Halford’s early success was not favourable to his prosecuting original research nor to his publishing much that is important. His chief publications were first given as addresses to meetings of the College of Physicians. In these he showed skill and pleasing literary art. He wrote on the Climacteric Disease, on the Necessity of Caution in the Estimation of Symptoms in the Last Stages of some Diseases, on the Tic Douloureux, on Shakespeare’s Test of Insanity (Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4), on the Influence of some of the Diseases of the Body on the Mind, on Gout, on Phlegmasia Dolens, on the Treatment of Insanity, and on the Deaths of some Illustrious Persons of Antiquity—and again, on the Deaths of some Eminent Persons of Modern Times. It is to be regretted perhaps that a man of such accomplishments should have left so little behind him; but he was of use to his day and generation; and as to the knowledge he had attained, it served him only to affix the term “conjectural” to medicine, when speaking of the confidence Baillie inspired. At least he did not seem to have hidden from himself how little the medicine of his days could lay claim to being completely informed.
William Fredric Chambers, the son of an East Indian civil servant, whose family belonged to Northumberland, was born in India in 1786. Brought to England in 1793 in consequence of his father’s death, he was educated at Bath, Westminster, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1808. He had hoped for a fellowship, intending to take orders; but being disappointed, he turned to medicine, and entered at the Great Windmill Street School, subsequently spending a year at Edinburgh, and returning to study at St. George’s Hospital, the Eye Infirmary at Moorfields, and at Bateman’s celebrated Dispensary. His diligence, both in practical medical study and in dissections, attracted the attention of the St. George’s physicians, and on the resignation of Dr. Pelham Warren, then one of the leaders of London practice, he was brought forward and elected physician to the Hospital in 1816 when only thirty years of age. His East Indian connection secured him, in 1819, the post of examining physician to the East India Company, after being some time assistant-physician. Notwithstanding his early prominence, his professional income rose but slowly, showing that neither ability nor patronage will avail greatly in competition with the established favourites. It was 1825 before Chambers’s practice amounted to £2000; and his pre-eminence was not marked till the death of Dr. Maton in 1835, and the great age of Sir Henry Halford (who died in 1844), left him in indisputed possession of the leading London practice. From 1836 to about 1851 he received in fees between seven and nine thousand guineas a year. In 1836 he was consulted by Queen Adelaide, and in 1837 was made Physician-in-Ordinary to William IV., declining knighthood, though made Commander of the Guelphic order. He was continued as Physician-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria, and his successful career was uninterrupted, except by rather frequent ill-health. About 1851, owing to the failure of his health, he retired from practice, and settled near Lymington, where he died on the 17th December 1855.
Chambers did not win his success either by writing, teaching, or discovering. In addition to a tall commanding figure, and the most agreeable, yet straightforward manners, he possessed striking decision, and pursued bold and successful plans of treatment in acute diseases. He kept himself well acquainted with the advances of others, and was early distinguished by his adopting the stethoscope. Like many men of great eminence, he was at heart exceedingly diffident, and felt acutely the responsibilities which he undertook. He was continually in fear of doing something wrong or making a mistake. Thus he undoubtedly was a most conscientious physician, and it is to be feared that he gave himself much suffering by the minutely painstaking system that he adopted. Both at the hospital and in private practice, he personally recorded the particulars of every case that he saw, together with all his prescriptions—an astounding instance of laborious effort. In this way his private practice furnished sixty-seven large quarto volumes of notes, which were every day completely written up, and carefully indexed, so that he could refer with the utmost ease to any case he had ever seen. Moreover, he made in very many instances sketch maps of the diseased organs, side by side with the description. So persistent was he in this conscientious toil, that he often continued it far into the night and even till daylight, resuming work again before nine o’clock. Ill-health was a necessary consequence, but his reliability was certain to tell in practice. He could scarcely depend on a single regular meal a day, so great was the demand for his services. He literally rushed through the streets driven post-haste at ten miles an hour. After a serious illness in 1834, through having absorbed poisonous matter from a patient who had died of pleurisy, his right hand was distorted by the results of abscesses; and it was hence vulgarly reported that his fingers had become crooked from the continual habit of taking fees. The regard he won from others may be evidenced by the fact that Sir Benjamin Brodie for some weeks visited him daily during this illness at Tunbridge Wells, when this entailed much greater loss of time than now. His liberality was well known, and this, with his frequent illnesses, caused him to accumulate no great fortune.
With regard to Sir Henry Holland, it is with regret that we own how comparatively slight are his claims to a place in the gallery of great medical men. He was accomplished beyond most men, but one is compelled to ask, what did he accomplish with his great opportunities? Whom did he teach? what did he teach? what did he discover? His travelling excursions extended over almost the whole globe except Australia. He was intimate for more than half a century with many men and women of mark on both Continents. He knew well the Presidents and statesmen of the United States; prescribed for six Prime Ministers of England, as well as for its sovereigns and princes. But even in regard to information of moment which he might justifiably have given concerning them, he has been strikingly reticent in his “Recollections of Past Life.”
