In considering the growth of medical knowledge in London, we should do very wrong to omit mentioning the Royal Society, in the establishment of which Charles II. seems to have taken a lively interest. The first informal meetings of those who afterwards formed the nucleus of this important Society were held at Wadham College, Oxford; and after the Restoration, at Gresham College, London. Among those mentioned by Chamberlayne as the founders are Robert Boyle, Sir W. Petty, the Bishop of Salisbury, the Dean of Wells, Dr. Wallis, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Willis, Sir Christopher Wren, Lord Brouncker, John Evelyn, Thomas Henshaw, Sir George Ent, and Dr. Croone. The actual foundation of the Royal Society by charter from the King took place on April 22nd, 1663, and amongst the powers granted to the Society by their charter was that of taking and anatomising the dead bodies of persons put to death by order of the law. Their recognised place of meeting was Gresham College, but after the fire they met for a time at Arundel House. “In their discoursings,” we are told, “they lay aside all set speeches, and eloquent harangues (as fit to be banished out of all civil assemblies, as a thing found by woeful experience, especially in England, fatal to peace and good manners), and everyone endeavours to express his opinion or desire in the plainest and most concise manner.” Even at the present day there are not wanting those who sneer at the “ologies,” and it is therefore not surprising that in 1682 it should have been necessary to meet criticism by putting forward a defence of this Society. “But what advantage and benefit,” says Chamberlayne, “appears after so many meetings? It is true they have made many experiments of Light (as the excellent Lord Bacon calls them), and perhaps not so many experiments of fruit and profit; yet without doubt some may hereafter find out no small use and benefit even in those Luciferous experiments which now seem only curious and delightful; but it is also as true that the Royal Society hath made a great number of experiments and inventions very profitable and advantageous to mankind. They have mightily improved the naval, civil, and military architecture. They have advanced the art, conduct, and security of navigation. They have not only put this kingdom upon planting woods, groves, orchards, vineyards, evergreens, but also Ireland, Scotland, New England, Virginia, Jamaica, Barbadoes, all our plantations, begin to feel the influence of this Society.” At Gresham College they had a library, the gift of the Duke of Norfolk, and a repository or museum, filled with natural curiosities.
GRESHAM COLLEGE.
This allusion to the Royal Society has brought to our notice Gresham College, the first home of the Society. Pepys often alludes to “The College,” meaning thereby the meetings of the Royal Society in Gresham College. This College, which ought to have been the nucleus of a university of London, was founded by Sir Thomas Gresham, who was born in 1519, and flourished in the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. He was himself a university man, having been at Caius College, Cambridge, and he amassed great wealth as a merchant and financier. He died in 1579, and by his will he left the bulk of his property to his widow, with the stipulation that at her death his house in Bishopsgate Street should be converted into a college, and that it should have for its endowment the rents arising from the shops in the Royal Exchange, which in Gresham’s time amounted to £700 a year. The Corporation and the Mercers’ Company were the trustees of this fund. There were seven endowed professorships—viz., astronomy, physic, law, geometry, divinity, rhetoric, and music. Gresham’s house in Bishopsgate Street appears to have been admirably adapted for a college. It was quadrangular, and had a garden and planted walks, so that the quiet and seclusion which are essential to study might have been obtained there. Be the cause what it may, the College, which escaped the fire, did not flourish.
GRESHAM COLLEGE.
The Royal Society left it in 1710, and in 1768 Gresham House was pulled down to make way for an Excise Office, the Government granting £500 a year in exchange for the house and land. After this date the lectures were given in a room of the Royal Exchange, and in 1843 the present Gresham College was built at the corner of Basinghall Street, the house being outwardly not to be distinguished from the mercantile houses which abound in the city. The cause of the failure of Gresham College is doubtful. Dr. Johnson was of opinion that it was due to the fact that the students paid no fees, and therefore a powerful stimulus to the professors was wanting. The condition that the lectures were to be given in Latin as well as English, a condition reasonable enough in Gresham’s time, has served as a clog; but probably the chief cause is to be found in the physical and moral atmosphere of the city. The corner of Basinghall Street is a very different place from those “groves of the Academy where Plato taught the truth.” Here every creature you meet appears to be in a hurry—certainly in too great a hurry to get wisdom, which, says the son of Sirach, “cometh by opportunities of leisure.”
If universities, in the proper sense, have languished in London, the same cannot be said of learned societies. London, the great exchange and mart of the world, has assisted by its numerous and flourishing societies in the exchange of knowledge and ideas among learned men. The Medical Society of London was founded in 1773 in Bolt Court, Fleet Street. The Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society was founded in 1805. The other medical societies are all recent creations.
Thus it appears that the College of Physicians and the Company of Barbers and Surgeons, and also Gresham College, were the earliest schools of medicine in London, the only places where anything approaching to systematic instruction was given.
THE EARLIEST HOSPITALS.
It was scarcely before the beginning of the eighteenth century that the hospitals of London began to be of any importance in the teaching of medicine. The earliest hospitals in London were leper hospitals, for at one time leprosy abounded in this city. St. James’s Palace is built on the site of a hospital for “maidens that were leprous;” the name Spitalfields reminds us that at one time there was a “spittle” here for lepers. There were other hospitals of a similar kind in Southwark and Kingsland. The next hospitals were mostly institutions founded by the religious houses, and were very much of the nature of almshouses, where the wretched, unfortunate, and diseased were received for a time. The two most important of these were St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and St. Thomas’s Hospital, and a few words as to their origin will not, I think, be uninteresting.