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 surpassed 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 constitutional, 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
classical 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 Lunæ 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 pronounced, 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 practitioner which Mead contrived to acquire. Into his hands
also passed 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 title 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
Tithe Communication Act passed, 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 entitled to of the produce of the land.
Often he did not get half his dues; and even when he did obtain a fair
tithe, 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 entitled 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 title of _Reverend_ was
still affixed to their names--their costume was still that of their
order--and by large masses 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 butter 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 competitors 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 Æsculapian 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 chastisement, and was proceeding to
carry out her menaces, when Mead, recognizing the peril of his
position, turned and fled from the room. The duchess 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 coarseness
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 associated
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 practitioner 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 shores, 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 Dupré, 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.
William George Meade was an eminent physician at Tunbridge Wells; and
dying there on the 4th of November, 1652, was buried at Ware, in
Hertfordshire. This gentleman left £5 a-year for ever to the poor; but
he is more remarkable for longevity than generosity. He died at the
extraordinary age of 148 years and nine months. This is one of the
most astonishing instances of longevity on record. Old Parr, dying at
152 years of age, exceeded it only by 4 years. The celebrated Countess
Desmond was some years more than 140 at the time of her death. Henry
Read, minister of Hardwicke, Co. Northampton, numbered only 132 years;
and the Lancashire woman (the _Cricket of the Hedge_) did not outlive
the 141st year. But all these ages become insignificant when put by
the side of the 169 years to which Henry Jenkins protracted his
earthly sojourn.