The Gold-Headed Cane

by William Macmichael

The scene I have endeavoured to describe at the Bishop’s may serve as a specimen of a consultation of that day, and has given me an opportunity of introducing to the reader a very distinguished person, for such certainly must Sir Hans Sloane be allowed to have been. About four years after the time I now speak, he was elected President of the College of Physicians; on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, was chosen to fill the chair of the Royal Society; and after his own decease gave origin to the British Museum.

It is not, however, my intention to follow Mead into all the details of his private practice, but I will point out some of the material improvements introduced by him in his art, and the progress which the science of physic made in his hands.—Mr. Secretary Craggs applied to him, in 1719, to find out the most effectual method to prevent the spreading of the plague, which had proved so fatal that year at Marseilles. My master accordingly published a discourse on that subject, which was so well received as to go through no less than seven editions in a twelvemonth. The kingdom was at this time governed by Lords Justices, during the absence of His Majesty George the First, who was then in Hanover. An act of parliament was passed, in consequence of the advice given by Mead; but the Opposition of the day, chiefly with the view to thwart the Ministry, caused two of its wisest clauses to be given up the following year. These related to the removing of sick persons from their habitations, and the making of lines of demarcation about infected places. Against the adoption of these prudent precautions an outcry was raised, that persons in office intrusted with such powers might be tempted to abuse them, and exercise their authority in a manner grievous to the subjects of the kingdom. Dr. Mead, on the other hand, contended, that Salus populi supremo lex est; and said that, if the plague should unhappily be brought again into England, he was sure the people themselves would cry out for help, notwithstanding wrong notions of liberty may sometimes overpossess their minds, and make them, under the best of governments, impatient of restraint. A clamour like this will probably be always renewed whenever this subject comes to be discussed by the public; the bold and the ignorant will excite it for the purposes of gainful notoriety, and the selfish trader from a short-sighted view of his own immediate interest. “But suppose for a moment,” said Mead in conversation with a friend, “that the laws of quarantine were useless, and that the fears entertained of the contagious nature of the plague were without foundation, how can the commerce of this country be benefited by the abolition of these regulations here, unless the rest of civilized Europe adopt the same measure, and agree, at a sort of general congress, to remove all restraints from their trade with the Levant? But,” continued he, in an earnest manner, which had all the air of prophecy, “depend upon it, whenever the doctrine of non-contagion is revived in England (and it will be, even a hundred years hence), it will always excite alarm among the nations who are more prudent than ourselves, and less eager to entertain every kind of wild and visionary speculation. Incalculable mischief will be done by the broaching of this pernicious doctrine[15]: the speculators who adopt such opinions should at least keep them to themselves, or if they will continue their experiments, let them make them in corpore vili, and not upon subjects which involve the general welfare of the community.”

Two or three years after this, my master’s attention was called to another matter of equal, or perhaps greater importance than the one just mentioned; and I had the satisfaction of witnessing another prodigious step made towards the improvement of physic. This was no less than the mitigation of that loathsome disease the small-pox, a malady more formidable, and infinitely more fatal than the plague itself. Lady Mary Wortley Montague having returned to England in 1722, was determined to introduce the practice of inoculating for the small-pox, which she had witnessed in the East, and having before had the operation performed successfully upon her son at Constantinople, desired her family surgeon to engraft her daughter also with that disease. The process was witnessed by three physicians and the family apothecary; but though the success was complete, the profession still remained in suspense, and caution prevented the repetition of the experiment. But Caroline Princess of Wales, having nearly lost the life of one of her daughters, the Princess Anne, by small-pox, was desirous of having her children inoculated; and obtained from His Majesty George the First, that six condemned felons should be pardoned for the good of the public, on condition of their submitting to be inoculated. Five of the felons contracted the disease favourably; the sixth, who concealed having previously had the small-pox, was not infected—but all escaped hanging. At the suggestion of my master, the Chinese method was practised upon a seventh criminal, who was a young girl of eighteen years of age. He accordingly introduced into her nostrils a tent, wetted with matter taken out of ripe pustules, which nearly approaches to the practice of the Chinese, who take the skins of some of the dried pustules which have fallen from the body, and put them into a porcelain bottle, stopping the mouth of it very closely with wax. When they have a mind to infect any one, they make up three or four of these skins (inserting between them one grain of musk) into a tent with cotton, which they put up the nostrils. In the case of the girl whom my master treated as above related, she, like those who were inoculated by incisions made in the skin, fell sick and perfectly recovered.

