A Book about Doctors Part 7

Loutherbourg became notorious for curing people without medicine. G.o.d, they proclaimed, had endowed them with a miraculous power of healing the impoverished sick, by looking upon them and touching them. Of course every one who presumed to doubt the statement was regarded as calling in question the miracles of holy writ, and was exclaimed against as an infidel. The doctor's house was besieged with enormous crowds. The good man and his lady refused to take any fee whatever, and issued gratuitous tickets amongst the mob, which would admit the bearers into the Loutherbourgian presence. Strange to say, however, these tickets found their way into the hands of venal people, who sold them to others in the crowd (who were tired of waiting) for sums varying from two to five guineas each; and ere long it was discovered that these barterers of the healing power were accomplices in the pay of the poor man's friend. A certain Miss Mary Pratt, in all probability a puppet acting in obedience to Loutherbourg's instructions, wrote an account of the cures performed by the physician and his wife. In a dedicatory letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Miss Pratt says:--"I therefore presume when these testimonies are searched into (which will corroborate with mine) your Lords.h.i.+p will compose a form of prayer, to be used in all churches and chapels, that nothing may impede or prevent this inestimable gift from having its free course; and publick thanks may be offered up in all churches and chapels, for such an astonis.h.i.+ng proof of G.o.d's love to this favoured land." The publication frankly states that "Mr. De Loutherbourg, who lives on Hammersmith Green, has received a most glorious power from the Lord Jehovah--viz. the gift of healing all manner of diseases incident to the human body, such as blindness, deafness, lameness, cancers, loss of speech, palsies." But the statements of "cases" are yet more droll. The reader will enjoy the perusal of a few of them.

"_Case of Thomas Robinson._--Thomas Robinson was sent home to his parents at the sign of the Ram, a public-house in Cow Cross, so ill with what is called the king's evil, that they applied for leave to bring him into St Bartholomew's Hospital." (Of course he was discharged as "incurable," and was eventually restored to health by Mr. Loutherbourg.) "But how," continues Miss Pratt, "shall my pen paint ingrat.i.tude? The mother had procured a ticket for him from the Finsbury Dispensary, and with a shameful reluctance denied having seen Mr De Loutherbourg, waited on the kind gentleman belonging to the dispensary, and, _amazing_! thanked them for relief which they had no hand in; for she told me and fifty more, she took the drugs and medicines and threw them away, reserving the phials, &c. Such an imposition on the public ought to be detected, as she deprived other poor people of those medicines which might have been useful; not only so--robbed the Lord of Life of the glory due to him only, by returning thanks at the dispensary for a cure which they had never performed.

The lad is now under Mr De Loutherbourg's care, who administered to him before me yesterday in the public healing-room, amongst a large concourse of people, amongst whom was some of the first families in the kingdom."

"_Case.--Mary Ann Hughes._--Her father is chairman to her Grace the d.u.c.h.ess of Rutland, who lives at No. 37, in Ogle Street. She had a most violent fever, _fell into her knee_, went to Middles.e.x Hospital, where they made every experiment in order to cure her--but in vain; she came home worse than she went in, her leg contracted and useless.

In this deplorable state she waited on Mrs De Loutherbourg, who, with infinite condescension, saw her, administered to her, and the second time of waiting on Mrs De Loutherbourg she was perfectly cured."

"_Case.--Mrs Hook._--Mrs Hook, Stableyard, St James's, has two daughters born deaf and dumb. She waited on the lady above-mentioned, _who looked on them with an eye of benignity, and healed them_. (I heard them both speak.)"

Mary Pratt, after enumerating several cases like the foregoing, concludes thus:

"Let me repeat, with horror and detestation, the wickedness of those who have procured tickets of admission, and sold them for five and two guineas apiece!--whereas this gift was chiefly intended for the poor.

Therefore Mr De Loutherbourg has retired from the practice into the country (for the present), having suffered all the indignities and contumely that man could suffer, joined to ungrateful behaviour, and tumultuous proceedings. I have heard people curse him and threaten his life, instead of returning him thanks; and it is my humble wish that prayers may be put up in all churches for his great gifts to multiply."

"FINIS.

"Report says three thousand persons have waited for tickets at a time."

