THE GOLD-HEADED CANE.*

IT was a quaint custom of writers more than half a century ago to make brute animals or inanimate objects narrate their history.

The Story of a Pineushian., The Travels of a Dog, The Adventures of a Shilling, were familiar titles at one period on the shelves devoted to juvenile literature. Such works, however, were not confined to the nursery, as The Gold-Headed Cane will testify.

The second edition of that little work was published in 1828 from the famous house in Albemarle Street, and we believe that no further editions were called for. The reprint before us is likely to deceive readers, since there is no indication on the title-page that a book long-forgotten is revived in a modern form. To the five chapters by Dr. Macmichael, which formed the original work, Dr. Munk has added three written on the lines of his predecessor ; but we miss in the new copy the interesting if old-fashioned illustrations and portraits which " adorn " the original work. It is well known that at one time every physician carried a cane as the indication of his calling. It was originally designed for a protection against contagion, and had a rounded knob perforated with holes and a receptacle for aromatic vinegar, is vinaigre des guatre vole m's it was called, and the name is said to have arisen from the confession of four thieves, who, during a plague at Marseilles, plundered the dead bodies with perfect security, and who, on being arrested, stated on condition of their being spared, that the use of an aromatic vinegar had preserved them from the influence of the contagion." At the College of Physicians there is a Gold-Headed Cane "which was carried successively by Drs. Radcliffe, Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie, and the arms of these celebrated physicians were en- graved on the head of the cane." For fifty years this Cane, which, instead of a vinaigrette, has a crossbar, remained in a cupboard of the library, but it has recently been honoured with a glass-case.

The Cane, which is supposed to have seen a great deal of medical life, and to have been present in many stirring scenes, describes what it has witnessed, and discusses a variety of topics connected with the healing art. If the reader can overlook the absurdity of the form the book assumes, he will find in the sub- stance of it a good deal that is interesting and instructive.

Dr. Radcliffe, despite Matthew Prior's bitter epigram, which might with advantage have been quoted here, was the ablest as well as the most popular physician of his day, and his magnifi- cent bequests to Oxford have kept his memory green in ours. It was for practical knowledge and a quick perception of disease, which to slower minds appeared like magic, rather than for great learning, that Radcliffe was famous. Unrefined in manner, coarse and scurrilous in language, with a wit that spared neither friend nor foe, and with a bluntness that treated King and Com- moner alike, he reached, notwithstanding, an eminence which, if income be a test, no English physician had previously at- tained. It was he who, when the Court physicians were divided in opinion, at once pronounced the disease of which Queen Mary died to be small-pox ; it was be who bluntly told King William he would not have his Majesty's two legs for his three

kingdoms ; it was he who, when the Princess Anne sent for him by a messenger, who described her symptoms, ex- claimed with an oath that her distemper was nothing but the vapours ; it was he who told her when Queen—for much as Anne disliked him, she was forced to send for him—

that Prince George had been so badly treated by the doctors that nothing in the art of physic could keep him alive more

than six days. Patients were never allowed to entertain delusive hopes by Radcliffe, yet his reputation was boundless, and his

• The Gold-Heeded Cane. Edited by William Munk, M.D., FA. Longman&

fees are said to have amounted to twenty guineas a day, an enormous sum, considering the value of money two centuries ago. Long before his death, in 1714, he was worth more than

£80,000. As an illustration of the generous fees he obtained, it may be mentioned that for going to Namur in 1695 to attend on Lord Albemarle, with whom he remained a week, Radcliffe received from William III. £1,200, and from Lord Albemarle him- self four hundred guineas and a diamond ring. Such fees, how- ever, noble as they are, seem inconsiderable when compared to the lavish treatment of Dr. Dimsdale, the founder of a well-known

banking-house in the City. For successfully inoculating the Empress Catherine at St. Petersburg and her son the Grand

Duke, he "was rewarded with the rank of Baron of the Empire, Councillor of State and Physician to the Empress, with a pension of 2500 per annum, and a present in money of £12,000." On the subject of incomes in the medical profession, it may be well to quote a passage in the Cane's account of Sir Henry Raiford, for which Dr. Munk is responsible :—

" The reputation which my first master, Dr. Radcliffe, had made at Oxford, preceded him to London, and secured for him from the first an extraordinary professional income. He had settled in town some years before I came into existence, but I have always understood that from a very early period he made on an average twenty guineas a day, or more than seven thousand a year ; which sum was soon increased, though to what extent is not known, and continued much the same to the death of William III. Considering the value of money at that period, Dr. Radcliffe's annual receipts may perhaps be regarded as the largest that have been made by any English physician. Dr. Mead, the protégé of Radcliffe and his successor in public favour, is known to have had a professional income of from five to six thousand guineas for many successive years, and in one year be received as much as seven thousand. The elder Dr. Warren, who died in 1797, one of the most popular of men, and the favourite physician of his time, realised nine thousand a year from the time of the Regency, and bequeathed to his family above one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Dr. Baillie's income for many years ranged from nine to ten thousand ; and Sir Henry Halford's professional income, from the death of Dr. Baillie to the death of William IV., when his attendance on the Court terminated, is known to have uniformly ex- ceeded ten thousand, and was not unfrequently more than eleven thousand in the year. This is probably a larger professional inoome than had ever before been made for a series of years by any physician ; but it may be questioned whether, having regard to the relative value of money at the two periods, it was more than equivalent to the amount received by Dr. Radcliffe. Dr. Chambers, who succeeded to the position in public estimation and in professional employment which had been so long occupied by Sir Henry Halford, had a pro- fessional income ranging for some years between seven and nine thousand guineas, bat he never exceeded, it is believed, the larger amount."

