A Book About Doctors

by John Cordy Jeaffreson

"'You are not so ignorant as to be a stranger to the character of Æsculapius, as the patron and most successful of all who profess the Art of Medicine. But as most of his operations are owing to a natural sagacity or impulse, he has very little troubled himself with the Doctrine of Drugs, but has always given Nature more room to help herself than any of her learned assistants; and consequently has done greater wonders than in the power of Art to perform; for which reason he is half deified by the people, and has ever been courted by all the world, just as if he were a seventh son.

"'It happened that the charming Hebe was reduc'd, by a long and violent fever, to the most extreme danger of Death; and when all skill failed, they sent for Æsculapius. The renowned artist was touched with the deepest compassion, to see the faded charms and faint bloom of Hebe; and had a generous concern, too, in beholding a struggle, not between Life, but rather between Youth, and Death. All his skill and his passion tended to the recovery of Hebe, beautiful even in sickness; but, alas! the unhappy physician knew not that in all his care he was only sharpening darts for his own destruction. In a word, his fortune was the same with that of the statuary who fell in love with an image of his own making; and the unfortunate Æsculapius is become the patient of her whom he lately recovered. Long before this, Æsculapius was far gone in the unnecessary and superfluous amusements of old age, in the increase of unwieldy stores, and the provision in the midst of an incapacity of enjoyment, of what he had for a supply of more wants than he had calls for in Youth itself. But these low considerations are now no more; and Love has taken place of Avarice, or rather is become an Avarice of another kind, which still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the metamorphosis: the anxious mean cares of an usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover. "Behold," says the aged Æsculapius, "I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on Pills? Yet, O Fate! for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned in gold, clasp'd in gold, without having any value for that beloved metal, but as it adorns the person and laces the hat of the dying lover. I ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me but gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia! that is all I implore."' When Æsculapius had finished his complaint, Pacolet went on in deep morals on the uncertainty of riches, with this remarkable explanation—'O wealth! how impatient art thou! And how little dost thou supply us with real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee, for the love of what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!'"

Seven days after the Tatler resumed the attack, but with less happy effect. In this picture, the justice of which was not questioned, even by the Doctor's admirers, the avarice of the veteran is not less insisted on as the basis of his character, than his amorousness is displayed as a ludicrous freak of vanity. Indeed, love of money was the master-defect of Radcliffe's disposition. Without a child, or a prospect of offspring, he screwed and scraped in every direction. Even his debaucheries had an alloy of discomfort that does not customarily mingle in the dissipations of the rich. The flavour of the money each bottle cost gave ungrateful smack to his wine. He had numerous poor relations, of whom he took, during his life, little or no notice. Even his sisters he kept at arm's distance, lest they should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his pockets. It is true, he provided liberally for them at his death—leaving to the one (a married lady—Mrs. Hannah Redshaw) a thousand a year for life, and to the other (a spinster lady) an income of half that amount as long as she lived. But that he treated them with unbrotherly neglect there is no doubt.

After his decease, a letter was found in his closet, directed to his unmarried sister, Millicent Radcliffe, in which, with contrition, and much pathos, he bids her farewell. "You will find," says he, in that epistle, "by my will that I have taken better care of you than perhaps you might expect from my former treatment of you; for which, with my dying breath, I most heartily ask pardon. I had indeed acted the brother's part much better, in making a handsome settlement on you while living, than after my decease; and can plead nothing in excuse, but that the love of money, which I have emphatically known to be the root of all evil, was too predominant over me. Though, I hope, I have made some amends for that odious sin of covetousness, in my last dispositions of those worldly goods which it pleased the great Dispenser of Providence to bless me with."

What made this meanness of disposition in money matters the more remarkable was, that he was capable of occasional munificence, on a scale almost beyond his wealth, and also of a stoical fortitude under any reverse of fortune that chanced to deprive him of some of his beloved guineas.

In the year 1704, at a general collection for propagating the Gospel in foreign parts, he settled on the Society established for that purpose £50 per annum for ever. And this noble gift he unostentatiously made under an assumed name. In the same year he presented £520 to the Bishop of Norwich, to be distributed among the poor non-juring clergy; and this donation he also desired should be kept a secret from the world.

