All eager to perform their part.—P. [64.]
If there is safety in the multitude of counsellors, Charles did not find it in the multitude of physicians. Nine were in attendance, all men of eminence; the presence of the least of whom, Le Sage would have said, was fully adequate to account for the subsequent catastrophe. They were Sir Thomas Millington, Sir Thomas Witherby, Sir Charles Scarborough, Sir Edmund King, Doctors Berwick, Charlton, Lower, Short, and Le Fevre. They signed a declaration, that the king had died of an apoplexy.
The joyful short-lived news soon spread around.—P. 65.
An article was published in the Gazette, on the third day of the king's illness, importing, "That his physicians now conceived him to be in a state of safety, and that in a few days he would be freed from his indisposition."[61] North tells us, however, on the authority of his brother, the Lord Keeper, that the only hope which the physicians afforded to the council, was an assurance, (joyfully communicated,) that the king was ill of a violent fever. The council seeing little consolation in these tidings, one of the medical gentlemen explained, by saying, that they now knew what they had to do, which was to administer the cortex. This was done while life lasted,[62] although some of the physicians seem to have deemed the prescription improper; in which case, Charles, after escaping the poniards and pistols of the Jesuits, may be said to have fallen a victim to their bark.
And he who most performed, and promised less,
Even Short himself, forsook the unequal strife.—P. [67].
Dr Thomas Short, an eminent physician, who came into the court practice when Dr Richard Lower, who formerly enjoyed it, embraced the political principles of the Whig party. Short, a Roman Catholic, and himself a Tory, was particularly acceptable to the Tories. To this circumstance he probably owes the compliment paid him by our author, and another from Lord Mulgrave to the same purpose. Otway reckons, among his selected friends,