This was the desperate remedy taken by Caroline, Queen of that brute George II., when he expected her to take her usual walk with him, though both her feet were swollen with rheumatism. She plunged them in a bath of cold water, and managed to go out with him that afternoon.
I read in some publication—London Society, I think—in an article on medicine, that it is a sensible plan, adopted by some wise people, to pay a medical man a yearly sum to look up a household periodically and keep them in good health. This seems to me as insane a plan as can well be imagined. Fancy the physicking such a family, especially the children and servants, must all the year round undergo! For the doctor does not like to take his money and do nothing for it; so, if there happens to be no real illness, he must exhibit his draughts and pills, just to show that he is honestly earning his fee. The regular attendant, the family doctor, means that the family are hospitalizing all the year round. Better go and live in the island of Sark. Sir Robert Inglis, in his account of the Channel Islands, says that at Sark there is no doctor, and that in the years 1816 and 1820 there was not one death on the island, containing a population of five hundred persons, and that on an average of ten years the mortality is not quite one in a hundred. But let us return to the old doctors.
Dr. George Fordyce, who came in 1762 from Edinburgh to London, very speedily made himself a name by a series of public lectures on medical science, which he afterwards published in a volume entitled 'Elements of the Practice of Physic,' which passed through many editions. Unfortunately he was given to drink, and though he never was known to be dead drunk, yet he was often in a state which rendered him unfit for professional duties. One night when he was in such a condition, he was suddenly sent for to attend a lady of title who was very ill. He went, sat down, listened to her story, and felt her pulse. He found he was not up to his work; he lost his wits, and in a moment of forgetfulness exclaimed: 'Drunk, by Jove!' Still, he managed to write out a mild prescription. Early next morning he received a message from his noble patient to call on her at once. Dr. Fordyce felt very uncomfortable. The lady evidently intended to upbraid him either with an improper prescription or with his disgraceful condition. But to his surprise and relief she thanked him for his prompt compliance with her pressing summons, and then confessed that he had rightly diagnosed her case, that unfortunately she occasionally indulged too freely in drink, but that she hoped he would preserve inviolable secrecy as to the condition he had found her in. Fordyce listened to her as grave as a judge, and said: 'You may depend upon me, madam; I shall be as silent as the grave.'
Another doctor who made his reputation by lecturing was Dr. G. Wallis, of Red Lion Square. He had originally established himself at York, where he was born, but being much attached to theatrical amusements, and a man of wit, he had written a dramatic piece, entitled 'The Mercantile Lovers: a Satire.' It contained a number of highly caustic remarks, either so directly levelled at certain persons of that city, or taken by them to themselves, that he lost all professional practice, and had to leave York, when he came to London, and, as already mentioned, commenced lectures on the Theory and Practice of Physic. He published various medical works, and died in 1802.
In the reign of James I. lived Dr. Edward Jorden, whom we mention on account of two curious circumstances in his life. The doctor, being on a journey, benighted on Salisbury Plain, and not knowing which way to ride, met a shepherd of whom he made inquiry what places were near where he could pass the night. He was told there was no house of entertainment for travellers near, but that a gentleman of the name of Jordan, and a man of great estate, lived close by. Looking on the similarity of the names as a good omen, Jorden applied at the house, where he was kindly received, and made so good an impression on his host that the latter bestowed on him his daughter with a considerable fortune.
The second circumstance was this: James, as is well known, was a firm believer in witchcraft. Now, it happened that a girl in the country was said to have been bewitched by a neighbour. The King had her sent for, and placed under the care of Dr. Jorden, who very soon discovered the girl to be a cheat; in fact, she confessed as much, saying that her father, having had a quarrel with a female neighbour, had induced her (his daughter) to accuse the woman of having bewitched her and brought upon her the fits she simulated. This confession Jorden reported to the King, the doctor not being courtier enough to see what James wanted, namely, a witch to burn. But as the girl had for a short time given him the prospect of such a treat, the King, though she by her own confession was a diabolical liar—for everyone in those days knew that the charge of witchcraft involved the risk of losing life by a fiery death—James actually gave her a portion, and she was married, 'and,' as the account naïvely observes, 'thus was cured of her inimical witchery.'