His liberality to Oxford was far from being all of the post-mortem sort. In 1687 he presented the chapel of University College with an east window, representing, in stained glass, the Nativity, and having the following inscription:—"D.D. Johan Radcliffe, M.D., hujus Collegii quondam Socius, Anno Domini MDCLXXXVII." In 1707 he gave Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, bills for £300, drawn under the assumed name of Francis Andrews, on Waldegrave the goldsmith, of Russell Street, Covent Garden, for the relief of distressed Scotch Episcopal clergy.

As another instance of how his niggard nature could allow him to do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame, his liberality to James Drake, the Tory writer, may be mentioned. Drake was a physician, as well as a political author. As the latter, he was well liked, as the former he was honestly hated by Radcliffe. Two of a trade—where one of the two is a John Radcliffe—can never agree. Each of the two doctors had done his utmost to injure the reputation of the other. But when Drake, broken in circumstances by a political persecution, was in sore distress from want of money, Radcliffe put fifty guineas into a lady's hands, and begged her to convey it to Drake. "Let him," said Radcliffe, with the delicacy of a fine heart, "by no means be told whence it comes. He is a gentleman, and has often done his best to hurt me. He could, therefore, by no means brook the receipt of a benefit from a person whom he had used all possible means to make an enemy."

After such instances of Ratcliffe's generosity, it may seem unnecessary to give more proofs of the existence of that quality, disguised though it was by miserly habits. His friend Nutley, a loose rollicking gentleman about town, a barrister without practice, a man of good family, and no fortune, a jovial dog, with a jest always on his lips, wine in his head, and a death's-head grinning over each shoulder [such bachelors may still be found in London], was in this case the object of the doctor's benevolence. Driven by duns and tippling to the borders of distraction, Nutley crept out of his chambers under the cover of night to the "Mitre Tavern," and called for "a bottle." "A bottle" with Nutley meant "many bottles." The end of it was that the high-spirited gentleman fell down in a condition of —— well! in a condition that Templars, in this age of earnest purpose and decent morals, would blush to be caught in. Mr. Nutley was taken hold of by the waiters, and carried up-stairs to bed.

The next morning the merry fellow is in the saddest of all possible humours. The memory of a few little bills, the holders of which are holding a parliament on his stair-case in Pump-court; the recollection that he has not a guinea left—either to pacify those creditors with, or to use in paying for the wine consumed over night; a depressing sense that the prominent features of civilized existence are tax-gatherers and sheriff's officers; a head that seems to be falling over one side of the pillow, whilst the eyes roll out on the other;—all these afflict poor Mr. Nutley! A knock at the door, and the landlady enters. The landlady is the Widow Watts, daughter of the widow Bowles, also in the same line. As now, so a hundred and fifty years ago, ladies in licensed victualling circles played tricks with their husbands' night-caps—killed them with kindness, and reigned in their stead. The widow Watts has a sneaking fondness for poor Mr. Nutley, and is much affected when, in answer to her inquiry how "his honour feels his-self," he begins to sob like a child, narrate the troubles of his infancy, the errors of his youth, and the sorrows of his riper age. Mistress Watts is alarmed. Only to think of Mr. Nutley going on like that, talking of his blessed mother who had been dead these twenty years, and vowing he'd kill himself, because he is an outcast, and no better than a disgrace to his family. "To think of it! and only yesterday he were the top of company, and would have me drink his own honourable health in a glass of his own wine." Mistress Watts sends straightway for Squire Nutley's friend, the Doctor. When Radcliffe makes his appearance, he sees the whole case at a glance, rallies Billy Nutley about his rascally morals, estimates his assertion that "it's only his liver a little out of order" exactly at its worth, and takes his leave shortly, saying to himself, "If poor Billy could only be freed from the depression caused by his present pecuniary difficulties, he would escape for this once a return of the deliri...." At the end of another half hour, a goldsmith's man enters the bed-room, and puts into Nutley's hand a letter and a bag of gold containing 200 guineas. The epistle is from Radcliffe, begging his friend to accept the money, and to allow the donor to send him in a few days 300 more of the same coins. Such was the physician's prescription, in dispensing which he condescended to act as his own apothecary. Bravo, doctor!—who of us shall say which of the good deeds—thy gift to Billy Nutley or thy princely bequest to Oxford—has the better right to be regarded as the offspring of sincere benevolence? Some—and let no "fie!" be cried upon them—will find in this story more to make them love thy memory than they have ever found in that noble library whose dome stands up amidst the towers, and steeples, and sacred walls of beloved Oxford.