Forming a portion of this interesting work by Miss Pratt is a description of a case which throws the Loutherbourgian miracles into the shade, and is apparently cited only for the insight it affords into the state of public feeling in Queen Anne's time, as contrasted with the sceptical enlightenment of George III.'s reign:--

"I hope the public will allow me to adduce a case which history will evince the truth of. A girl, whose father and mother were French refugees, had her hip dislocated from her birth. She was apprentice to a milliner, and obliged to go out about the mistress's business; the boys used to insult her for her lameness continually, as she limped very much.... Providence directed her to read one of the miracles performed by our blessed Saviour concerning the withered arm. The girl exclaimed, 'Oh, madam, was Jesus here on earth he would cure me.' Her mistress answered, 'If you have faith, his power is the same now.' She immediately cried, 'I have faith!' and the bone flew into its place with a report like the noise of a pistol. The girl's joy was ecstatic.

She jumped about the room in raptures. The servant was called, sent for her parents, and the minister under whom she sat. They spent the night praising G.o.d. Hundreds came to see her, amongst whom was the Bishop of London, by the command of her Majesty Queen Anne (for in those days people were astonished at this great miracle.)"

Dr. Loutherbourg was not the first quack to fleece the good people of Hammersmith. In the 572nd paper of the _Spectator_, dated July 26, 1714, there is a good story of a consummate artist, who surrounded himself with an enormous crowd, and a.s.sured them that Hammersmith was the place of his nativity; and that, out of strong natural affection for his birth-place, he was willing to give each of its inhabitants a present of five s.h.i.+llings. After this exordium, the benevolent fellow produced from his cases an immense number of packets of a powder warranted to cure everything and kill nothing. The price of each packet was properly five s.h.i.+llings and sixpence; but out of love for the people of Hammersmith the good doctor offered to let any of his audience buy them at the rate of sixpence apiece. The mult.i.tude availed themselves of this proposition to such an extent that it is to be feared the friend of Hammersmith's humanity suffered greatly from his liberality.

Steele has transmitted to us some capital anecdotes of the empirics of his day. One doctor of Sir Richard's acquaintance resided in Moore Alley, near Wapping, and proclaimed his ability to cure cataracts, _because he had lost an eye in the emperor's service_. To his patients he was in the habit of displaying, as a conclusive proof of his surgical prowess, a muster-roll showing that either he, or a man of his name, had been in one of his imperial Majesty's regiments. At the sight of this doc.u.ment of course mistrust fled. Another man professed to treat ruptured children, because his father and grandfather were born bursten. But more humorous even than either of these gentlemen was another friend of Sir Richard's, who announced to the public that "from eight to twelve and from two till six, he attended for the good of the public to bleed for threepence."

The fortunes which pretenders to the healing art have ama.s.sed would justify a belief that empiricism, under favourable circ.u.mstances, is the best trade to be found in the entire list of industrial occupations. Quacks have in all ages found staunch supporters amongst the powerful and affluent. Dr. Myersbach, whom Lettsom endeavoured to drive back into obscurity, continued, long after the publication of the "Observations," to make a large income out of the credulity of the fas.h.i.+onable cla.s.ses of English society. Without learning of any kind, this man raised himself to opulence. His degree was bought at Erfurth for a few s.h.i.+llings, just before that university raised the prices of its academical distinctions, in consequence of the pleasant raillery of a young Englishman, who paid the fees for a Doctor's diploma, and had it duly recorded in the Collegiate archives as having been presented to Anglicus Ponto; Ponto being no other than his mastiff dog. With such a degree Myersbach set up for a philosopher. Patients crowded to his consulting-room, and those who were unable to come sent their servants with descriptions of their cases. But his success was less than that of the inventor of Ailhaud's powders, which ran their devastating course through every country in Europe, sending to the silence of the grave almost as many thousands as were destroyed in all Napoleon's campaigns. Tissot, in his "Avis au Peuple," published in 1803, attacked Ailhaud with characteristic vehemence, and put an end to his destructive power; but ere this took place the charlatan had mounted on his slaughtered myriads to the possession of three baronies, and was figuring in European courts as the Baron de Castelet.

The tricks which these pract.i.tioners have had recourse to for the attainment of their ends are various. Dr. Katterfelto, who rose into eminence upon the evil wind that brought the influenza to England in the year 1782, always travelled about the country in a large caravan, containing a number of black cats. This gentleman's triumphant campaign was brought to a disastrous termination by the mayor of Shrewsbury, who gave him a taste of the sharp discipline provided at that time by the law for rogues and vagabonds.--"The Wise Man of Liverpool," whose destiny it was to gull the canny inhabitants of the North of England, used to traverse the country in a chariot drawn by six horses, attended by a perfect army of outriders in brilliant liveries, and affecting all the pomp of a prince of the royal blood.

