proofs of his affection, one of the last being a
donation of £500 last year towards its redecoration. Not a great many
laymen know the College by sight. It is a corner building in Trafalgar
Square, the entrance facing Whitcomb Street. The meetings of the Fellows
are held in the magnificent library, lined with 60,000 volumes, chiefly
classics. Opening out of the library is the Censors' room, panelled with
old oak, and hung with portraits of former Presidents, chiefly by old
masters. At an examination the President sits at the end of the table
with his back to the fireplace, the Registrar (Dr. Liveing) opposite,
and the Censors on either side. In front of the President is a cushion
with the Caduceus, the Mace, and the Golden Cane. It was in the library
that Sir Andrew presided at the Harveian Oration the day before he was
taken ill.
Sir Andrew could not be judged of by the surface. As Sir Joseph Phayres
truly says: "I have known him intimately, and the more I knew him the
more I respected and admired him." Those who knew him best loved him
best. One has only to read how one leading man after another writes of
him with enthusiastic appreciation (in the _Medical Journal_) to learn
what his colleagues thought of his medical skill and personal character.
A bishop recently spoke of him as the truthful doctor: and a young girl,
who from a small child had stayed with him, told me he would always
correct himself if he had told an anecdote the least inaccurately; and
one day this summer when walking round their garden with him she said
the caterpillars had eaten all their gooseberry trees; "I mean the
gooseberry _leaves_," she added. Sir Andrew immediately said, "I am glad
you are particular to say what is exactly true"; but, she added, there
was always _something_ to remember in everything he said. With regard to
another point, a clergyman who knew Sir Andrew very intimately once told
me that "No man of this century had a more keenly religious mind; he was
so saturated with thoughts of God and so convinced that God had spoken
to man. He was intensely religious, with a profound sense of the
supernatural; he certainly was a great example to very busy men in the
way he always managed to find time for church, and even when called away
to a distance he would, if possible, go to a church near where he
happened to be." In addition to these qualities, he was very just,
sympathetic, and generous.
[Illustration: CAMFIELD HOUSE, ESSENDON.
_From a Photo. by Mavor & Meredith._]
I have come across many friends who knew him well, and it is interesting
to note that the same cardinal points seem to have struck everyone as
the key-notes of his life. In almost identical words each one speaks of
his strong faith, his strict veracity, and his intense devotion to duty.
One of his old friends said to me the other day: "_Nothing_ would tempt
Clark away from what he thought right; his conscientiousness was
unbounded."
His love of metaphysics, combined with a very high motive, made him
naturally interested in the _whole_ man--body, mind, and spirit. To
quote the words of a well-known bishop: "It was his intrepid honesty
which was so valuable a quality. In Sir Andrew Clark men felt that he
wished to do them good, and to do them the best good, by making men
of them."
[Illustration: SIR ANDREW CLARK'S HOUSE IN CAVENDISH SQUARE.
_From a Photograph by Mavor & Meredith._]
The bishop told me a characteristic anecdote illustrating this: "A
clergyman complained to him of feeling low and depressed, unable to face
his work, and tempted to rely on stimulants. Sir Andrew saw that the
position was a perilous one, and that it was a crisis in the man's life.
He dealt with the case, and forbade resort to stimulants, when the
patient declared that he would be unequal to his work and ready to sink.
'Then,' said Sir Andrew, 'sink like a man!'" This is but one of many
incidents showing his marvellous power in restraining his patients and
raising them to a higher moral level. The writer could tell a far more
wonderful story of the saving of a drunkard, body and soul, but it is
too touching and sacred for publication. At the top of the wall of that
well-known consulting-room (in which Sir Andrew is said to have seen
10,000 patients annually), immediately facing the chair where he always
sat, are the words: "Glory to God."
[Illustration: CENSORS' ROOM--COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS.
_From a Photo. by Mavor & Meredith_.]
With regard to his profession he was an enthusiast. He termed medicine
"the metropolis of the kingdom of knowledge," and in one of his
addresses to students, said: "You have chosen one of the noblest, the
most important, and the most interesting of professions, but also the
most arduous and the most self-denying, involving the largest sacrifices
and the fewest rewards. He who is not prepared to find in its
cultivation and exercise his chief recompense, has mistaken his calling
and should retrace his steps."
