1847] Life and Character of Mead. 179 offices it is "to heal the sick, to open the eyes of the blind, and to speak comfort to those that are afflicted."* Recurring to Boerhaave's favourite motto, that "simplicity is the seal of truth," Dr. Mackness closes his comments on the letter to him in these words: May we then learn to be simple; simple in our object, simple in our views, simple in our practice, simple in our habits, simple in word and deed. But whilst we aim at simplicity, let us take care that we have truth for our foundation; for many systems and theories are apparently very simple, but being based on insufficient evidence, they are wanting in the important element of truth. There is no doubt but that truth is in itself always simple, but in our limited knowledge we may not be able to grasp it in its entirety, and therefore to perceive its simplicity, and may mistake for it some specious counterfeit which appears to bear a simple aspect." P. 345. The next character that we propose to introduce to our readers is that of Boerhaave's school-fellow, and almost equally distinguished cotemporary, Dr. MEAD. The Rev. Matthew Mead, the father of Dr. Mead, was one of the 2000 ministers who were ejected from their livings on St. Bartholomew's day, by the Act of Uniformity, during the profligate reign of Charles II. Up to that time, he had been parish-minister of Stepney, and, after his ejectment, he continued to preach to a congregation of Non-conformists in the same place; and there his son Richard was born Aug. 11, 1673. Ten years after this date, the aged minister, being accused of disloyalty, was obliged to retreat into Holland; but, as he had a handsome fortune, this expatriation did not prevent him from giving his numerous family a liberal education. When sixteen years of age, Richard, one of 13 children, was sent to Utrecht, where he studied three years under the celebrated Grævius. Subsequently he went to the university of Leyden, where he attended the lectures of Pitcairn on the theory and practice of medicine, and those of Hermann on botany. Having completed his medical education, he made the tour of Europe, in company with Dr. Pellet, afterwards president of the London College of Physicians. At Padua, in 1695, he took the degree of Doctor; and, after visiting Rome and Naples, he returned to England in the course of the following year, married, and commenced practice at Stepney. In 1701, he published his work on Poisons. It has been remarked that there is in it a marked degree of reserve in speaking of certain deleterious substances, in consequence, it is believed, of the prevalence of secret poisoning in those days. He afterwards wrote on the Influence of the Sun and Moon upon the Human Body, and presented to the Royal Society an analysis of Bonomo's letter on the cutaneous worms which generate the Itch. In 1703, he was chosen physician of St. Thomas' Hospital, and was appointed by the Company of Surgeons to read anatomical lectures in their hall. In 1707, the university of Oxford conferred a doctor's degree upon him, and in 1716 he became a fellow of the College By some the name ΙΗΣΟΥΣ is derived from ιαομαι, ιησομαι, medeor, sano. N * of Physicians. Mead was now in extensive practice, and had a warm and firm friend in Dr. Radcliffe, to whose practice, and house in Bloomsbury Square, he succeeded at his death. The day before the death of Queen Anne, Radcliffe being confined to the house with the gout, Mead was summoned to visit the royal patient. In 1721, he was deputed to superintend the inoculation of some condemned criminals; the experiment succeeded, and the operés were set at liberty. In 1727, he was made physician to George II., whom he had served in that capacity whilst he was Prince of Wales; and he had afterwards the pleasure of seeing his two sons-inlaw, Drs. Nichols and Wilmot, his coadjutors in the same eminent station. In 1747, he published a treatise on Small-pox and Measles, in Latin. He also wrote a short discourse concerning Contagion, &c.; in which he gave directions for a system of medical police, with the view of preventing the spread of the Plague which, being then at Marseilles, had caused great alarm in England. Dr. Mead was a staunch whig, and had considerable influence with the then dominant part in the state. His generous use of this influence in the case of Dr. Friend was a splendid example of magnanimity and friendship. "Dr. Friend had been committed to prison on suspicion of treasonable practices on behalf of the House of Stuart. Mead made many attempts to procure his discharge, but in vain, till being called in to attend Sir Robert Walpole, he made his friend's release the sine qua non of his attendance. The minister surrendered, and Friend was liberated; and, at an entertainment given at Mead's house to celebrate this event, the generous host put into the hands of his friend a bag containing 5000 guineas, being the amount of fees which he had received for him during his incarceration." P. 225. Mead was a remarkably prosperous man. It has been said of him that, of all physicians who ever flourished, he gained the most,* spent the most, and enjoyed the highest favour during his lifetime, not only in his own, but in foreign countries. He was a munificent patron of literature and the arts, and was intimately acquainted with the leading men of talent of the day. With Boerhaave he long kept up a constant correspondence. Garth