The quacks who merit severe punishment the least of all their order are those who, while they profess to exercise a powerful influence over the bodies of their patients, leave nature to pursue her operations pretty much in her own way. Of this comparatively harmless cla.s.s was Atwell, the parson of St. Tue, who, according to the account given of him by Fuller, in his English Worthies, "although he now and then used blood-letting, mostly for all diseases prescribed milk, and often milk and apples, which (although contrary to the judgments of the best-esteemed pract.i.tioners) either by virtue of the medicine, or fortune of the physician, or fancy of the patient, recovered many out of desperate extremities." Atwell won his reputation by acting on the same principle that has brought a certain degree of popularity to the hom?opathists--that, namely, of letting things run their own course. The higher order of empirics have always availed themselves of the wonderful faculty possessed by nature of taking good care of herself. Simple people who enlarge on the series of miraculous cures performed by their pet charlatan, and find in them proofs of his honesty and professional worth, do not reflect that in ninety-and-nine cases out of every hundred where a sick person is restored to health, the result is achieved by nature rather than art, and would have been arrived at as speedily without as with medicine. Again, the fame of an ordinary medical pract.i.tioner is never backed up by simple and compound addition. His cures and half cures are never summed up to magnificent total by his employers, and then flaunted about on a bright banner before the eyes of the electors. 'Tis a mere matter of course that _he_ (although he _is_ quite wrong, and knows not half as much about his art as any great lady who has tested the efficacy of the new system on her sick poodle) should cure people. 'Tis only the cause of globules which is to be supported by doc.u.mentary evidence, containing the case of every young lady who has lost a severe headache under the benign influence of an infinitesimal dose of flour and water.

Dumoulin, the physician, observed at his death that "he left behind him two great physicians, Regimen and River Water." A due appreciation of the truth embodied in this remark, coupled with that masterly a.s.surance, without which the human family is not to be fleeced, enabled the French quack, Villars, to do good to others and to himself at the same time. This man, in 1723, confided to his friends that his uncle, who had recently been killed by an accident at the advanced age of one hundred years, had bequeathed to him the recipe for a nostrum which would prolong the life of any one who used it to a hundred and fifty, provided only that the rules of sobriety were never transgressed. Whenever a funeral pa.s.sed him in the street he said aloud, "Ah! if that unfortunate creature had taken my nostrum, he might be carrying that coffin, instead of being carried in it." This nostrum was composed of nitre and Seine water, and was sold at the ridiculously cheap rate of five francs a bottle. Those who bought it were directed to drink it at certain stated periods, and also to lead regular lives, to eat moderately, drink temperately, take plenty of bodily exercise, go to and rise from bed early, and to avoid mental anxiety. In an enormous majority of cases the patient was either cured or benefitted. Some possibly died, who, by the ministrations of science, might have been preserved from the grave. But in these cases, and doubtless they were few, the blunder was set down to Nature, who, somewhat unjustly, was never credited with any of the recoveries. The world was charitable, and the doctor could say--

"The grave my faults does hide, The world my cures does see; What youth and time provide, Are oft ascribed to me."

Anyhow Villars succeeded, and won the approbation not only of his dupes, but of those also who were sagacious enough to see the nature of his trick. The Abbe Pons declared him to be the superior of the marshal of the same name. "The latter," said he, "kills men--the former prolongs their existence." At length Villars' secret leaked out; and his patients, unwise in coming to him, unwisely deserted him.

His occupation was gone.

The displeasure of Villars' dupes, on the discovery of the benevolent hoax played upon them, reminds us of a good story. Some years since, at a fas.h.i.+onable watering-place, on the south-east coast of England, resided a young surgeon--handsome, well-bred, and of most pleasant address. He was fast rising into public favour and a good practice, when an eccentric and wealthy maiden lady, far advanced in years, sent for him. The summons of course was promptly obeyed, and the young pract.i.tioner was soon listening to a most terrible story of suffering.

