During the 17th and 18th centuries medical impostors had things all their own way. Ignorance was no hinderance to advancement, socially or pecuniarily. Some men published, in their own names, voluminous works, in both English and Latin, which they themselves could not read. By soft words and cunning arts others gained high positions, and, without knowledge of the first branch of medical science, became “court physicians.”
From the lowest walks, they rose up on every side: from the cobbler’s bench, and the tailor’s board; from cutting up meat in the butcher’s shop, to “cutting up” naughty boys in a pedagogue’s capacity; from shaving the unwashed rabble behind the striped barber’s pole, to shaving their wives behind counters, where they measured the cloth of the weaver, they became cobblers of poor healths, butchers of men, and shavers of the invalided public. But these will be discoursed of under another head.
We here offer one proof of this state of affairs by a quotation from the original charter of the first College of Physicians, granted by Henry VIII., which reads, “Before this period a great multitude of ignorant persons, of which the greater part had no insight into physic, nor into any other kind of learning,—some could not even read the Book,—so far forth that common artificers, as smiths, weavers, and women boldly and accustomedly took upon themselves great cures, to the high displeasure of God, great infamy of the faculty, and the grievous hurt, damage, and destruction of many of the king’s liege people.”
The meetings of this august body (College of Physicians) were held at the house of Dr. Linacre. “He was a gentleman of distinction, both as a physician and scholar.” He became disgusted with physic, and took “holy orders” five years before his death. He was one of the original petitioners of the charter, which complained that the above rabble of doctors could not read the Book (Bible). Now see the ignorance—the hypocrisy of the man!
Dr. Caius, who wrote his epitaph, says of Linacre, “He certainly was not a very profound theologian, for a short time before his death he read the New Testament for the first time, when, so greatly was he astonished at finding the rules of Christianity so widely at variance with their practice, that he threw down the sacred volume in a passion, saying, ‘Either this is not gospel, or we are not Christians.’” This was just prior to 1600.
This Dr. Caius is supposed to be the same character whom Shakspeare introduced in his “Merry Wives of Windsor;” and as it is a fact patent to all that the great poet had no very exalted opinion of doctors, and would “throw physic to the dogs,” it has been suggested that Caius was produced by him on that ground.
There are others of this and a later period, whom, though ranking amongst the greatest of humbugs, we defer mentioning here, but will notice in our chapter on quacks.
Mr. Jeaffreson, in his excellent work, “Book About Doctors,” to which work I am indebted for several anecdotes, says,—
“The lives of three physicians—Sydenham, Sir Hans Sloane, and Heberden—completely bridge over the uncertain period between old empiricism and modern science.”
The former, Dr. Thomas Sydenham, was born at Windford Eagle, Dorsetshire, England, in 1624, and was esteemed as an excellent physician and profound scholar of his day. Nothing is known of his boyhood. For a time he was a soldier. He was about forty years old when admitted a member of the College of Physicians. Dr. Richard Blackmore, his contemporary, who was but a pedagogue at the outstart himself, but afterwards knighted as Sir Richard, says of Dr. Sydenham, “He was only a disbanded officer, who entered upon the practice of medicine for a maintenance, without any preparatory learning.” The fact of his possessing a diploma went for nothing, since Dr. Meyersbach obtained his about this time for a few shillings, and without the rudiments of an education, made a splendid living out of the credulity even of the most learned and fashionable classes of English society, and arrived at the height of honor and distinction.