Party-principles were far from influencing his attachments; though he was himself a zealous whig, he was equally the intimate of Garth, Arbuthnot, and Friend: his connections, more especially, with the latter, are manifested not only in their mutual writings, (of which, more hereafter) but in that when Dr. Friend was committed a prisoner to the Tower in 1723, upon a suggestion of his being concerned in the practices of Bishop Atterbury against the government, Dr. Mead became one of his securities to procure his enlargement.
In 1719, an epidemic fever made great ravages at Marseilles; and tho’ the French physicians were very unwilling to admit, this disease to have been of foreign extraction or contagious; yet our government wisely thought it necessary, to consider of such measures as might be the most likely to prevent our being visited by so dangerous a neighbour; or in failure thereof, to put an early stop to the progress of the infection. Dr. Mead, whose deserved reputation may not unjustly be said to have merited that mark of distinction, was consulted on these critical and important points, by command of their excellencies, the lords justices of the kingdom, in his majesty’s absence: how equal he was to this momentous talk, sufficiently appears from the discourse he published on that occasion: the approbation this performance met with, may be estimated from the reception it universally found; seven impressions were sold of it in the space of one year, and in the beginning of 1722, the author gave an eighth, to which he prefixed a long preface, particularly calculated to refute what had been advanced in France, concerning the absence of contagion in the malady that had afflicted them: he also now added a more distinct description of the plague, and its causes; and confirmed the utility of the measures he had recommended, for preventing its extension, from examples of good success, where the same had been put in practice: to these he has likewise annexed, a short chapter relating to the cure of this deplorable affliction.—In 1744, this work was carried to a ninth edition, wherein, to use the doctor’s own expression, he has “here and there added some new strokes of reasoning, and, as the painters say, retouched the ornaments, and heightened the colouring of the piece.” Here it may not be improper to take notice, that it is in this last impression of his discourse on the plague, that our author appears to have first adopted his theory of the properties and affections of the nervous fluid, or animal spirits, upon which he has also founded his latter reasonings on the subject of poisons, as well as in respect to the influence of the sun and moon on human bodies.
In 1723, Dr. Mead was appointed to speak the anniversary Harveian oration, before the members of the college of physicians, when, ever studious of the honour of his profession, he applied himself to wipe off the obloquy, thought to be reflected upon it, by those who maintained the practice of physic at Rome, to have been confined to slaves or freed-men, and not deemed worthy the attention of an old Roman: which oration was made publick in 1724, and to it was annexed, a dissertation upon some coins, struck by the Smyrnæans, in honour of physicians.[13]
This publication was smartly attacked by Dr. Conyers Middleton in 1726,[14] who was replied to by several, and particularly, as it is said, by Dr. John Ward, professor of rhetoric in Gresham College. This gentleman was supposed by his opponent, to have been employed by Dr. Mead, who did not chuse to enter personally, into this little-important debate; upon which presumption, Dr. Middleton published a defence of his former dissertation in the succeeding year;[15] wherein he treats his respondents with no little contempt.[16] The merits of this dispute are not intended to be here discussed, but it may not be amiss to observe, that however displeased Dr. Middleton may have been with his antagonists; in a work published several years after, he speaks of our author in the most respectful manner. In treating of an antique picture, he says, he believes it to be the first, and only one of the sort ever brought to England, “donec Meadius noster, artis medicæ decus, qui vita revera nobilis, vel principibus in republica viris, exemplum præbet, pro eo, quo omnibus fere præstat artium veterum amore, alias postea quasdam, & splendidiores, opinor, Roma quoque deportandas curavit.”[17]
In respect to this controversy, our author’s eulogist[18] takes notice that there is reason to believe, that Dr. Mead himself had some thoughts of more determinately explaining or confirming his sentiments upon this subject, in a work which he left unfinished, and which was designed to have been intitled, medicina vetus collectitia ex auctoribus antiquis non medicis.
However, this literary altercation, did not in the least affect our author’s medical reputation, for in 1727, soon after his present Majesty’s accession to the throne, whom he had the honour to serve in the same capacity while prince of Wales, he was appointed one of the royal physicians, and he had the happiness to see his two sons-in-law, Dr. Willmot and Dr. Nichols, his co-adjutors in that eminent station.
After having spent near fifty years in the constant hurry of an extensive and successful practice; after having lived (truely according to his own motto, non sibi sed toti) beyond that period assigned by the royal psalmist for the general term of mortality; when the infirmities of age would no longer permit him the free exercise of those faculties, which he had hitherto so advantageously employed in the service of the community, far from sinking into a supine indolence, or assuming a supercilious disregard of the world, he still continued his application, even in the decline of life, to the improvement of physic, and the benefit of mankind.
When he was grown unequal to the discharge of more active functions, and a retirement was become absolutely necessary, he took the opportunity of revising all his former writings: to this retreat therefore, and the happy protraction of so useful a life, the world is indebted for the improvements that appear in the latter editions of those works, which have already been taken notice of. It was not till now that our author could find leisure to perfect his discourse on the small pox and measles,[19] which had been begun by him many years before.
As it was the principal design of these memoirs, to lay before the public a concise and comprehensive history of Dr. Mead’s writings, the occasion of this universally admired performance, cannot be better given than from the author’s own account, contained in the preface to it, in which also his connections with, and attachment to Dr. Friend, are further illustrated.
It appears that Dr. Mead, from having observed in the year 1708, that some of his patients in St. Thomas’s Hospital, recovered from a very malignant sort of the small pox, even beyond expectation, by a looseness seizing them on the ninth or tenth day of the disease, and sometimes earlier, first took the hint to try what might be done by opening the body with a gentle purge, on the decline of the distemper; finding the success of this experiment in a great measure answerable to his wishes, he communicated this method of practice to Dr. Friend, and met with his approbation.