The afflicted lady, according to her own account, had a year before, during the performance of her toilet, accidentally taken into her throat one of the bristles of her tooth-brush. This bristle had stuck in the top of the gullet, and set up an irritation which, she was convinced, was killing her. She had been from one surgeon of eminence to another, and everywhere in London and in the country the Faculty had a.s.sured her that she was only the victim of a nervous delusion--that her throat was in a perfectly healthy condition--that the disturbance existed only in her own imagination. "And so they go on, the stupid, obstinate, perverse, unfeeling creatures," concluded the poor lady, "saying there is nothing the matter with me, while I am--dying--dying--dying!" "Allow me, my dear lady," said the adroit surgeon in reply, "to inspect for myself--carefully--the state of your throat." The inspection was made gravely, and at much length. "My dear Miss ----," resumed the surgeon, when he had concluded his examination, "you are quite right, and Sir Benjamin Brodie and Sir James Clark are wrong. I can see the head of the bristle low down, almost out of sight; and if you'll let me run home for my instruments, I'll forthwith extract it for you." The adroit man retired, and in a few minutes re-entered the room, armed with a very delicate pair of forceps, into the teeth of which he had inserted a bristle taken from an ordinary tooth-brush. The rest can be imagined. The lady threw back her head; the forceps were introduced into her mouth; a p.r.i.c.k--a scream! and 'twas all over; and the surgeon, with a smiling face, was holding up to the light, and inspecting with lively curiosity, the extracted bristle. The patient was in raptures at a result that proved that she was right, and Sir Benjamin Brodie wrong. She immediately recovered her health and spirits, and went about everywhere sounding the praises of "her saviour," as she persisted in calling the dexterous operator. So enthusiastic was her grat.i.tude, she offered him her hand in marriage and her n.o.ble fortune. The fact that the young surgeon was already married was an insuperable obstacle to this arrangement. But other proofs of grat.i.tude the lady lavishly showered on him. She compelled him to accept a carriage and horses, a service of plate, and a new house. Unfortunately the lucky fellow could not keep his own counsel. Like foolish Samson with Delilah, he imparted the secret of his cunning to the wife of his bosom; she confided it to Louise Clarissa, her especial friend, who had been her bridesmaid; Louise Clarissa told it under vows of inviolable secrecy to six other particular friends; and the six other particular friends--base and unworthy girls!--told it to all the world. Ere long the story came round to the lady herself. Then what a storm arose! She was in a transport of fury! It was of no avail for the surgeon to remind her that he had unquestionably raised her from a pitiable condition to health and happiness. That mattered not. He had tricked, fooled, bamboozled her! She would not forgive him, she would pursue him with undying vengeance, she would ruin him! The writer of these pages is happy to know that the surgeon here spoken of, whose prosperous career has been adorned by much genuine benevolence, though unforgiven, was not ruined.

The ignorant are remarkable alike for suspicion and credulity; and the quack makes them his prey by lulling to sleep the former quality, and artfully arousing and playing upon the latter. Whatever the field of quackery may be, the dupe must ever be the same. Some years since a canny drover, from the north of the Tweed, gained a high reputation throughout the Eastern Counties for selling at high prices the beasts intrusted to him as a salesman. At Norwich and Earl Soham, at Bury and Ipswich, the story was the same--Peter M'Dougal invariably got more per head for "a lot" than even his warmest admirers had calculated he would obtain. He managed his business so well, that his brethren, unable to compete with him, came to a conclusion not altogether supported by the facts of the case, but flattering to their own self-love. Clearly Peter could only surpa.s.s them by such a long distance, through the agency of some charm or witch's secret. They hinted as much; and Peter wisely accepted the suggestion, with a half-a.s.senting nod of cunning, and encouraged his mates to believe in it. A year or so pa.s.sed on, and it was generally allowed that Peter M'Dougal was in league on honourable terms with the unseen world. To contend with him was useless. The only line open to his would-be imitators was to buy from him partic.i.p.ations in his mysterious powers.

"Peter," at length said a simple southern, at the close of Halesworth cattle-fair, acting as spokesman for himself and four other conspirators, "lets us into yer secret, man. Yer ha' made here twelve pun a yead by a lot that aren't woth s.e.x. How ded yer doo it? We are all owld friens. Lets us goo to 'Th' Alter'd Case,' an I an my mets ull stan yar supper an a dead drunk o' whiskey or rom poonch, so be yar jine hans to giv us the wink." Peter's eyes twinkled. He liked a good supper and plenty of hot grog at a friend's expense. Indeed, of such fare, like Sheridan with wine, he was ready to take any given quant.i.ty. The bargain was made, and an immediate adjournment effected to the public-house rejoicing in the t.i.tle of "The Case is Altered."

