CHAPTER XIV
ENGLISH LEADERS IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY DURING THE EIGHTEENTH AND EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURIES
First Group: Fothergill, Abernethy, James and John Douglass, Percival Pott and Sir Astley Cooper
The desire to start the science of medicine on a new course of growth seemed to develop at the same time in England that it did on the continent of Europe—that is, during the first half of the eighteenth century. The prolonged wars had for a long period of time turned men’s thoughts entirely aside from scientific inquiries of any kind; but, the moment the outlook seemed bright for a renewal of peaceful relations between the warring nations, there arose, among the men of the different sciences, a strong impulse to resume their normal labors in the various fields of research. Some of the evidences of the truth of this statement have been furnished in the earlier pages of the present work, and already, during the period which we have now reached in this brief historical sketch, the proofs are not lacking that the first fruits of this new harvest are before us and that we may safely form some idea as to their quality.
Of those who should be classed as physicians Fothergill and Abernethy certainly deserve to be named first. The latter, I am well aware, is usually classed among the surgeons, and he certainly deserves to be so classed; but he seems to me to occupy an equally high position as a medical philosopher.
John Fothergill, one of the most distinguished English physicians of the eighteenth century, was born at Carr End, Yorkshire, March 8, 1712. He received his early medical training at Edinburgh, under the teaching of Monro, Alston, Sinclair and Plummer, all three of whom had been pupils of Boerhaave, at Leyden, Holland, and was given the degree of Doctor of Medicine by the University of Edinburgh, in 1736. During the years immediately following this event, he visited in turn the principal medical schools of Holland, Germany and France, and then settled definitively in London. In 1746 he met with marked success in the treatment of an epidemic of “putrid sore-throat,” which was raging in England at that period, and which showed a tendency to develop into a gangrenous condition. The physicians of that day employed largely purgatives and bloodletting in their treatment of this disease, but Fothergill depended mainly on the cautious use of emetics, mineral acids, bitters and light wines, the favorite practice among Spanish physicians. The success which attended his plan of treatment brought Fothergill a great increase in reputation as well as in fortune; and thus he was able, in 1762, to purchase at Upton, in Essex, a large tract of land which he developed into a splendid garden, where exotic plants of all sorts were cultivated. He also gathered at this place a very large collection of zoölogical and mineralogical specimens, which in the course of time became one of the most complete that was to be found anywhere in England. From 1765 onward, in order to relieve his health from the almost constant strain of so much business, he adopted the habit of absenting himself from London, regularly every year, for a period of two months; and with this object in view he chose for his retreat an attractive residence near Carr End, the town in which he was born. He died on December 26, 1780, at the age of sixty-nine, and bequeathed his entire fortune—aside from a modest stipend which he left to his sister—to the poor. The inscription written on his tombstone reads as follows: “Here lies Doctor Fothergill, who spent two-hundred thousand guineas for the relief of those in distress.” “I do not believe,” said the immortal Franklin, “that there ever existed a man who was better entitled to receive the esteem and veneration of all mankind than was Fothergill.” (Vicq-d’Azyr, in the Report of the Société Royale, of Paris.)
Fothergill did not write a single large treatise, but he published, in the Philosophic Transactions and elsewhere, no fewer than forty-one short memoirs on a great variety of topics.