Oxford,
February 26th, 1915.
PREFACE
William Macmichael, the author of the Gold-Headed Cane, was born at Bridgenorth, in Shropshire, in 1784, and after receiving his education at the grammar school of that town, entered as a student at Christ Church, Oxford, where, after receiving his degree of Master of Arts in 1807, he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1816. In 1811, he was elected to the Radcliffe Travelling Fellowship which owed its foundation to the generosity of Dr. Radcliffe, about whom he writes so delightfully in his chef d’œuvre. These fellowships were founded with the purpose of giving their holders the opportunity of travel in foreign lands, and Dr. Macmichael passed several years journeying in Russia, Turkey, Greece and Palestine. That he was an observing and interested traveller is manifested in a little work which he published in London in 1819, entitled “A Journey from Moscow to Constantinople, in the Years 1817 and 1818.” He was, for a short time, physician to Lord Londonderry while the latter was ambassador to Vienna. He settled in London in the practice of medicine in 1818, and was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians of London in the same year. At the outset of his career as a practicing physician, he had the good fortune to secure the friendship of Sir Henry Halford, to whom the College was indebted for the gift of the Gold-Headed Cane, which had descended to Sir Henry from the distinguished line of bearers about whom Macmichael centered its autobiography. Sir Henry Halford’s influence in professional and social circles in London was immense. His name was really Henry Vaughan. His father was a physician in Leicester, who devoted his entire income to the education of his seven sons, all of whom proved themselves worthy of the parental self-denial by the eminent positions which they subsequently obtained in the professions which they respectively adopted. Sir Henry, after graduating from Oxford, secured an advantageous social position for himself by his marriage to the daughter of Lord St. John of Bletsoe. He inherited a large property on the death of Lady Denbigh, the widow of his mother’s cousin, Sir Charles Halford, Bart., and by an act of Parliament, in 1809, changed his name from Vaughan to Halford. In the subsequent year he was made a baronet. He attended in a professional capacity George III, George IV and Queen Victoria, and after the death of Matthew Baillie, he had the largest and most fashionable practice in London.
Halford was the president of the College of Physicians of London from 1820 until his death in 1844, and it was during his presidency that the College was removed from Warwick Lane to Pall Mall East. Those who envied his position attributed his success to his courtly manners, and he was nicknamed “the eel-backed baronet.” The story is told that he galloped from the death bed of George IV out to Bushy Park in order that he might have the honor of being the first to inform William IV of the glad event. He was present at the opening of the coffin of Charles I, in 1813, and published an account of the proceedings on that occasion. J. F. Clarke, in his autobiography, accuses Halford, amongst other things, of retaining possession of part of the King’s fourth cervical vertebra through which the axe passed, and displaying it at his dinner table as an interesting curio.
Halford, in the words of Dr. Munk, “at the height of his success, and when his duties at Court were the most onerous, found it necessary to have in reserve some physician on whom he could implicitly rely, to act as his representative and substitute when such was needed. His choice fell on Dr. Macmichael, who, through Sir Henry’s influence, was appointed in rapid succession Physician Extraordinary to the King in 1829, Librarian to the King in 1830, in place of a very eminent physician, Dr. Gooch, recently deceased; and finally, in 1831, Physician in Ordinary to the King.”
Halford had been obliged to resign his position as physician to the Middlesex Hospital, owing to the pressure of other duties, as early as 1800; but it was probably due to his influence that twenty-two years later Macmichael was appointed to the same position. Macmichael was very active in the affairs of the College of Physicians, served among its officers on several occasions, and read a number of communications before it. He wrote various articles on contagion and infection, none of them possessing any great value. In spite of powerful backing and the important positions he held, Dr. Macmichael lacked the ambition or did not possess the aptitude to acquire a large practice.
In 1830 Macmichael published “Lives of British Physicians,” of which another edition was published by Thomas Tegg in 1846. Macmichael himself contributed to it the lives of Linacre, Caius, Harvey, Sir Thomas Browne, Sydenham and Radcliffe. The biographies of twelve other English medical worthies were contributed by Dr. Bisset Hawkins, Dr. Parry, Dr. Southey, Dr. Munk, and Mr. Clarke. The book is a small volume containing portraits of some of the more famous subjects. It was dedicated to Sir Henry Halford. Although not so happy in its conception and execution as the Gold-Headed Cane, this little work is a most valuable contribution to English medical literature. The lives are well written, accurate, and contain information much of which is derived from sources inaccessible to the general reader.