The supper was of hot steak-pudding, made savoury with pepper and onions. Peter M'Dougal ate plentifully and deliberately. Slowly also he drank two stiff tumblers of whiskey punch, smoking his pipe meanwhile without uttering a word. The second tumbler was followed by a third, and as he sipped the latter half of it, his entertainers closed round him, and intimated that their part of the contract being accomplished, he, as a man of honour, ought to fulfill his. Peter was a man of few words, and without any unnecessary prelude or comment, he stated in one laconic speech the secret of his professional success.

Laying down his pipe by his empty gla.s.s, and emitting from his gray eyes a light of strange humour, he said drily, "Ye'd knoo hoo it was I cam to mak sae guid a sale o' my beasties? Weel, I ken it was joost this--_I fund a fule!_"

The drover who rises to be a capitalist, and the lawyer who mounts to the woolsack, ascend by the same process. They know how to find out fools, and how to turn their discoveries to advantage.

It is told of a Barbadoes physician and slaveholder, that having been robbed to a serious extent in his sugar-works, he discovered the thief by the following ingenious artifice. Having called his slaves together, he addressed them thus:--"My friends, the great serpent appeared to me during the night, and told me that the person who stole my money should, at this instant--_this very instant_--have a parrot's feather at the point of his nose." On this announcement, the dishonest thief, anxious to find out if his guilt had declared itself, put his finger to his nose. "Man," cried the master instantly, "'tis thou who hast robbed me. The great serpent has just told me so."

Clearly this piece of quackery succeeded, because the quack had "fund a fule."

CHAPTER VII.

JOHN RADCLIFFE.

Radcliffe, the Jacobite partisan, the physician without learning, and the luxurious _bon-vivant_, who grudged the odd sixpences of his tavern scores, was born at Wakefield in Yorks.h.i.+re, in the year 1650.

His extraction was humble, his father being only a well-to-do yeoman.

In after life, when he lived on intimate terms with the leading n.o.bility of the country, he put in a claim for aristocratic descent; and the Earl of Derwent.w.a.ter recognized him as a kinsman deriving his blood from the Radcliffes of Dilston, in the county of Northumberland, the chiefs of which honourable family had been knights, barons, and earls, from the time of Henry IV. It may be remembered that a similar countenance was given to Burke's patrician pretensions, which have been related by more than one biographer, with much humorous pomp. In Radcliffe's case the Heralds interfered with the Earl's decision; for after the physician's decease they admonished the University of Oxford not to erect any escutcheon over or upon his monument. But though Radcliffe was a plebeian, he contrived, by his shrewd humour, arrogant simplicity, and immeasurable insolence, to hold both Whigs and Tories in his grasp. The two factions of the aristocracy bowed before him--the Tories from affection to a zealous adherent of regal absolutism; and the Whigs, from a superst.i.tious belief in his remedial skill, and a fear that in their hours of need he would leave them to the advances of Death.

At the age of fifteen he became a member of the University College, Oxford; and having kept his terms there, he took his B. A. degree in 1669, and was made senior-scholar of the college. But no fellows.h.i.+p falling vacant there, he accepted one on the foundation of Lincoln College. His M. B. degree he took in 1675, and forthwith obtained considerable practice in Oxford. Owing to a misunderstanding with Dr.

Marshall, the rector of Lincoln College, Radcliffe relinquished a fellows.h.i.+p, which he could no longer hold, without taking orders, in 1677. He did not take his M. D. degree till 1682, two years after which time he went up to London, and took a house in Bow Street, next that in which Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller long resided; and with a facility which can hardly be credited in these days, when success is achieved only by slow advances, he stept forthwith into a magnificent income.

The days of mealy-mouthed suavity had not yet come to the Faculty.

Instead of standing by each other with lip-service, as they now do in spite of all their jealousies, physicians and surgeons vented their mutual enmities in frank, honest abuse. Radcliffe's tongue was well suited for this part of his business; and if that unruly member created for him enemies, it could also contend with a legion of adversaries at the same time. Foulks and Adams, then the first apothecaries in Oxford, tried to discredit the young doctor, but were ere long compelled to sue for a cessation of hostilities. Luff, who afterwards became Professor of Physic in the University, declared that all "Radcliffe's cures were performed only by guesswork"; and Gibbons, with a sneer, said, "that it was a pity that his friends had not made a scholar of the young man." In return Radcliffe always persisted in speaking of his opponent as _Nurse_ Gibbons--because of his slops and diet drinks, whereas he (Radcliffe the innovator) preached up the good effects of fresh air, a liberal table, and cordials. This was the Dr.

