Читать книгу A Book About Doctors - John Cordy Jeaffreson - Страница 14

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The lives of three physicians—Sydenham, Sir Hans Sloane, and Heberden—completely bridge over the uncertain period between old empiricism and modern science. The son of a wealthy Dorsetshire squire, Sydenham was born in 1624, and received the most important part of his education in the University of Oxford, where he was created Bachelor of Medicine 14th April, 1648. Settling in London about 1661, he was admitted a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians 25th June, 1665. Subsequently he acquired an M.D. degree at Cambridge, but this step he did not take till 17th May, 1676. He also studied physic at Montpellier; but it may be questioned if his professional success was a consequence of his labours in any seat of learning, so much as a result of that knowledge of the world which he gained in the Civil war as a captain in the Parliamentary army. It was he who replied to Sir Richard Blackmore's inquiry after the best course of study for a medical student to pursue—"Read Don Quixote; it is a very good book—I read it still." Medical critics have felt it incumbent on themselves to explain away this memorable answer—attributing it to the doctor's cynical temper rather than his scepticism with regard to medicine. When, however, the state of medical science in the seventeenth century is considered, one has not much difficulty in believing that the shrewd physician meant exactly what he said. There is no question but that as a practitioner he was a man of many doubts. The author of the capital sketch of Sydenham in the "Lives of British Physicians" says—"At the commencement of his professional life it is handed down to us by tradition, that it was his ordinary custom, when consulted by his patients for the first time, to hear attentively the story of their complaints, and then say, 'Well, I will consider of your case, and in a few days will order something for you.' But he soon discovered that this deliberate method of proceeding was not satisfactory, and that many of the persons so received forgot to come again; and he was consequently obliged to adopt the usual practice of prescribing immediately for the diseases of those who sought his advice." A doctor who feels the need for such deliberation must labour under considerable perplexity as to the proper treatment of his patient. But the low opinion he expressed to Blackmore of books as instructors in medicine, he gave publicly with greater decorum, but almost as forcibly, in a dedication addressed to Dr. Mapletoft, where he says, "The medical art could not be learned so well and so surely as by use and experience; and that he who would pay the nicest and most accurate attention to the symptoms of distempers would succeed best in finding out the true means of cure."

Sydenham died in his house, in Pall Mall, on the 29th of December, 1689. In his last years he was a martyr to gout, a malady fast becoming one of the good things of the past. Dr. Forbes Winslow, in his "Physic and Physicians"—gives a picture, at the same time painful and laughable, of the doctor's sufferings. "Sydenham died of the gout; and in the latter part of his life is described as visited with that dreadful disorder, and sitting near an open window, on the ground floor of his house, in St. James's Square, respiring the cool breeze on a summer's evening, and reflecting, with a serene countenance and great complacency, on the alleviation to human misery that his skill in his art enabled him to give. Whilst this divine man was enjoying one of these delicious reveries, a thief took away from the table, near to which he was sitting, a silver tankard filled with his favourite beverage, small beer, in which a sprig of rosemary had been immersed, and ran off with it. Sydenham was too lame to ring his bell, and too feeble in his voice to give the alarm."

Heberden, the medical friend of Samuel Johnson, was born in London in 1710, and died on the 17th of May, 1801. Between Sydenham and Heberden came Sir Hans Sloane, a man ever to be mentioned honourably amongst those physicians who have contributed to the advancement of science, and the amelioration of society.

Pope says:—

"'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ,

To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy;

Is it less strange the prodigal should waste

His wealth to purchase what he ne'er can taste?

Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats,

Artists must chuse his pictures, music, meats; He buys for Topham drawings and designs, For Pembroke statues, dirty gods, and coins; Rare monkish manuscripts, for Hearne alone, And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane." Pope's Moral Essays, Epistle IV.

Hans Sloane (the seventh and youngest child of Alexander Sloane, receiver-general of taxes for the county of Down, before and after the Civil war, and a commissioner of array, after the restoration of Charles II.) was born at Killileagh in 1660. An Irishman by birth, and a Scotchman by descent, he exhibited in no ordinary degree the energy and politeness of either of the sister countries. After a childhood of extreme delicacy he came to England, and devoted himself to medical study and scientific investigation. Having passed through a course of careful labour in London, he visited Paris and Montpellier, and, returning from the Continent, became the intimate friend of Sydenham. On the 21st of January, 1685, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; and on the 12th of April, 1687, he became a Fellow of the College of Physicians. In the September of the latter year he sailed to the West Indies, in the character of physician to the Duke of Albemarle, who had been appointed Governor of Jamaica. His residence in that quarter of the globe was not of long duration. On the death of his Grace the doctor attended the Duchess back to England, arriving once more in London in the July of 1689. From that time he remained in the capital—his professional career, his social position, and his scientific reputation being alike brilliant. From 1694 to 1730, he was a physician of Christ's Hospital. On the 30th of November, 1693, he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society. In 1701 he was made an M.D. of Oxford; and in 1705 he was elected into the fellowship of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In 1708 he was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris. Four years later he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Berlin. In 1719 he became president of the College of Physicians; and in 1727 he was created President of the Royal Society (on the death of Sir Isaac Newton), and was appointed physician to King George II. In addition to these honours, he won the distinction of being the first[6] medical practitioner advanced to the dignity of a baronetcy.

