A Book About Doctors

by John Cordy Jeaffreson

Charmed with the reply, Radcliffe exclaimed,

"By ——, I'll recommend you to my patients."

The promise was kept; and Mead endeavoured to repay the worldly advancement with spiritual council. "I remember," says Kennett (vide Lansdowne MSS., Brit. Mus.), "what Dr Mede has told to several of his friends, that he fell much into the favour of Dr Radcliffe a few years before his death, and visited him often at Carshalton, where he observed upon occasion that there was no Bible to be found in the house. Dr Mede had a mind to supply that defect, without taking any notice of it; and therefore one day carried down with him a very beautiful Bible that he had lately bought, which had lain in a closet of King William for his Majesty's own use, and left it as a curiosity that he had picked up by the way. When Dr Mede made the last visit to him he found that Dr R. had read in it as far as the middle of the Book of Exodus, from whence it might be inferred that he had never before read the Scriptures; as I doubt must be inferred of Dr Linacre, from the account given by Sir John Cheke."

The allusion to "the kingdom of Alexander the Great" reminds one of Arbuthnot's letter to Swift, in which the writer concludes his sketch of the proposed map of diseases for Martinus Scriblerus with—"Then the great diseases are like capital cities, with their symptoms all like streets and suburbs, with the roads that lead to other diseases. It is thicker set with towns than any Flanders map you ever saw. Radcliffe is painted at the corner of the map, contending for the universal empire of this world, and the rest of the physicians opposing his ambitious designs, with a project of a treaty of partition to settle peace."

As a practitioner, Radcliffe served the public as well as he did his own interests. The violent measures of bleeding, and the exhibition of reducing medicines, which constituted the popular practice even to the present generation, he regarded with distrust in some cases and horror in others. There is a good story told of him, that well illustrates his disapproval of a kill-or-cure system, and his hatred of Nurse Gibbons. John Bancroft, the eminent surgeon, who resided in Russell Street, Covent Garden, had a son attacked with inflammation of the lungs. Gibbons was called in, and prescribed the most violent remedies, or rather the most virulent irritants. The child became rapidly worse, and Radcliffe was sent for. "I can do nothing, sir," observed the doctor, after visiting his patient, "for the poor little boy's preservation. He is killed to all intents and purposes. But if you have any thoughts of putting a stone over him, I'll help you to an inscription." The offer was accepted, and over the child's grave, in Covent Garden churchyard, was placed a stone sculptured with a figure of a child laying one hand on his side, and saying, "Hic dolor," and pointing with the other to a death's head on which was engraved, "Ibi medicus." This is about the prettiest professional libel which we can point to in all the quarrels of the Faculty.

The uses to which the doctor applied his wealth every one knows. Notwithstanding his occasional acts of munificence, and a loss of £5000 in an East Indian venture, into which Betterton, the tragedian, seduced him, his accumulations were very great. In his will, after liberally providing for the members of his family and his dependents, he devoted his acquisitions to the benefit of the University of Oxford. From them have proceeded the Radcliffe Library, the Radcliffe Infirmary, the Radcliffe Observatory, and the Radcliffe Travelling Fellowships. It is true that nothing has transpired in the history of these last-mentioned endowments to justify us in reversing the sentiment of Johnson, who remarked to Boswell: "It is wonderful how little good Radcliffe's Travelling Fellowships have done. I know nothing that has been imported by them."

After lying in state at his own residence, and again in the University, Radcliffe's body was interred, with great pomp, in St. Mary's Church, Oxford. The royal gift of so large an estate (which during life he had been unable thoroughly to enjoy) to purchase a library, the contents of which he at no time could have read, of course provoked much comment. It need not be said that the testator's memory was, for the most part, extolled to the skies. He had died rich—a great virtue in itself. He was dead; and as men like to deal out censure as long as it can cause pain, and scatter praise when it can no longer create happiness, Radcliffe, the physician, the friend of suffering humanity, the benefactor of ancient and Tory Oxford, was spoken of in "most handsome terms." One could hardly believe that this great good man, this fervent Christian and sublime patriot, was the same man as he whom Steele had ridiculed for servile vanity, and to bring whom into contempt a play was written, and publicly acted, only ten years before, to the intense delight of the Duchess of Marlborough, and the applauding maids of honour.

The philosophic Mandeville, far from approving the behaviour of the fickle multitude, retained his old opinion of the doctor, and gave it to the world in his "Essay on Charity and Charity Schools." "That a man," writes Mandeville, "with small skill in physic, and hardly any learning, should by vile arts get into practice, and lay up great wealth, is no mighty wonder; but that he should so deeply work himself into the good opinion of the world as to gain the general esteem of a nation, and establish a reputation beyond all his contemporaries, with no other qualities but a perfect knowledge of mankind, and a capacity of making the most of it, is something extraordinary.

"If a man arrived to such a height of glory should be almost distracted with pride—sometime give his attendance on a servant, or any mean person, for nothing and at the same time neglect a nobleman that gives exhorbitant fees—at other times refuse to leave his bottle for his business, without any regard to the quality of the persons that sent for him, or the danger they are in; if he should be surly and morose, affect to be an humourist, treat his patients like dogs, though people of distinction, and value no man but what would deify him, and never call in question the certainty of his oracles; if he should insult all the world, affront the first nobility, and extend his insolence even to the royal family; if to maintain, as well as to increase, the fame of his sufficiency, he should scorn to consult his betters, on what emergency soever, look down with contempt on the most deserving of his profession, and never confer with any other physician but what will pay homage to his genius, creep to his humour, and ever approach him with all the slavish obsequiousness a court flatterer can treat a prince with; if a man in his life-time should discover, on the one hand, such manifest symptoms of superlative pride, and an insatiable greediness after wealth at the same time; and, on the other, no regard to religion or affection to his kindred, no compassion to the poor, and hardly any humanity to his fellow-creatures; if he gave no proofs that he loved his country, had a public spirit, or was a lover of the arts, of books, or of literature—what must we judge of his motive, the principle he acted from, when, after his death, we find that he has left a trifle among his relations who stood in need of it, and an immense treasure to a University that did not want it.

"Let a man be as charitable as it is possible for him to be, without forfeiting his reason or good sense, can he think otherwise, but that this famous physician did, in the making of his will, as in everything else, indulge his darling passion, entertaining his vanity with the happiness of the contrivance?"