Gibbons around whom the apothecaries rallied, to defend their interests in the great Dispensarian contest, and whom Garth in his poem ridicules, under the name of "Mirmillo," for entertaining drug-venders:--

"Not far from that frequented theatre, Where wandering punks each night at five repair, Where purple emperors in buskins tread, And rule imaginary worlds for bread; Where Bentley, by old writers, wealthy grew, And Briscoe lately was undone by new; There triumphs a physician of renown, To none, but such as rust in health, unknown.

The trading tribe oft thither throng to dine, And want of elbow-room supply in wine."

Gibbons was not the only dangerous antagonist that Radcliffe did battle with in London. Dr. Whistler, Sir Edmund King, Sir Edward Hannes, and Sir Richard Blackmore were all strong enough to hurt him and rouse his jealousy. Hannes, also an Oxford man, was to the last a dangerous and hated rival. He opened his campaign in London with a carriage and four horses. The equipage was so costly and imposing that it attracted the general attention of the town. "By Jove! Radcliffe,"

said a kind friend, "Hannes's horses are the finest I have ever seen."

"Umph!" growled Radcliffe savagely, "then he'll be able to sell them for all the more."

To make his name known Hannes used to send his liveried footmen running about the streets with directions to put their heads into every coach they met and inquire, with accents of alarm, if Dr. Hannes was in it. Acting on these orders, one of his fellows, after looking into every carriage between Whitehall and the Royal Exchange, without finding his employer, ran up Exchange Alley into Garraway's Coffee-house, which was one of the great places of meeting for the members of the medical profession. (Apothecaries used regularly to come and consult the physicians, while the latter were over their wine, paying only half fees for the advice so given, without the patients being personally examined. Batson's coffee-house in Corn-hill was another favourite spot for these Galenic re-unions, Sir William Blizard being amongst the last of the medical authorities who frequented that hostelry for the purpose of receiving apothecaries.) "Gentlemen, can your honours tell me if Dr. Hannes is here?" asked the man, running into the very centre of the exchange of medicine-men.

"Who wants Dr. Hannes, fellow?" demanded Radcliffe, who happened to be present. "Lord A---- and Lord B----, your honour!" answered the man.

"No, no, friend," responded the doctor slowly, and with pleasant irony, "you are mistaken. Those lords don't want your master--'tis he who wants them."

But Hannes made friends and a fine income, to the deep chagrin of his contemptuous opponent. An incessant feud existed between the two men.

The virulence of their mutual animosity may be estimated by the following story. When the poor little Duke of Gloucester was taken ill, Sir Edward Hannes and Blackmore (famous as Sir Richard Blackmore, the poet) were called in to attend him. On the case taking a fatal turn, Radcliffe was sent for; and after roundly charging the two doctors with the grossest mismanagement of a simple attack of rash, went on, "It would have been happy for this nation had you, sir, been bred up a basket-maker--and you, sir, had remained a country schoolmaster, rather than have ventured out of your reach, in the practice of an art which you are an utter stranger to, and for your blunders in which you ought to be whipped with one of your own rods."

The reader will not see the force of this delicate speech if he is not aware that Hannes was generally believed to be the son of a basket-maker, and Sir Richard Blackmore had, in the period of his early poverty, like Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, been a teacher of boys. Whenever the "Amenities of the Faculty" come to be published, this consultation, on the last illness of Jenkin Lewis's little friend, ought to have its niche in the collection.