He had an ideal, and he did his utmost to live up to it. His words in
many instances did as much good as his medicine.
To explain what I mean I cannot do better than quote part of a letter
received since Sir Andrew's death, from a delicate, hardworking
clergyman, whom I have known some years. After speaking of Sir Andrew's
painstaking kindness, "never seeming the least hurried," he says: "He
had a wonderful way of inspiring one with confidence and readiness to
face one's troubles. I remember his saying once, 'It is wonderful how we
get _accustomed_ to our troubles,' and at another time, while
encouraging me to go on with work--reading for Orders: 'If one is to
die, it is better to die doing something, than doing nothing.' I have
often found that a help when feeling done-up and useless. In the old
days when people used to go and see him without an appointment, I have
often sat for hours in his dining-room, feeling so ill that I felt as if
I should die before I saw him, but after having seen him I felt as if I
had got a new lease of life. I was not at all hypochondriacal or
fanciful, I think, but that was the moral effect of an interview with
him. I believe he revolutionized the treatment of cases like mine, and
that he, to a certain extent, experimented on me; at any rate, he
treated me on philosophical principles, and told me often" (he went to
him for twenty years) "that I had become much stronger than he had
expected. He said to me several times: 'You are a wonderful man; you
have saved many lives.'"
[Illustration: ENTRANCE HALL--COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS.
_From a Photo. by Mavor & Meredith_]
This my correspondent understood to mean the experiments had been
successful.
"He once said that if I had died at that time, there was not a doctor in
London would have approved of his treatment. He gave a description of my
case some years ago, in a lecture I think at Brighton--but of course
without the name. The particular weakness was valvular disease of the
heart, the consequence of rheumatic fever, and this treatment was
founded on the principle that Nature always works towards compensation.
He told me many years ago that that particular mischief was fully
compensated for."
[Illustration: THE READING ROOM--COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS.
_From a Photo. by Mavor & Meredith_]
He loved his work and never tired of it. He often told the story how
his first serious case, and encouraging cure, was himself. With severe
hemorrhage of the lungs, he was told it would be at the risk of his life
if he went on with his studies. A doctor, however, he made up his mind
he would be, and that he would begin by making every effort to cure
himself. With characteristic determination, he persisted in a strict
regimen of diet and fresh air. "I determined," said Sir Andrew, "as far
as my studies would allow me--for I never intended to give them up--to
live in the fresh air, often studying out of doors; and in a short time
I was so much better that I was able to take gentle exercise. I got
well, and I may almost say I got over the trouble which threatened me."
The lungs were healed, and a result which seemed inevitable avoided. He
would often say he obtained his first appointment at the London Hospital
chiefly out of pity, the authorities thinking he would not live six
months, but he outlived almost every one of them.
[Illustration: THE CADUCENS, MACE, BOOK, AND SEAL--COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS
_From a Photo by Mavor & Meredith_]
No man could have kept on for fourteen and sixteen hours a day, as Sir
Andrew did, without unbounded enthusiasm and an absorbing interest.
His enormous correspondence must have been the great tax. Most people
are disinclined to write a dozen letters at the end of a hard day's
work; but Sir Andrew often came home at eight o'clock with the knowledge
that letters would occupy him until after midnight. His letters averaged
sixty per day. These would be answered by return, except where minute
directions were inclosed.
Only the other day, a friend of his told me, Sir Andrew came in the
morning, a short time before he was taken ill, looking very tired and
worried. On being asked the reason, he said he had not slept all night,
for he went to see a patient three days before, and because he had not
sent the table of directions, the patient wrote saying he would not try
his treatment. "I never slept," said Sir Andrew, "thinking of the state
of mind to which I had unavoidably reduced that poor patient."
In order to get through his work he had a light breakfast at 7.30, when
he read his letters, which were opened for him. From eight until two or
three he saw patients, his simple luncheon being taken in the
consulting-room. He would then go to the hospital, College of
Physicians, or some consultation; he had often after that to go to see
someone at a distance, but he never worried a patient by seeming in a
hurry, however much pressed for time.
He had a very strong sense of responsibility, and would never rest
himself by staying the night if it were unnecessary. A rich patient in
Devonshire once offered him a large sum to stay until the next morning.