and Arbuthnot were his chosen friends. Pope was a frequent guest at his table, and has sung his praises in the well-known lines "Alive by miracle, or what is more— Young, too, has celebrated the medical skill of his friend and physician : How late I shuddered on the brink! how late That time is mine, O Mead! to thee I owe. His charity and hospitality were large and ample, on a scale indeed of princely generosity. In his house in Great Ormond Street, he had a spacious * The average annual receipts of his practice amounted, for several years, to between six and seven thousand pounds, at a time when the value of money was much greater than in the present day. 1847] Life and Character of Mead. 181 gallery filled with the treasures of art and literature. The catalogue of his library contained 6592 separate volumes, and his pictures sold, after his death, for £3400. He had, moreover, splendid collections of statues, prints, drawings, coins, and articles of vertu. He corresponded with all the principal men of letters in Europe, and in the decline of his life he received an invitation to visit the King of Naples, and inspect the newlydiscovered city of Herculaneum-an invitation his advanced age compelled him to decline. It was principally to him that the several counties of England and our colonies abroad applied for the choice of their medical men, and he was likewise consulted by foreign physicians from Russia, Prussia, Denmark, and other countries. Among his other munificent acts, he caused the beautiful and splendid edition of Thuanus' history to be published in seven volumes folio; and, by his generous interposition, Mr. Sutton's invention of drawing foul air from ships and other close places was carried into execution, and all the ships in his Majesty's navy were provided with this useful machine. In short, nothing pleased Mead more than to call hidden talents into light, to give encouragement to meritorious projects, and to see them executed under his own eye. It was he also who induced the wealthy Citizen Guy to found the hospital that bears his name. In the deline of life, Mead composed his "Medica Sacra," or commentary on the most remarkable diseases mentioned in the Bible. His "Monita et Præcepta Medica," were published still later. He died in February 1754, in the eighty-first year of his age. Professor Marx's letter to Dr. Mead opens thus: "It is a common saying that the King never dies, because he is immediately replaced; with equal justice may we say that a great man never dies, because he cannot be replaced. "Having known and admired you for years, I turn to you, the object of my highest veneration, as to an old acquaintance. That we have never seen each other is nothing to the point. The blind never see their parents, the deaf never hear a brother's voice, and many see and commune with one another daily without ever really knowing each other. "When a person like me writes to another so late in the day, it is to be presumed that he has made himself acquainted not merely with the whole man and his achievements, but also with his times,' that chief of re-agents, and blowpipe of events. The most accurate analysis brings out to our view the finished scholar, the distinguished practitioner, and the man of noble mind. It is to address the last-mentioned alone that I take up my pen. "Of the many things which I have heard related of you, nothing has so much pleased me as your friendly conduct towards your school-fellow Friend. He would have long lain in the Tower, to which his too bold speeches in 1722 against the government as a member of parliament had consigned him, had you not obliged the Minister Walpole to set him at liberty. Not satisfied with this, you handed over to him £5000, received as fees for him in the interval of his imprisonment. "The pious reflections which this genuine scriptural occurrence* suggest are these, that you were not induced by envy to wish a fellow-physician a thousand * "In the Medica Sacra,' which you wrote after fifty years' practice, you say, miles off, or even in the land of shadows, but that you were desirous of having him near you, and that you gave up to him a sum for fees which in any other country would scarcely be accumulated during a long life, even with the help of government salaries, patrimony, and every legitimate service." P. 228. After some very pertinent observations on the jealousies and unhandsome dealings that are but too frequent among medical men, from one to another, Professor Marx very pointedly remarks: "Discord and strife are unworthy of the science of healing; war is only a disease.* Harmony and open honesty should be the symbol of professional intercourse. Hogarth, indeed, in his Analysis of Beauty,' speaks of the serpentine line as the line of beauty; but in common life the straight line is to be preferred to the crooked one." "It is not necessary that a man should sacrifice his nature, one can be independent without giving pain. Neither need we look upon active restless characters as dangerous, their excitability works for those who travel in beaten paths, like sour leaven or like caprification. For instance, a wild fig tree is set in the neighbourhood of the cultivated trees, that the insects from the wild one may pierce the buds of the others, and cause them to ripen more quickly." P. 231. We have then, towards the close of the letter, some very flattering compliments addressed to England, and the