The attention of the medical world was naturally much engrossed by this new method, and every one was discussing the nature of the small-pox, of which the contagious quality was one of the most remarkable properties. “How strange!” said Mead, “that this property, apparently so obvious, should not have been noticed by every writer on the subject, from the very first appearance of this dangerous malady among us. Yet Sydenham, discerning, as he has been called, does not take the slightest notice of it, and perhaps even at this very day, had it not been for the introduction of this novel method of communicating it, its infectious quality might not have been universally admitted. One would suppose that the merest tyro in an apothecary’s shop could not have seen half a dozen cases of the small-pox without being convinced that one person caught it from another. An additional striking example of what has often been observed before, that the most plain and obvious truths lie undiscovered till accident bring them to light.”—More than twenty years after this, Dr. Mead published a treatise on the small-pox and measles, which contained many valuable observations on both these diseases, and also strong recommendations of the practice of inoculation. To this treatise, which is written in a pure Latin style, he subjoined a translation of Rhazes’ commentary on the small-pox into the same language, a copy of which he had obtained from Leyden, through the assistance of his friend and fellow-student Boerhaave, with whom my master maintained a constant correspondence.

The ingenuity of mankind is exercised upon no subjects with so much pertinacity and acuteness as upon those connected with medicine, and it has often been disputed whether inoculation has lessened the number of deaths by small-pox.—One thing however is certain, that it has contributed to the comfort and security of all prudent individuals and families; for though it cannot admit of a doubt that many formerly passed through a long life without the disease, yet such a situation must have proved a constant source of uneasiness to themselves and friends, of restraint from many desirable pursuits, and at times of absolute seclusion from the world.

The next improvement which Dr. Mead introduced into the practice of medicine was entirely of his own invention, and serves to show that his mind was not only capable of the extended views of philosophy, but was alive to the most minute circumstances that could contribute towards the perfection of his art. For the skill of a physician, though it assume a more exalted character when displayed in the pursuit of general science, is equally conspicuous, and perhaps more immediately useful, when exerted in the discovery and employment of ingenious contrivances for the relief of suffering humanity.

My master had often considered what could be the reason that, in cases of persons labouring under dropsy, when the water is suddenly drawn off, the patient swoons and frequently dies on the spot. A simple expedient occurred to him, which was this: during the operation of tapping, to make external pressure by the hands, and afterwards to apply a bandage to the belly. I was present when this method was first tried in the hospital, and afterwards frequently saw it used, more especially in the case of Dame Mary Page, wife of Sir Gregory Page, Bart., who was afflicted with this disease, and died March 4th, 1728, in the fifty-sixth year of her age. In sixty-seven months she was tapped sixty-six times and had two hundred and forty gallons of water taken away, without ever once fearing the operation[16]. This was certainly a most valuable discovery, and shows the advantage derivable from the exercise of good sense and sound judgment; for Mead naturally reflected, that the removal of the pressure of the accumulated water caused the fibres suddenly to lose the extension which they had previously acquired; and it as naturally occurred to him, that the tendency to faint could only be obviated by substituting an external support to the parts.

But it is now time, after having related the benefits he conferred upon mankind by enlarging the boundaries of medical science, to revert to some details of a more domestic character. It has been mentioned before, when speaking of the first experiment of inoculation made in this country, that zeal for his profession had on one occasion brought my master acquainted with the veriest outcasts of society, and in contact with convicted felons: it remains for me to relate how the calls of friendship and generous sympathy led him again within the walls of a prison.

In politics Mead was a hearty Whig, but he reckoned amongst his friends many whose sentiments differed widely from his own. Garth, Arbuthnot, and Freind were among his chief associates: with the latter particularly he had always been on terms of the most friendly intercourse. Recently the intimacy of these two distinguished physicians had been much increased by a controversy in which they were embarked in support of their own enlightened views on the subject of the cooling treatment of the small-pox, against the attacks of the ignorant and malevolent.