"I could do you no good," said Sir Andrew, "and my patients will want me
to-morrow." Among his patients were almost all the great authors,
philosophers, and intellectual men of the day. Longfellow, Tennyson,
Huxley, Cardinal Manning, and numerous others were his warm friends. He
always declared he caught many a cold in the ascetic Cardinal's "cold
house." An old pupil truly says Sir Andrew had the rare faculty of
surveying the conditions and circumstances of each one, gathering them
up, and clearly seeing what was best to do. Professor Sheridan Delapine
says: "He was specially fond of quoting Sydenham's words: 'Tota ars
medici est in observationibus.'"
After asking what was amiss and questioning them on what they told him,
he would say: "Give me a plan of your day. What is your work? When do
you take your meals? Of what do they consist? What time do you get up,
and when do you go to bed?" Notwithstanding the keenness of his eye and
natural intuition, which found out instantly far more than was told, he
not only eagerly and attentively listened, but _remembered_ what his
patient said. Sir Henry Roscoe gave me a striking instance of this, and
I cannot do better than quote his exact words:--
"I first made Sir Andrew's acquaintance about twenty years ago at
Braemar, where he was spending the autumn, and, as was his kindly wont,
had with him a young Manchester man, far gone in consumption, to whom he
acted as friend, counsellor, and physician. In our frequent walks and
talks, I confided in the eminent doctor that I had suffered from that
frequent plague of sedentary men, the gout. 'Come and see me any morning
in Cavendish Square before eight,' said he, 'and I will do what I can
for you.' Many years slipped by; living then in Manchester, I never took
advantage of the kind offer, and I never saw Sir Andrew until some eight
years afterwards. I was calling on my old friend, Sir Joseph Whitworth,
who at that time had rooms in Great George Street. As I came quickly out
of the front door, Clark's carriage drove up, and almost before it
stopped the Doctor 'bounced' out and we nearly ran against each other.
In one 'instant-minute,' as our American friends say, he accosted me:
'Well! How's the gout?' He had no more idea of meeting me at that moment
than of meeting the man in the moon, and yet, no sooner had he seen my
face--which he had not looked upon for eight years--than the whole
'case' flashed upon him. Since that time I have often seen him, and I
shall always retain not only a high opinion of his great gifts, but also
an affectionate remembrance of his great-heartedness."
Literary people and brain-workers particularly interested him, and they
found in the kind doctor a friend who understood them. He would advise
all writing that involved thought to be done in the morning before
luncheon. The evening might be spent in "taking in" or reading up the
subject of a book or paper, but there must be no giving out. For
brain-workers who were not strong, he insisted on meat in the middle of
the day; he declared that for this class it was "physiologically wicked"
even to have luncheon without.
To one who spoke of fatigue after a comparatively short walk, he
replied: "Walk little, then. Many who work their brain are not up to
much exercise. I hardly ever walk a mile myself; but that need not
prevent men having plenty of fresh air."
[Illustration: THE LONDON HOSPITAL
_From a Photo. by Mavor & Meredith._]
Some people laugh at his rules for diet, etc., forgetting that these
simple directions are based on deep knowledge of the human frame. Let
them laugh. Many who have tried them know they have been different
people in consequence. His incisive words--"My friend, you eat too
much!" "My friend, you drink too much!" would not he appreciated by
all; but Sir Andrew thought nearly all diseases were the outcome of the
constant and apparently unimportant violation of the laws of health.
Those who were hopelessly ill would always hear the truth from him, but
he would leave no stone unturned to lessen their suffering. Many an
incurable patient has he sent to a home from the London Hospital, and
visited them afterwards. Only the other day I heard of patients he had
sent to St. Elizabeth's, Great Ormond Street, where incurable patients
are nursed and cared for until they die, and never left the hospital
without leaving a guinea with one of the nuns. Sir Andrew had no
stereotyped plan. It was not merely the disease, but the individual he
treated. A friend told me he saved her aunt's life. She could not sleep,
and Sir Andrew ordered them to give her breakfast at five, "for after
tossing about all night she might sleep after having some food," and so
it proved.
[Illustration: THE HARRISON WARD--LONDON HOSPITAL.
_From a Photo. by Mavor & Meredith._]