21_st July_ 1737.--It was resolved "that the thanks of this Court be
given to William Hogarth, Esquire . . . for his generous and free gift of
the painting of the great staircase. . . ."
5_th Jan._ 1758.--A committee considered the subject of visiting
prisoners in Newgate, but the plan was apparently thrown over because
prisoners were found entirely destitute of clothes, bedding, etc.
Even in the history of Mr Pickwick (chapter xlii.) we read that "not a
week passes over our heads, but, in every one of our prisons for debt,
some . . . must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they
were not relieved by their fellow prisoners."
It is curious to find that in 1821 the function of the hospital as a
school for students of medicine was something of a novelty. The reform
seems to have been due to Abernethy.
In 1845, on 13th May, a unanimous resolution against female governors was
carried. Dr Moore adds that "about half a century later they were
admitted, and no disastrous consequences have ensued." In 1851 Miss
Elizabeth Blackwell was actually admitted as a student, and strange to
say with satisfactory results.
The author relates {154} how he was walking back to St Bartholomew's one
hot summer afternoon when he saw at a small second-hand book shop Paulus
Jovius' history of his own times, printed in 1550. Within it Woodhull
the collector had noted that he bought it at the sale of Dr Askew's
books. Next day Sir Norman met Robert Browning and mentioned the book to
him: "He had read it, and recalled passages in it, and told most
pleasantly how the bishop had concealed the manuscript in a chest . . .
when the Spaniards took Rome, and how a Spanish captain found out that
Paulus Jovius valued the manuscript, and so only gave it up on receiving
a promise of the emoluments of a living in the gift of the church" (ii.,
p. 539).
Sir George Burrows became physician in 1841:--"He did not hesitate to
express censure where he thought censure required. A clergyman at St
Bartholomew's rather aggressively invited his criticism on a sermon which
he had just delivered. 'Let me tell you, sir,' said Burrows, 'that many
a man has been put in a lunatic asylum for much less nonsense than you
preached to us to-day'" (ii., p. 561).
Dr Frederic John Farre was elected physician, 1854. Farre was captain of
Charterhouse School during Thackeray's first year there. And in _The
Adventures of Philip_ the author tells how one of the boys laughed
because Firmin's eyes "filled with tears at some ribald remark, and was
gruffly rebuked by Sampson major [_i.e._, Dr Farre], the cock of the
whole school; and with the question, 'Don't you see the poor beggar's in
mourning, you great brute?' was kicked about his business."
Percivall Pott was elected assistant surgeon at St Bartholomew's in 1745
and surgeon in 1749, holding office till 1787. There is in the hospital
a fine portrait of him in a crimson coat, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. A very
old lady, whose mother's medical attendant had been dresser to Percivall
Pott, told Dr Moore, on the authority of the above practitioner, that
Pott often came to the hospital in a red coat, and sometimes wore a
sword.
Occasional teaching in medicine had been carried out from the seventeenth
century onwards, but the originator _par excellence_ was John Abernethy,
who was born in 1764 and became a pupil at St Bartholomew's in 1779. He
taught anatomy in a really scientific manner, but he did not succeed in
permanently raising it from the region of cram which in my day at
Cambridge it shared with Materia Medica.
Many stories are told of his abrupt manner with his private patients.
Charles Darwin used to tell us of a patient entering Abernethy's
consulting room, holding out his hand and saying, "Bad cut," to which
Abernethy replied, "Poultice"; the patient departed, only to return in a
day or two, when his laconic report, "Cut worse," was answered by "More
poultice." Finally he came back cured and enquired what he owed the
surgeon, who replied, "Nothing; you are the best patient I ever had, and
I could not take a fee."
