And Dryden, in the postscript to his translation of Virgil, speaks in the same way of the profession. “That I have recovered,” says he, “in some measure the health which I had lost by too much application to this work, is owing, next to God’s mercy, to the skill and care of Dr. Guibbons and Dr. Hobbs, the two ornaments of their profession, whom I can only pay by this acknowledgment.”
When Dr. Dimsdale, a Hertford physician and member of Parliament, went over to Russia to inoculate the Empress Catherine and her son, in the year 1768, he received a fee of £12,000, a pension for life of £500 per annum, and the rank of Baron of the Empire.
Dr. Henry Atkins was sent for to Scotland by James the Sixth to attend Charles the First (then an infant), ill of a dangerous fever. The King gave him a fee of £6000, with which he purchased the manor of Clapham.
Louis XIV. after undergoing an operation, gave his physician and his surgeon 75,000 crowns each.
Dr. Glynn once attended the only son of a poor peasant woman, ministering to his wants with port wine, bark, and delicacies. After the lad’s recovery, his mother waited on the doctor, bringing a large wicker basket with an enormous magpie, which was her son’s pet, as a fee to show their gratitude.
A thousand pounds were ordered to be paid to Sir Edmund King for promptly bleeding Charles the Second, but he never received this fee.
Dr. Mead, in the time of George the First, was generous to a degree, and like many of his brethren, would not accept fees from curates, half-pay officers, and men of letters. At home his fee was a guinea. When he visited patients of means, in consultation or otherwise, he expected two guineas or more. But to the apothecaries who waited on him at his coffee houses of call he charged only half a guinea for prescriptions, written without his having seen the patient. He had an income one year of £7,000, and for several years received between £5,000 and £6,000, which, considering the value of money at that time, is as much as that of any living physician.
The physicians who attended Queen Caroline had five hundred guineas, and the surgeons three hundred guineas each; Dr. Willis was rewarded for his attendance on George III. by £1,500 per annum for twenty years, and £650 per annum to his son for life. The other physicians, however, had only thirty guineas each visit to Windsor, and ten guineas each visit to Kew.
Dr. Abernethy was annoyed by a lady needlessly consulting him about her tongue. One morning she came, as he was descending the steps from his door and putting on his gloves. She said:—“Doctor, I’m so glad I have caught you!” The doctor asked if it were the old trouble. On her saying “Yes,” he told her to put out her tongue. She did so, and he said, “Stand there till I come,” and left her so, in the street, setting out on his round of visits.
Once when prescribing nutritious and expensive diet for a young man in consumption, he observed the look of despair on the young wife’s face, and the evidence of straitened circumstances around; when the lady appealed to him, asking if there was really nothing else he could suggest for her husband. He replied:—“When I think of it, I’ll send along a box of pills in the afternoon!” A messenger brought the box. On the lid was written “One every day,” and, on being opened, it was found to contain twenty guineas!