Of Dr. Francis J. P. de Valangin (b. 1719, d. 1805), of the College of Physicians, London, though a native of Switzerland, it was said that to his patients he was kind and consolatory in the extreme—nothing of the rough element in him; he was, as the obituary notice of him says, the friend of mankind and an honour to his profession. About the year 1772 de Valangin purchased ground in Pentonville, near White Conduit House, where he erected a residence on a plan laid down by himself; and as the design was not that of ordinary builders or architects it was called fanciful, chiefly because of a high brick tower rising from it, which the doctor built for an observatory. Of course the next tenant, a timber merchant, had nothing more pressing to do than immediately to pull down the features which distinguished the building from the dulness of orthodox architecture. Valangin had christened the elevation on which his house stood 'Hermes Hill,' after Hermes Trismegistus, the fabled discoverer of the chemist's art.
Dr. Anthony Askew, one of the celebrities of St. Bartholomew's in the last half of the last century, was as famous in literature as he was in medicine. He had a collection of Greek MSS., purchased at great expense in the East, more numerous and more valuable than that of any other private gentleman in England. His house in Queen Square was, moreover, crammed with printed books; the sale of his library in 1775, which lasted twenty days, was the great literary auction of the time.
Another famous physician of St. Bartholomew's was Dr. David Pitcairn, who died in 1809. He also was distinguished as a literary man and lover of art. His earnings were very large, for he was frequently requested by his brethren for his advice in difficult cases. His manners as a physician were simple, gentle, and dignified, and always sufficiently cheerful to inspire confidence and hope. It is said that he was occasionally affected in his speech; thus he is reported to have asked a lady for a pinch of snuff in the following terms: 'Madam, permit me to immerse the summits of my digits in your pulveriferous utensil, to excite a grateful titillation of my olfactory nerves.'
Of Dr. John Radcliffe, the physician of the reigns of William III. and Queen Anne, many strange anecdotes are told, for he was a man of rough Abernethy manners, even with kings. When called in to see King William at Kensington, finding his legs dropsically swollen, he said: 'I would not have your two legs, your Majesty, not for your three kingdoms.' The remark gave great offence. But on another occasion he was even more brusque. 'Your juices,' he said to the King, 'are all vitiated, your whole mass of blood corrupted, and the nutriment mostly turned to water. If your Majesty will forbear making long visits to the Earl of Bradford' (where the King was wont to drink very hard), 'I'll engage to make you live three or four years longer, but beyond that time no physic can protract your Majesty's existence.' On one occasion, when he was sent for from the tavern, to which he resorted but too often, by Queen Anne, he flatly refused to leave his bottle. 'Tell her Majesty,' he bellowed, 'that it's nothing but the vapours.' He advised a hypochondriacal lady, who complained of nervous singing in the head, to 'curl her hair with a ballad.' He cured a gentleman of a quinsy by making his own two servants eat a hasty-pudding for a wager, which caused the patient to break out into such a fit of laughter as to burst the quinsy. Sir Godfrey Kneller and Radcliffe were at one time neighbours in Bow Street, Covent Garden, and the painter having beautiful pleasure-grounds, a door was opened for the accommodation of his neighbour. But in consequence of damage done to his flower-beds, Sir Godfrey threatened to close the door, to which Radcliffe replied, he might do anything with it but paint it. 'Did Dr. Radcliffe say so?' cried Sir Godfrey. 'Go and tell him, with my compliments, that I can take anything from him but his physic.' In spite of his cynicism and rudeness, he made a very large income, on the average twenty guineas a day, and when he was told that the £5,000 he had invested in South Sea stock was lost, he could with placid sangfroid say: 'Well, it is only going up another 5,000 stairs.' But though he so heavily taxed his patients, he was very much opposed to paying his debts, especially such as he owed to tradespeople. A pavior, whom he had employed and constantly put off paying, at last waited for him at his (the doctor's) door, and, when his carriage drove up, roughly asked for his money. 'Why, you rascal,' said the doctor, 'do you expect to get paid for such a bad piece of work? You have spoiled my pavement, and covered it with earth to hide your bad work!' 'Doctor,' replied the pavior, 'mine is not the only bad work the earth hides.' 'You dog, you!' cried the doctor, 'you must be a wit, and want the money. Come in.' And he paid him. Curiously enough, the man who left the splendid library, known by his name, to Oxford, at one time, on being asked where his library was, pointed to a few phials, a skeleton, and a herbal, in one corner of his apartment, and said, 'Sir, there is my library!' He was a Tory in politics, and it was said that he kept Lady Holt alive out of pure political animosity to the Whig Chief Justice Holt, because she led her lord such a life.