Sir James Paget was assistant surgeon at St Bartholomew's in 1847; he
became surgeon in 1861; he resigned the position in 1871, and died in
1899. He was the chief surgeon of the Victorian age, and his success may
be estimated by the fact that his professional income rose to 10,000
pounds per annum. He freely gave of his store of knowledge, for instance
in Charles Darwin's _The Expression of the Emotions_. William Morrant
Baker was elected a surgeon of St Bartholomew's in 1882. He was noted
for the neatness of his dress, and Dr Francis Harris, who sometimes wore
country clothes, told Dr Moore that he occasionally hid in the porter's
lodge to avoid Baker's critical eyes. He warned Dr Moore (who was a
candidate for the Wardenship of the College) that those same eyes were on
him in the matter of dress.
Sir William Church, who wrote on the Hospital Pharmacopoeia, gives some
astonishing facts. From 1866 to 1875 the annual consumption of sulphate
of magnesia was 42.5 hundredweights, _i.e._, about two cart-loads. "In
1836 8.75 tons of linseed meal were used, while from 1876 to 1885 the
annual average was 15.75 tons, but in 1911 the poultice was so nearly
obsolete that 3 cwt. sufficed. In 1837 96,300 leeches were used; . . .
in 1868 the number had sunk to 2200. . . . It is now (1911) about 700"
(ii., p. 714).
Chloroform first appears in the apothecaries' ledger on 22nd November
1847, just one week after the publication of Sir James Y. Simpson's
treatise.
A pound of pure carbolic acid was used in 1865, in 1911 the quantity was
2.5 tons. Nurses have increased from a "matron and eleven sisters in the
reign of King Edward VI. to the matron, assistant-matron, thirty-eight
sisters, and 268 nurses who form the highly trained nursing staff of the
present day" (ii., p. 778).
I cannot resist quoting a reminiscence of Mr Mark Morris, the Steward of
the Hospital, who was born early enough to remember "several cases . . .
of wives who had been sold in Smithfield. A rope was loosely thrown
round them, and as the seller handed the end of the rope to the buyer,
the buyer gave him a shilling. The new marriage was regarded . . . as in
every way reputable and complete" (ii., p. 789).
We have space for but a few of Dr Moore's pleasant reminiscences. A
woman came from South Wales whose only language was Welsh. Her husband's
native language was Irish, and he had learned Welsh, but could speak no
English. A scavenger came into the Casualty Department named Michael
O'Clery. "An illustrious name," said the physician (N. M.?) remembering
a certain famous chronicler. The scavenger explained accurately to which
part of the family of hereditary historians he belonged.
"Another patient, a shoemaker . . . gave the name of Conellan. 'Have you
ever heard,' said the physician, 'of Owen Conellan, who wrote a grammar?'
'My relation,' replied the patient, 'historiographer to His Majesty King
George IV.' Thus was the physician instructed in the biography of the
grammarian" (ii., p. 873).
A mountebank, who gained his living by thrusting a sword, about a foot
long, down his gullet was admitted to a surgical ward. The treatment
consisted in putting probangs of india-rubber down the gullet, and in
this the patient was more adroit than the highly skilled surgeon who
attended him (ii., p. 874).
I like, too, the case of a patient who was described as an "arrow-maker,"
and on being asked whether he did not call himself a fletcher, said,
"Yes, but I thought you would not know." We read, also, of ruler-makers
with "their hair turned green by the resin dust produced by their
lathes." Also of "secret springers and piercers," who suggest murder and
sudden death to the imperfectly informed.
The following incident (ii., p. 883) is interesting from the point of
view of history:--A negro, Jonathan Strong, had been brutally beaten by
his master, and was admitted to the hospital in 1765. On leaving he got
work at a chemist's in the city; all seemed well, when he was recognised
by an agent of his former master, and seized as "the property of Mr
Kerr." Granville Sharp, who happened to be present, at once charged the
agent with committing an assault. An action brought against Sharp
lingered on for some time and was finally dropped. Strong remained free,
but the general question of slavery in England was not settled till 1772.
It is pleasant to know that in 1877 Dr Moore told the story of Jonathan
Strong to William Lloyd Garrison.