From an engraving by James Ward of a portrait painted by Sir William Beechey, R.A.
Thomas Linacre (1460–1524) was born at Canterbury of parents who have eluded research, and his connexion with the old family that took its name (Linacre = flax farmer) from a hamlet near Chesterfield in Derbyshire was regarded by J. F. Payne as merely an assumption. Believing that those devoted to learning should be free from the obligations of the married state Linacre remained single, so that he had no direct descendants; his will[2] contains references to his brother, who had the same Christian name—Thomas—as himself, two sisters Alice and Joan, two nieces Agnes and Margaret, and two cousins Robert Wright of Chester and Richard Wright; but according to Payne[3] the family history cannot be traced any further. I recently had a faint hope that I had got on the track of collateral descendants, but on enquiry it was courteously made clear that though the family in question was descended from a Mrs. Linnecar, her connexion with T. Linacre rested on tradition only and that no documentary evidence or genealogical tree existed to justify any claim. It may be remembered that Linacre was one of the earliest English students (circa 1488), more than a century before William Harvey, to study medicine and take the doctorate at the ancient University of Padua, which celebrated its seven-hundredth anniversary in May 1922. It is, next, natural to look back to the first holder of this Lectureship, and to wonder what manner of man he was and what he taught. To the Master of St. John’s College I am indebted for the few details that are known of Christopher Jackson (B.A. 1524–25, M.A. 1527), who was buried in the old Chapel on July 2, 1528, his death according to a brass erected to his memory in the new antechapel being “e sudore britanico.”[4] Some of the Lecturers were without a medical qualification, and of these Matthew Prior (1664–1721), the poet and diplomatist, who was a “Medical Fellow” for life and Linacre Lecturer from July 5, 1706, to July 7, 1710, was the most famous. That he ever lectured is more than doubtful, but he appears to have thought out reasons for not doing so: at any rate his Alma or the Progress of the Mind (written about 1715) contains in its third canto the lines:
how could I explain
The various labyrinths of the brain!
Surprise my readers whilst I tell them
Of cerebrum and cerebellum!
How could I play the commentator
On dura and on pia mater!
Three of the Linacre Lecturers under the old dispensation stand out for special remembrance on account of their influence on Medicine:
William Heberden the Elder (1710–1801), the author of the Commentarii de Morborum Historia et Curatione, published posthumously (1802), held office from 1734–38, and was described by Sir William Osler as the “English Celsus.”[5]
Fig. 2.—Sir Thomas Watson, Bt., M.D., F.R.S. President of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1862–67. Linacre Lecturer, 1822–26.
From an engraving by George Cousins, R.A., of a portrait painted in 1867 by George Richmond. R.A., now in the Royal College of Physicians of London.
Sir Thomas Watson (1792–1882), whose Lectures on Physic held its place longer than any medical text-book of modern times and set an example of style that still commands our admiration and imitation, was Lecturer 1822–26, and in the first year of office was also a Proctor. Subsequently (1862–67), he was President of the Royal College of Physicians of London, the most magnificent of Linacre’s Foundations; this appropriate association was shared by William Baronsdale (P.R.C.P. 1589–1600), by Thomas Gisborne, who was President on three separate occasions (1791, 1794, 1796–1804) alternately with his senior Sir George Baker, and by Sir Norman Moore of St. Catherine’s College (P.R.C.P. 1918–22), who gave the Linacre Lecture under the new regulations in 1913 on The Physician in English History.[6]
John Haviland (1785–1851), the only one of these three who remained in Cambridge, and the only one who did not become a nonagenarian, was Linacre Lecturer for two periods (1817–22, 1826–47), Sir Thomas Watson intervening. As Professor of Anatomy (not human anatomy) from 1814–17 he delivered the first regular course of lectures on human anatomy; and when he succeeded Sir Isaac Pennington (also Linacre Lecturer, 1767–1816) as Regius Professor of Physic (1817–51) he was the first to give courses in pathology and the practice of medicine, thus rousing the post from the sleep of a sinecure, and to make the medical examinations a real and rigid test instead of little more than a farcical form consisting of a few viva voce questions. Further, had it not been for his influence and insistence the medical faculty might have been abolished, and it was said[7] after his death that the subsequent success of the medical school was due to his exertions. He wrote little and perhaps for that reason his name is seldom mentioned now, but if the work that has since been done by this medical school be his monument he could hardly have a greater.