LETTSOM.
High amongst literary, and higher yet amongst benevolent, physicians
must be ranked John Coakley Lettsom, formerly president of the
Philosophical Society of London. A West Indian, and the son of a
planter, he was born on one of his father's little islands, Van Dyke,
near Tortola, in the year 1744. Though bred a Quaker, he kept his
heart so free from sectarianism, and his life so entirely void of the
formality and puritanic asceticism of the Friends, that his ordinary
acquaintance marvelled at his continuing to wear the costume of the
brotherhood. At six years of age he was sent to England for education,
being for that purpose confided to the protection of Mr. Fothergill,
of Warrington, a Quaker minister, and younger brother of Dr. John
Fothergill. After receiving a poor preparatory education, he was
apprenticed to a Yorkshire apothecary, named Sutcliffe, who, by
industry and intelligence, had raised himself from the position of a
weaver to that of the first medical practitioner of Settle. In the
last century a West Indian was, to the inhabitants of a provincial
district, a rare curiosity; and Sutcliffe's surgery, on the day that
Lettsom entered it in his fifteenth year, was surrounded by a dense
crowd of gaping rustics, anxious to see a young gentleman accustomed
to walk on his head. This extraordinary demonstration of curiosity was
owing to the merry humour of Sutcliffe's senior apprentice, who had
informed the people that the new pupil, who would soon join him, came
from a country where the feet of the inhabitants were placed in an
exactly opposite direction to those of Englishmen.
Sutcliffe did not find his new apprentice a very handy one. "Thou
mayest make a physician, but I think not a good apothecary," the old
man was in the habit of saying; and the prediction in due course
turned out a correct one. Having served an apprenticeship of five
years, and walked for two the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital, where
Akenside was a physician, conspicuous for supercilious manner and want
of feeling, Lettsom returned to the West Indies, and settled as a
medical practitioner in Tortola. He practised there only five months,
earning in that time the astonishing sum of £2000; when, ambitious of
achieving a high professional position, he returned to Europe, visited
the medical schools of Paris and Edinburgh, took his degree of M.D. at
Leyden on the 20th of June, 1769, was admitted a licentiate of the
Royal College of Physicians of London in the same year, and in 1770
was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
From this period till his death, in 1815 (Nov. 20), he was one of the
most prominent figures in the scientific world of London. As a
physician he was a most fortunate man; for without any high reputation
for professional acquirements, and with the exact reverse of a good
preliminary education, he made a larger income than any other
physician of the same time. Dr. John Fothergill never made more than
£5000 in one year; but Lettsom earned £3600 in 1783--£3900 in
1784--£4015 in 1785-and £4500 in 1786. After that period his practice
rapidly increased, so that in some years his receipts were as much as
£12,000. But although he pocketed such large sums, half his labours
were entirely gratuitous. Necessitous clergymen and literary men he
invariably attended with unusual solicitude and attention, but without
ever taking a fee for his services. Indeed, generosity was the ruling
feature of his life. Although he burdened himself with the public
business of his profession, was so incessantly on the move from one
patient to another that he habitually knocked up three pairs of horses
a-day, and had always some literary work or other upon his desk, he
nevertheless found time to do an amount of labour, in establishing
charitable institutions and visiting the indigent sick, that would by
itself have made a reputation for an ordinary person.
To give the mere list of his separate benevolent services would be to
write a book about them. The General Dispensary, the Finsbury
Dispensary, the Surrey Dispensary, and the Margate Sea-bathing
Infirmary, originated in his exertions; and he was one of the first
projectors of--the Philanthropic Society, St. Georges-in-the-Fields,
for the Prevention of Crimes, and the Reform of the Criminal Poor; the
Society for the Discharge and Relief of Persons Imprisoned for Small
Debts; the Asylum for the Indigent Deaf and Dumb; the Institution for
the Relief and Employment of the Indigent Blind; and the Royal Humane
Society, for the recovery of the apparently drowned or dead. And year
by year his pen sent forth some publication or other to promote the
welfare of the poor, and succour the afflicted. Of course there were
crowds of clever spectators of the world's work, who smiled as the
doctor's carriage passed them in the streets, and said he was a deuced
clever fellow to make ten thousand a-year so easily; and that, after
all, philanthropy was not a bad trade. But Lettsom was no calculating
humanitarian, with a tongue discoursing eloquently on the sufferings
of mankind, and an eye on the sharp look-out for his own interest.