character of its people. Gracefully commemorating us and our country as "This happy breed of men, this little world, Marx alludes, with evidently cordial pleasure, to an incident which occurred to him in his visit (of which he has given a description in his former work, "Erinnerungen an England") to our shores. "The victory of the will over matter is there everywhere apparent. Amongst my agreeable recollections, I place a stroll in the neighbourhood of London as far as Highgate with a friend, where at leisure we enjoyed the influence of retirement. You will remember that this was the place where, at a former period, the greatest thinker of England was struck by the angel of death on the first day of Easter, 1626. Lord Bacon was riding there with his household physician, Dr. Wilberborne. Snow was on the ground, and an idea struck him that it might be used to preserve meat from putrefaction like salt. Immediately they dismounted, went into a cottage close by, bought a fowl, had it drawn, and then stuffed it with snow. In this occupation Bacon became so unwell, that he was immediately afterwards compelled to go to bed, and in a few days after expired. "The peculiarity and remarkable character of the natives occasioned me to make a reflection from which I will no more wander. There appears to be in England a kind of necessity to know the contrary side of everything which is in the commencement of the preface: Scripta sacra, ut hominem Christianum decet, frequentius evolvi;' and at the end of the same: Fidem Christianam ab omnibus suis cultoribus id in primis exigere liquet, ut quaevis humanitatis ac benevolentiæ officia sibi in vicem praestent." # C Benjamin Rush has written (Natural History of Medicine among the Indians in his Inquiries, 5th Ed. vol. i., Philadelphia, 1818, p. 66): War is nothing but a disease, it is founded on the imperfection of political bodies, just as fevers are founded on the weakness of the animal body.' 1847] Life and Character of Cheyne. 183 revered and admired. They are as eager for the caricature as for the original. This seems to brace them like a cold sea-bath against a diseased sensibility. Their seriousness calls forth humour, their spirit of contradiction, satire. Out of the great they extract the ludicrous, not to trample it to the dust, but to survey it on the other side, to preserve themselves from over-valuing it, and to maintain a fitting moderation with regard to it. "It is to you that the medical body is in a great measure indebted for the high esteem which they enjoy in that kingdom, and as there is an invisible church in science as well as in religion, even a foreigner may on this account be grateful to you." P. 233. Dr. Mackness's observations on this letter to Dr. Mead are chiefly occupied with comments on the duties of medical men towards each other. He shews, by several examples, the evils of those petty rivalries and unworthy disputes that have, alas! in all times dishonoured, nay sometimes have even degraded, the noble profession to which we belong. Among other illustrations, he contrasts the high-minded feeling of generous friendship that existed between Dr. William Hunter and Cullen, with the unhappy controversy that existed between Dr. Leeds and Dr. Fothergill; the conduct of the latter on this occasion having, it must be confessed with regret, left a blot on his otherwise fair and dignified reputation. He very justly remarks that, "the only real cure for the hydra-headed evil of medical jealousy we believe to be in the elevation of view and purity of purpose of the individuals themselves. He who looks most on the Whole and to the Future is least likely to be taken up with the squabbles of the present." For the particulars of the following biographical notice, we are indebted to the excellent little work, The Life, &c.," whose title is affixed to this article. GEORGE CHEYNE was born in Scotland in 1671. Little or nothing is known of his family; but he himself has gratefully acknowledged the advantage of having enjoyed "the instruction and example of pious parents. Being originally intended, like Boerhaave, for the ministry, he received a liberal education. While a tutor in a gentleman's family, he was induced to turn his thoughts to the study of Medicine by the celebrated Dr. Pitcairn, of whom mention has been already made, and whom he always loved to call "his great master and generous friend." His early predilection for the abstract sciences prepared him to adopt with energy and zeal the doctrines of the Mathematical or Mechanical School that Dr. Pitcairn had mainly contributed to introduce and render popular in this country. Having completed his medical studies (probably) at Edinburgh, he removed to London about the age of thirty, and soon after commenced practice as physician in the Metropolis. His account of himself at this time is very amusing. Hitherto he had been a sober, temperate, hard-working student; now he became the jolly frequenter of taverns and coffee-houses, with the view, it would seem, of acquiring notoriety, and enlarging the circle of his friends. "I found," says he, the bottle-companions, the younger gentry, and free-livers, to be the most easy of access, and most quickly susceptible of friendship and acquaintance; nothing being necessary for that purpose, but to be able to eat lustily, and swallow down much liquor; and being naturally of a large size, a cheerful temper, and tolerable lively " |