“Dr. Patrick Blair, however, who was in the rebellion of 1745, got himself into Newgate, and was condemned to be hanged. In the British Museum are several of his letters to Sir Hans Sloane, written in prison, soliciting his intercession, and in one of them he writes, ‘If you come towards Newgate, I hope you will favour me with a call.’ Dr. Martyn, the professor of Botany at Cambridge, supped with him in Newgate the night previous to his expected execution. Blair had been all along confident that he should be reprieved: Dr. Martyn said, he sat pretty quietly till the clock struck nine, and then he got up and walked about the room; at ten he quickened his pace; and at twelve, no reprieve coming, he cried out—‘By my troth! this is carrying the jest too far!’ The reprieve, however, came soon after, and in due time a pardon. Blair went afterwards, and settled at Boston in Lincolnshire, where he practised till his death.”
“SIR WILLIAM DUNCAN.
“Sir William Duncan once met Dr. Thomas Reeve, when the latter was President of the College, and insisted that his name should not follow Reeve’s, because he was physician to the king. Reeve asserted his dignity as president, and the consequence was, that each wrote his own prescription (the same they had agreed to) and gave it to the apothecary.
“There are many instances of medical etiquette being carried to a great extent, but polite etiquette in a sick room was perhaps [p345] never exceeded by the following exhibition of it, between the Duke of Ormond and a German Baron.
“The Duke of Ormond and a certain German Baron were both considered models of pride and politeness. When the Duke perceived that he was dying, he desired that he might be seated in his elbow chair, and then, turning to the Baron, with great courteousness, he requested that he would excuse any unseemly contortions of feature, as his physicians assured him, that he must soon struggle with the last pangs. ‘My dear Lord Duke,’ replied the Baron, with equal politeness, ‘I beg you will be on no ceremony on my account!’”
“BAILLIE,
“Not Matthew Baillie, but an Irish gentleman who had been rejected by the College, called the next day on Dr. Barrowby, who was one of the censors, and insisted upon his fighting him. Barrowby, who was a little puny man, declined it. ‘I am only the third censor,’ said he, ‘in point of age—you must first call out your own countryman, Sir Hans Sloane, our president, and when you have fought him and the two senior censors, then I shall be ready to meet you.’
“Many medical duels have been prevented by the difficulty of arranging the ‘methodus pugnandi.’ In the instance of Dr. Brocklesby, the number of paces could not be agreed upon; and in the affair between Akenside and Ballow, one had determined never to fight in the morning, and the other that he would never fight in the afternoon. John Wilkes, who did not stand upon ceremony in these little affairs, when asked by Lord Talbot, ‘How many times they were to fire?’ replied, ‘Just as often as your Lordship pleases; I have brought a bag of bullets and a flask of gunpowder.’”
“WOODVILLE.
“Dr. Joseph Adams, who was much with Woodville just before his death, used to relate several traits of his firmness and seeming unconcern with respect to death. Woodville lived in lodgings at a carpenter’s in Ely-place, and Adams, a few days before his death, advised the matron of the Small-pox Hospital to invite him to have a bed made up there, that he might be better attended to: this she did, and Woodville accepted it. He observed to Adams, the next day, that he was a poor man come to die at the hospital, and he remarked, that some of those who called on him flattered him with hopes of his getting better. ‘But I am not so silly,’ he said, ‘as to mind what they say; I know my own case too well, and that I am dying. A younger man with better stamina might think it hard to die; but why should I regret leaving such a diseased, worn-out carcase as mine?’