A Book About Doctors

by John Cordy Jeaffreson

John Archer, the author of "Every Man his own Doctor," and "Secrets Disclosed," was an advocate of generous diet and enlightened sensuality. His place of business was "a chamber in a Sadler's howse over against the Black Horse nigh Charing-cross," where his hours of attendance for some years were from 11 A. M. to 5 P. M. each day. On setting up a house at Knightsbridge, where he resided in great style, he shortened the number of hours daily passed in London. In 1684 he announced in one of his works—"For these and other Directions you may send to the Author, at his chamber against the Mews by Charing-cross, who is certainly there from twelve to four, at other times at his house at Knightsbridge, being a mile from Charing-cross, where is good air for cure of consumptions, melancholy, and other infirmities." He had also a business established in Winchester Street, near Gresham College, next door to the Fleece Tavern. Indeed, physician-in-ordinary to the King though he was, he did not think it beneath him to keep a number of apothecaries' shops, and, like Whitaker, to live by the sale of drugs as well as fees. His cordial dyet drink was advertised as costing 2s. 6d. per quart; for a box containing 30 morbus pills, the charge was 5s.; 40 corroborating pills were to be had for the same sum. Like Dr. Everard, he recommended his patients to smoke, saying that "tobacco smoke purified the air from infectious malignancy by its fragrancy, sweetened the breath, strengthened the brain and memory, and revived the sight to admiration." He sold tobacco, of a superior quality to the ordinary article of commerce, at 2s. and 1s. an ounce. "The order of taking it is like other tobacco at any time; its virtues may be perceived by taking one pipe, after which you will spit more, and your mouth will be dryer than after common tobacco, which you may moisten by drinking any warm drink, as coffee, &c., or with sugar candy, liquorish, or a raisin, and you will find yourself much refreshed."

Whilst Whitaker and Archer were advising men to smoke and drink, another physician of the Court was inventing a stomach-brush, in some respects much like the bottle-brush with which fly-poison ought to be taken from the interior of black bottles before wine is committed to them. This instrument was pushed down the gullet, and then poked about and turned round, much in the same way as a chimney-sweeper's brush is handled by a dexterous operator on soot. It was recommended that gentlemen should thus sweep out their insides not oftener than once a week, but not less frequently than once a month. The curious may find not only a detailed description but engraved likeness of this remarkable stomach-brush in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xx., for the year 1750.

It would be unfair to take leave of Dr. Archer without mentioning his three inventions, on which he justly prided himself not a little. He constructed a hot steam-bath, an oven "which doth with a small faggot bake a good quantity of anything," and "a compleat charriot that shall with any ordinary horse run swift with four or five people within, and there is place for more without, all which one horse can as easily draw as two horses." In these days of vapour baths, bachelors' kettles, and broughams, surely Dr. Archer ought to have a statue by the side of Jenner in Trafalgar Square.

The doctors of Anne's time were of even looser morals than their immediate predecessors. In taverns, over wine, they received patients and apothecaries. It became fashionable (a fashion that has lasted down to the present day) for a physician to scratch down his prescriptions illegibly; the mode, in all probability, arising from the fact that a doctor's hand was usually too unsteady to write distinctly.

Freind continually visited his patients in a state of intoxication. To one lady of high rank he came in such a state of confusion that when in her room he could only grumble to himself, "Drunk—drunk—drunk, by God!" Fortunately the fair patient was suffering from the same malady as her doctor, who (as she learnt from her maid on returning to consciousness) had made the above bluff comment on her case, and then had gone away. The next day, Freind was sitting in a penitent state over his tea, debating what apology he should offer to his aristocratic patient, when he was relieved from his perplexity by the arrival of a note from the lady herself enclosing a handsome fee, imploring her dear Dr. Freind to keep her secret, and begging him to visit her during the course of the day.

On another occasion Freind wrote a prescription for a member of an important family, when his faculties were so evidently beyond his control that Mead was sent for. On arriving, Mead, with a characteristic delicacy towards his professional friend, took up the tipsy man's prescription, and having looked at it, said, "'Pon my honour, Dr. Freind can write a better prescription when drunk than I can when sober."

Gibbons—the "Nurse Gibbons" of our old friend Radcliffe—was a deep drinker, disgusting, by the grossness of his debaucheries, the polite and epicurean Garth. But Gibbons did something for English dinner-tables worth remembering. He brought into domestic use the mahogany with which we have so many pleasant associations. His brother, a West Indian Captain, brought over some of the wood as ballast, thinking it might possibly turn to use. At first the carpenters, in a truly conservative spirit, refused to have anything to do with the "new wood," saying it was too hard for their tools. Dr. Gibbons, however, had first a candle-box and then a bureau made for Mrs. Gibbons out of the condemned material. The bureau so pleased his friends, amongst whom was the Duchess of Buckingham, that her Grace ordered a similar piece of furniture, and introduced the wood into high life, where it quickly became the fashion.

Of Radcliffe's drunkenness mention is made elsewhere. As an eater, he was a gourmand, not a gourmet. When Prince Eugene of Savoy came over to England on a diplomatic mission, his nephew, the Chevalier de Soissons, fell into the fashion of the town, roaming it at night in search of frays—a roaring, swaggering mohock. The sprightly Chevalier took it into his head that it would be a pleasant thing to thrash a watchman; so he squared up to one, and threatened to kill him. Instead of succumbing, the watchman returned his assailant's blows, and gave him an awful thrashing. The next day, what with the mauling he had undergone, and what with delirium tremens, the merry roisterer was declared by his physician, Sieur Swartenburgh, to be in a dying state. Radcliffe was called in, and acting on his almost invariable rule, told Prince Eugene that the young man must die, because Swartenburgh had maltreated him. The prophecy was true, if the criticism was not. The Chevalier died, and was buried amongst the Ormond family in Westminster Abbey—it being given out to the public that he had died of small-pox.

Prince Eugene conceived a strong liking for Radcliffe, and dined with him at the Doctor's residence. The dinner Radcliffe put before his guest is expressive of the coarseness both of the times and the man. On the table the only viands were barons of beef, jiggets of mutton, legs of pork, and such other ponderous masses of butcher's stuff, which no one can look at without discomfort, when the first edge has been taken off the appetite. Prince Eugene expressed himself delighted with "the food and liquors!"

George Fordyce, like Radcliffe, was fond of substantial fare. For more than twenty years he dined daily at Dolly's Chop-house. The dinner he there consumed was his only meal during the four-and-twenty hours, but its bulk would have kept a boa-constrictor happy for a twelvemonth. Four o'clock was the hour at which the repast commenced, when, punctual to a minute, the Doctor seated himself at a table specially reserved for him, and adorned with a silver tankard of strong ale, a bottle of port-wine, and a measure containing a quarter of a pint of brandy. Before the dinner was first put on, he had one light dish of a broiled fowl, or a few whitings. Having leisurely devoured this plate, the doctor took one glass of brandy, and asked for his steak. The steak was always a prime one, weighing one pound and a half. When the man of science had eaten the whole of it, he took the rest of his brandy, then drank his tankard of heady ale, and, lastly, sipped down his bottle of port. Having brought his intellects, up or down, to the standard of his pupils, he rose and walked down to his house in Essex Street to give his six o'clock lecture on Chemistry.