In 1742, Sir Hans Sloane quitted his professional residence at Bloomsbury; and in the society of his library, museum, and a select number of scientific friends, spent the last years of his life at Chelsea, the manor of which parish he had purchased in 1722.

In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1748, there is a long but interesting account of a visit paid by the Prince and Princess of Wales to the Baronet's museum. Sir Hans received his royal guests and entertained them with a banquet of curiosities, the tables being cleverly shifted, so that a succession of "courses," under glass cases, gave the charm of variety to the labours of observation.

In his old age Sir Hans became sadly penurious, grudging even the ordinary expenses of hospitality. His intimate friend, George Edwards, F.R.S., gives, in his "Gleanings of Natural History," some particulars of the old Baronet, which present a stronger picture of his parsimony than can be found in the pages of his avowed detractors.

"Sir Hans, in the decline of his life, left London and retired to his manor-house, at Chelsea, where he resided about fourteen years before he died. After his retirement at Chelsea, he requested it as a favour to him (though I embraced it as an honour due to myself), that I would visit him every week, in order to divert him for an hour or two with the common news of the town, and with everything particular that should happen amongst his acquaintance of the Royal Society, and other ingenious gentlemen, many of whom I was weekly conversant with; and I seldom missed drinking coffee with him on a Saturday, during the whole time of his retirement at Chelsea. He was so infirm as to be wholly confined to his house, except sometimes, though rarely, taking a little air in his garden in a wheeled chair; and this confinement made him very desirous to see any of his old acquaintance, to amuse him. He was strictly careful that I should be at no expense in my journeys from London to Chelsea to wait on him, knowing that I did not superabound in the gifts of fortune. He would calculate what the expense of coach-hire, waterage, or any other little charge that might attend on my journeys backward and forward would amount to, and would oblige me annually to accept of it, though I would willingly have declined it."

Such generosity speaks of a parsimonious temper and habit more forcibly than positive acts of stinginess would.

On the death of Sir Hans Sloane, on the 11th of January, 1753, his museum and library passed into the hands of the nation for a comparatively small sum of money, and became the nucleus of our British Museum.

The Royal Society of Sir Hans Sloane's time differed widely from the Royal Society of the present day. The reader of Mr. Charles Weld's history of that distinguished fraternity smiles a painful smile at the feeble steps of its first members in the direction of natural science. The efficacy of the divining rod, and the merits of Sir Kenelm Digby's sympathetic powder, were the subjects that occupied the attention of the philosophers of Charles II.'s reign. Entries such as the following are the records of their proceedings:—

"June 5.—Col. Tuke related the manner of the rain like corn at Norwich, and Mr. Boyle and Mr. Evelyn were entreated to sow some of those rained seeds to try their product.

"Magneticall cures were then discoursed of. Sir Gilbert Talbot promised to bring what he knew of sympathetical cures. Those that had any powder of sympathy were desired to bring some of it at the next meeting.

"Mr. Boyle related of a gentleman, who, having made some experiments of the ayre, essayed the quicksilver experiment at the top and bottom of a hill, when there was found three inches difference.

"Dr. Charleton promised to bring in that white powder, which, put into water, heates that.

"The Duke of Buckingham promised to cause charcoal to be distilled by his chymist.

"His Grace promised to bring into the society a piece of a unicorne's horn.

"Sir Kenelme Digby related that the calcined powder of toades reverberated, applyed in bagges upon the stomach of a pestiferate body, cures it by several applications."

"June 13.—Colonel Tuke brought in the history of rained seedes, which were reported to have fallen downe from heaven in Warwickshire and Shropshire, &c.

"That the dyving engine be going forward with all speed, and the treasurer to procure the lead and moneys.

"Ordered, that Friday next the engine be tried at Deptford."

"June 26.—Dr. Ent, Dr. Clarke, Dr. Goddard, and Dr. Whistler, were appointed curators of the proposition made by Sir G. Talbot, to torment a man presently with the sympatheticall powder.

"Sir G. Talbot brought in his experiments of the sympathetick cures."

It is true that these passages relate to transactions of the Royal Society that occurred long before Sir Hans was one of the body. But even in his time the advances made towards greater enlightenment were few and feeble, when compared with the strides of science during the last century. So simple and childish were the operations and speculations of the Society in the first half of the eighteenth century, that even Sir John Hill was able to cover them with ridicule.

Sir Hans had two medical successors in the presidentship of the Royal Society—Sir John Pringle, Bart., elected Nov. 30, 1772, and William Hyde Wollaston, M.D., elected June 29, 1820. The last-mentioned physician had but a brief tenure of the dignity, for he retired from the exalted post on Nov. 30, 1820, in favor of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart.

Humphrey Davy (the son of the Penzance woodcarver, who was known to his acquaintances as "Little Carver Davy") was the most acute natural philosopher of his generation, and at the same time about the vainest and most eccentric of his countrymen. With all his mental energy, he was disfigured by a moral pettiness, which, to a certain extent, justified Wordsworth's unaccustomed bitterness in "A Poet's Epitaph":—