Towards the conclusion of his life, Radcliffe said that, "when a young pract.i.tioner, he possessed twenty remedies for every disease; and at the close of his career he found twenty diseases for which he had not one remedy." His mode of practice, however, as far as anything is known about it, at the outset was the same as that which he used at the conclusion of his career. Pure air, cleanliness, and a wholesome diet were amongst his most important prescriptions; though he was so far from running counter to the interests of the druggists, that his apothecary, Dandridge, whose business was almost entirely confined to preparing the doctor's medicines, died worth 50,000_l_. For the imaginary maladies of his hypochondriacal male and fanciful female patients he had the greatest contempt, and neither respect for age or rank, nor considerations of interest, could always restrain him from insulting such patients. In 1686 he was appointed physician to Princess Anne of Denmark, and was for some years a trusted adviser of that royal lady; but he lacked the compliant temper and imperturbable suavity requisite for a court physician. Shortly after the death of Queen Mary, the Princess Anne, having incurred a fit of what is by the vulgar termed "blue devils," from not paying proper attention to her diet, sent in all haste to her physician. Radcliffe, when he received the imperative summons to hurry to St. James's was sitting over his bottle in a tavern. The allurements of Bacchus were too strong for him, and he delayed his visit to the distinguished sufferer. A second messenger arrived, but by that time the physician was so gloriously enn.o.bled with claret, that he discarded all petty considerations of personal advantage, and flatly refused to stir an inch from the room where he was experiencing all the happiness humanity is capable of.

"Tell her Royal Highness," he exclaimed, banging his fist on the table, "that her distemper is nothing but the vapours. She's in as good state of health as any woman breathing--only she can't make up her mind to believe it."

The next morning prudence returned with sobriety; and the doctor did not fail to present himself at an early hour in the Princess's apartment in St. James's Palace. To his consternation he was stopped in the ante-room by an officer, and informed that he was dismissed from his post, which had already been given to Dr. Gibbons. Anne never forgave the sarcasm about "the vapours." It so rankled in her breast, that, though she consented to ask for the Doctor's advice both for herself and those dear to her, she never again held any cordial communication with him. Radcliffe tried to hide the annoyance caused him by his fall, in a hurricane of insolence towards his triumphant rival: Nurse Gibbons had gotten a new nursery--Nurse Gibbons was not to be envied his new acquisition--Nurse Gibbons was fit only to look after a woman who merely fancied herself ill.

Notwithstanding this rupture with the Court, Radcliffe continued to have the most lucrative practice in town, and in all that regarded money he was from first to last a most lucky man. On coming to town he found Lower, the Whig physician, sinking in public favour--and Thomas Short, the Roman Catholic doctor, about to drop into the grave.

Whistler, Sir Edmund King, and Blackmore had plenty of patients. But there was a "splendid opening," and so cleverly did Radcliffe slip into it, that at the end of his first year in town he got twenty guineas per diem. The difference in the value of money being taken into consideration, it may be safely affirmed that no living physician makes more. Occasionally the fees presented to him were very large. He cured Bentinck, afterwards Earl of Portland, of a diarrh?a, and Zulestein, afterwards Earl of Rochford, of an attack of congestion of the brain. For these services William III. presented him with 500 guineas out of the privy-purse, and offered to appoint him one of his physicians, with ?200 per annum more than he gave any other of his medical officers. Radcliffe pocketed the fee, but his Jacobite principles precluded him from accepting the post. William, however, notwithstanding the opposition of Bidloe and the rest of his medical servants, held Radcliffe in such estimation that he continually consulted him; and during the first eleven years of his reign paid him, one year with another, 600 guineas per annum. And when he restored to health William, Duke of Gloucester (the Princess of Denmark's son), who in his third year was attacked with severe convulsions, Queen Mary sent him, through the hand of her Lord Chamberlain, 1000 guineas. And for attending the Earl of Albemarle at Namur he had 400 guineas and a diamond ring, 1200 guineas from the treasury, and an offer of a baronetcy from the King.

For many years he was the neighbour of Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller, in Bow Street. A dispute that occurred between the two neighbours and friends is worth recording. Sir G.o.dfrey took pleasure in his garden, and expended large sums of money in stocking it with exotic plants and rare flowers. Radcliffe also enjoyed a garden, but loved his fees too well to expend them on one of his own. He suggested to Sir G.o.dfrey that it would be a good plan to insert a door into the boundary wall between their gardens, so that on idle afternoons, when he had no patients to visit, he might slip into his dear friend's pleasure-grounds. Kneller readily a.s.sented to this proposition, and ere a week had elapsed the door was ready for use. The plan, however, had not been long acted on when the painter was annoyed by Radcliffe's servants wantonly injuring his parterres. After fruitlessly expostulating against these depredations, the sufferer sent a message to his friend, threatening, if the annoyance recurred, to brick up the wall. "Tell Sir G.o.dfrey," answered Radcliffe to the messenger, "that he may do what he likes to the door, so long as he does not paint it."

When this vulgar jeer was reported to Kneller, he replied, with equal good humour and more wit, "Go back and give my service to Dr.