What he was before the full stare of the world, that he was also in
his own secret heart, and those private ways into which hypocrisy
cannot enter. At the outset of his life, when only twenty-three years
old, he liberated his slaves--although they constituted almost his
entire worldly wealth, and he was anxious to achieve distinction in a
profession that offers peculiar difficulties to needy aspirants. And
when his career was drawing to a close, he had to part with his
beloved countryseat because he had impoverished himself by lavish
generosity to the unfortunate.
There was no sanctimonious affectation in the man. He wore a drab coat
and gaiters, and made the Quaker's use of _Thou_ and _Thee_; but he
held himself altogether apart from the prejudices of his sect. A poet
himself of some respectability, he delighted in every variety of
literature, and was ready to shake any man by the hand--Jew or
Gentile. He liked pictures and works of sculpture, and spent large
sums upon them; into the various scientific movements of the time he
threw himself with all the energy of his nature; and he disbursed a
fortune in surrounding himself at Camberwell with plants from the
tropics. He liked good wine, but never partook of it to excess,
although his enemies were ready to suggest that he was always glad to
avail himself of an excuse for getting intoxicated. And he was such a
devoted admirer of the fair sex, that the jealous swarm of needy men
who envied him his prosperity, had some countenance for their slander
that he was a Quaker debauchee. He married young, and his wife
outlived him; but as a husband he was as faithful as he proved in
every other relation of life.
Saturday was the day he devoted to entertaining his friends at Grove
Hill, Camberwell; and rare parties there gathered round
him--celebrities from every region of the civilized world, and the
best "good fellows" of London. Boswell was one of his most frequent
guests, and, in an ode to Charles Dilly, celebrated the beauties of
the physician's seat and his humane disposition:--
"My cordial Friend, still prompt to lend
Your cash when I have need on't;
We both must bear our load of care--
At least we talk and read on't."
"Yet are we gay in ev'ry way,
Not minding where the joke lie;
On Saturday at bowls we play
At Camberwell with Coakley."
"Methinks you laugh to hear but half
The name of Dr. Lettsom:
From him of good--talk, liquors, food--
His guests will always get some."
"And guests has he, in ev'ry degree,
Of decent estimation:
His liberal mind holds all mankind
As an extended Nation.
"O'er Lettsom's cheer we've met a peer--
A peer--no less than Lansdowne!
Of whom each dull and envious skull
Absurdly cries--'The man's down!'
"Down do they say? How then, I pray,
His king and country prize him!
Through the whole world known, his peace alone
Is sure t' immortalize him.
"Lettsom we view a _Quaker_ true,
'Tis clear he's so in one sense:
His _spirit_, strong, and ever young,
Refutes pert Priestley's nonsense.
"In fossils he is deep, we see;
Nor knows Beasts, Fishes, Birds ill;
With plants not few, some from Pelew,
And wondrous Mangel Wurzel!
"West India bred, warm heart, cool head,
The city's first physician;
By schemes humane--want, sickness, pain,
To aid in his ambition.
"From terrace high he feasts his eye,
When practice grants a furlough;
And, while it roves o'er Dulwich groves,
Looks down--even upon Thurlow."
The concluding line is an allusion to the Lord Chancellor's residence
at Dulwich.
In person, Lettsom was tall and thin--indeed, almost attenuated: his
face was deeply lined, indicating firmness quite as much as
benevolence; and his complexion was of a dark yellow hue. His
eccentricities were numerous. Like the founder of his sect, he would
not allow even respect for royalty to make an alteration in his
costume which his conscience did not approve; and George III., who
entertained a warm regard for him, allowed him to appear at Court in
the ordinary Quaker garb, and to kiss his hand, though he had neither
powder on his head, nor a sword by his side. Lettsom responded to his
sovereign's courtesy by presenting him with some rare and
unpurchasable medals.
Though his writings show him to have been an enlightened physician for
his time, his system of practice was not of course free from the
violent measures which were universally believed in during the last
century. He used to say of himself,
"When patients sick to me apply,
I physics, bleeds and sweats 'em;
Then--if they choose to die,
What's that to me--I lets 'em."--(I. Lettsom.)