Henry Holland, the son of Peter Holland, a much-respected medical practitioner, was born at Knutsford in Cheshire, on October 27, 1788. His maternal grandmother was a sister of Josiah Wedgwood, the eminent potter, and grandfather of Charles Darwin. Holland was also a cousin of Mrs. Gaskell, the author of “Mary Barton,” and biographer of Charlotte Brontë. He was educated first at Newcastle-on-Tyne under the Rev. W. Turner, and early showed his predilection for travel by making long pedestrian excursions in the neighbourhood. In 1803, he went for a year to Dr. Estlin’s school, near Bristol, where he succeeded at once to the position of head boy, left vacant by John Cam Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton, and where he also commenced his long friendship with Richard Bright, who has already been mentioned in this work. His classical and literary tastes here developed, and were further fostered by a vacation passed at Dr. Aikin’s at Stoke Newington, and in the society of his sister Mrs. Barbauld and his daughter Lucy Aikin. Still, young Holland leaned towards a commercial life, and entered a Liverpool merchant’s office, with the stipulation that he was to spend two sessions at Glasgow University. These saved him from being bound to a merchant’s desk; for after his second session, 1805-6, he sought and obtained release, and took up medicine. At Glasgow he had become intimate with William Hamilton (afterwards Sir William), his discussions with whom had doubtless a considerable influence on his mental development. Holland’s literary talent already began to show itself, for he was selected at the age of eighteen to draw up a Statistical Report on the Agriculture of Cheshire for Government, and received for it £200, double the sum proposed.
In October 1806, Holland entered at the Edinburgh Medical School; but he did not confine himself exclusively to one school, for he spent two succeeding winters in the Borough Schools of London, Guy’s and St. Thomas’s, and in private study. Resuming at Edinburgh, he took his degree in 1811. Travel had already found him apt; in 1810 he went to Iceland with Sir George Mackenzie and Richard Bright, and contributed considerable portions to the narrative of the expedition. Holland early became associated with the Whig section of Edinburgh society, but he saw much of its general aspects, and he knew Walter Scott, Dugald Stewart, Francis Jeffrey, Henry Erskine, and many others known to fame. He had already made the acquaintance of Maria Edgeworth during a visit to Ireland; and her letters to him would in themselves fill a volume. Everywhere the bright pleasing intelligent youth was welcomed. As he could not yet be admitted by the College of Physicians owing to his lack of years, he undertook extensive travels on the Continent, venturing into little-known regions, and published his “Travels in Portugal, Sicily, the Ionian Islands, and Greece,” in 1815, a work which yet further increased his fashionable repute. Mrs. Piozzi, writing from Bath in 1815, says, “We have had a fine Dr. Holland here. He has seen and written about the Ionian Islands, and means now to practise as a physician—exchanging the Cyclades, say we wits and wags, for the sick ladies. We made quite a lion of the man. I was invited to every house he visited at for the last three days. So I got the queue du lion, despairing of le cœur.”
Holland had spent much time in the military hospitals in Portugal during his travels, and gained valuable experience. In Turkey he came into contact with Ali Pasha, through whom he was deprived of most of his papers relating to Albania, a mortifying loss at the time. After his return home he speedily formed friendships with Lords Lansdowne, Aberdeen, and Holland, which continued uninterrupted save by death, and of course led to his intimacy with many other persons of note, traits in whose characters are recorded in the “Recollections.” We cannot here follow the incidents of the brilliant social life into which Henry Holland entered with so much zest. Suffice it to mention that he was elected to the Royal Society in 1816, and admitted on the same day as Lord Byron, who on that occasion made his only visit. Henry Holland was an almost constant guest at Holland House. In the summer of 1814 he became domestic medical attendant on the Princess (afterwards Queen) Caroline, to accompany her during her first year of travel on the Continent. This situation became one of extreme delicacy, and its importance was very manifest at her trial years afterwards, where Dr. Holland’s evidence, declaring that he had never seen anything improper or derogatory in her behaviour to Bergami or any other person, proved of extreme weight in her behalf.
A man of such connections could not fail to gain almost as much practice as he liked. His visits to Spa for four successive years, after the London season, strengthened his professional prospects, and his fourth year’s practice brought him over £1200. In a few years he was able to resolve that his professional income should never exceed £5000, and that he would give to study, recreation, or travel all his surplus time. Thus happily placed, Henry Holland became the friend of every man of note, the patron of science at the Royal Institution, of which he was long president—but not the hospital physician, the clinical teacher, the original writer, the promoter of medical reform, or the habitué of the medical societies. He dined out, and never reproved his patients for the lapses from physiological prudence which he observed at the table. The “frequent half hour of genial conversation” was what he bestowed and was most capable of bestowing on his patients. Perhaps he thereby solaced their days of tedium or hypochondria as well as others who might have sought to root up their habits or impart tone to their minds with more ruthless energy. “When Lady Palmerston was suffering from an illness that occasioned some alarm to her friends,” said the Times, in its obituary notice of Holland, “one of them, meeting the late Dr. Fergusson, asked anxiously how she was. ‘I can’t give you a better notion of her recovery,’ was the reply, ‘than by telling you that I have just received my last fee, and that she is now left entirely to Holland.’” On this being repeated to Lord Palmerston his lordship mused a little, and then said, “Ah! I see what he means. When you trust yourself to Holland, you should have a superfluous stock of health for him to work upon.” Holland himself had this superfluous stock of health. When over eighty he writes: “A frequent source of amusement to myself is my incapacity for walking slowly; and the sort of compulsion I even now feel to pass those immediately before me in the street, and to take the diagonal instead of the two sides of a square, whenever this is the alternative. When I cease to take the diagonal (often a dirty one) instead of the side pavements, I shall consider that I have gone a step downwards in the path of life.” His excursions were almost all taken alone; but he evidently seldom put himself out of the reach of general society, as good as the neighbourhood afforded. He was no recluse, yet apparently not a man of a few warm strong personal friendships. If he was we find no record of it. From his utter reticence about his medical contemporaries, we should judge that he did not at bottom appreciate them as they deserved.