But his prescriptions were not invariably of a kind calculated to
depress the system of his patient. On one occasion an old American
merchant, who had been ruined by the rupture between the colonies and
the mother country, requested his attendance and professional advice.
The unfortunate man was seventy-four years of age, and bowed down with
the weight of his calamities.
"Those trees, doctor," said the sick man, looking out of his bed-room
window over his lawn, "I planted, and have lived to see some of them
too old to bear fruit; they are part of my family: and my children,
still dearer to me, must quit this residence, which was the delight of
my youth, and the hope of my old age."
The Quaker physician was deeply affected by these pathetic words, and
the impressive tone with which they were uttered. He spoke a few words
of comfort, and quitted the room, leaving on the table as his
prescription--a cheque for a large sum of money. Nor did his goodness
end there. He purchased the house of his patient's creditors, and
presented it to him for life.
As Lettsom was travelling in the neighbourhood of London, a highwayman
stopped his carriage, and, putting a pistol into the window, demanded
him to surrender his money. The faltering voice and hesitation of the
robber showed that he had only recently taken to his perilous
vocation, and his appearance showed him to be a young man who had
moved in the gentle ranks of life. Lettsom quickly responded that he
was sorry to see such a well-looking young man pursuing a course which
would inevitably bring him to ruin; that he would _give_ him freely
all the money he had about him, and would try to put him in a better
way of life, if he liked to call on him in the course of a few days.
As the doctor said this, he gave his card to the young man, who turned
out to be another victim of the American war. He had only made one
similar attempt on the road before, and had been driven to lawless
action by unexpected pennilessness. Lettsom endeavoured in vain to
procure aid for his _protégé_ from the commissioners for relieving the
American sufferers; but eventually the Queen, interested in the young
man's case, presented him with a commission in the army; and in a
brief military career, that was cut short by yellow fever in the West
Indies, he distinguished himself so much that his name appeared twice
in the _Gazette_.
On one of his benevolent excursions the doctor found his way into the
squalid garret of a poor woman who had seen better days. With the
language and deportment of a lady she begged the physician to give
her a prescription. After inquiring carefully into her case, he wrote
on a slip of paper to the overseers of the parish--
"A shilling per diem for Mrs Moreton. Money, not physic, will cure
her.
"LETTSOM."
Of all Lettsom's numerous works, including his contributions to the
_Gentleman's Magazine_, under the signature of "Mottles," the anagram
of his own name, the one most known to the general reader, is the
"History of some of the Effects of Hard Drinking." It concludes with a
scale of Temperance and Intemperance, in imitation of a thermometer.
To each of the two conditions seventy degrees are allotted. Against
the seventieth (or highest) degree of Temperance is marked "Water,"
under which, at distances of ten degrees, follow "Milk-and-Water,"
"Small Beer," "Cyder and Perry," "Wine," "Porter," "Strong Beer." The
tenth degree of Intemperance is "Punch"; the twentieth, "Toddy and
Crank"; the thirtieth, "Grog and Brandy and Water"; the fortieth,
"Flip and Shrub"; the fiftieth, "Bitters infused in Spirits,
Usquebaugh, Hysteric Water"; the sixtieth, "Gin, Aniseed, Brandy, Rum,
and Whisky," in the morning; the seventieth, like the sixtieth, only
taken day and night. Then follow, in tabular order, the vices,
diseases, and punishments of the different stages of Intemperance. The
mere enumeration of them ought to keep the most confirmed toper sober
for the rest of his days:--
"_Vices._--Idleness, Peevishness, Quarrelling, Fighting, Lying,
Swearing, Obscenity, Swindling, Perjury, Burglary, Murder, Suicide.
"_Diseases._--Sickness, Tremors of the Hands in the Morning,
Bloatedness, Inflamed Eyes, Red Nose and Face, Sore and Swelled Legs,
Jaundice, Pains in the Limbs, Dropsy, Epilepsy, Melancholy, Madness,
Palsy, Apoplexy, Death.
"_Punishments._--Debt, Black Eyes, Rags, Hunger, Hospital, Poor-house,
Jail, Whipping, the Hulks, Botany Bay, Gallows!"
This reads like Hogarth's Gin Lane.