Dr. Hope, if we remember rightly, said that a London physician could not fairly make more than £5,000 a year. Dr. Williams has lately told the public that in no year did his income exceed £7,000; but there are great prizes in the profession still, and we read of a popular physician of the present day who on two occasions received a thousand guineas for going to Pan, and a fee of fifteen hundred guineas for visiting a patient at Pitlochry and remaining there a week.

When Radcliffe died, the Cane passed to Dr. Mead, a physician of great learning, wealth, and liberality, and a distinguished patron of art. He wrote on the plague, on small-pox, on the principal diseases mentioned in the Bible, and on poisons, in the study of which he made several dangerous experiments. He is said to have had a magnificent library and an unrivalled . Collection of works of art. Pope has immortalised him and the great surgeon, his contemporary, in the couplet :—

" I'll do what Mead and Cheselden advise, To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes," the first line of which is inaccurately printed in The Gold-Headed Cane. Pope, by the way, is said to have been always welcome at Mead's table, where he enjoyed his favourite dish of sweet- bread. With another literary celebrity whose name is closely

linked to Pope's, Mead was on one occasion intimately associated, for he was, we believe, among the first to approve of inoculation, which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced into England in 1722. People of the highest rank courted Mead's society, for his manners were as striking as his attainments. Although his income for several years was between £5,000 and £6,000, he was too liberal a man to die wealthy. It is interesting to read, as illustrating the manners of the time, that "when not engaged at home he generally spent his evenings at Batson's [Button's?] Coffee House, and in the forenoons apothecaries used to come to him at Tom's in Covent Garden, with written or verbal reports of cases, for which he prescribed without seeing the patient, and took half-guinea fees." As another sign of the times it may be mentioned that Mead was accustomed to travel to his country house near Windsor in a coach-and-six. Like Mead, Askew, who had also been a great traveller, accumulated a large library not of printed books only but of manuscripts. He was more distinguished probably as a man of learning than as a physician :—

" Our house in Queen Square' " we read, "was crammed full of books. We could dispense with no more. Oar passages were full ; even our very garrets overflowed ; and the wags of the day used to say that the half of the Square itself would have done so before the

book appetite of Dr. Askew would have been satiated Indeed from his youth upwards he had been distinguished fog his love of letters, and had received the early part of his education under Richard Dawes, the critic. His father, on presenting him to the schoolmaster, marked those parts of his back which Dawes, who was celebrated for his unsparing use of the birch, might scourge at his pleasure, except- ing only his head from this discipline, and my master was wont to relate with some humour the terror with which he surveyed for the first time this redoubted pedagogue. As a collector of books Dr. Askew was the first who brought bibliomania into fashion."

The Cane having little to say about Askew, dwells at greater length on the career of Dr. Heberden, a favourite physician of George III., who was practising in London at the same time.

Like most of our distinguished physicians, his charity was unbounded, and like many of them, he lived to a great age, observing when on the verge of ninety that though his occu- pations and pleasures were changed, he knew not if he had ever passed a year more happily. The son followed in his father's steps, and attained the highest honours of his profession. These men were as conspicuous for moral character as for scientific attainments ; and the same praise may be given to Pitcairn and to Baillie. Of the latter, the following anecdote is related :—

"When in the burry of great business, when his day's work, as he used to say, amounted to seventeen hours, he was sometimes rather irritable, and betrayed a want of temper in hearing the tiresome details of an unimportant story. After listening with torture to a prosing account from a lady who ailed so little that she was going to the opera that evening, he had happily escaped from the room, when he was urgently requested to step up-stairs again ; it was to ask him whether on her return from the opera, she might eat some oysters ?

Yes, ma'am,' said Baillie, 'shells and all.'"

It will be seen that this curious little volume is not without suggestive passages and amusing anecdotes. The latter portion of it, which is the work of Dr. Munk, dovetails skilfully with the preceding chapters A very interesting work, now, we believe, out of print, was published many years ago by the late Dr. Mackness, of Hastings, on the moral aspects of medical life. The subjects treated of in that volume are of profound interest ;

and one of them, the course the physician should adopt with a patient whom he believes to be dying, is wisely dealt with by Sir Henry Halford in an address delivered at the College of Physicians after the death of George IV. To this, however, we must be content to refer our readers. The portraits on the College walls give an opportunity for describing the men whom they represent, and this task is assigned to Dr. Paris. A glance at the list will show how many English physicians have been

distinguished for wit and learning, or for pursuits apart from their special vocation as doctors of medicine. There is Dr. Front, "without question the greatest animal chemist this country has produced." There is Sir Thomas Browne, of the " Religio Medici," whose books Charles Lamb loved so dearly. There is Arbuthnot, perhaps the greatest wit of an age that produced Swift. There is Sir Richard Blackmore, one of the physicians to William III., but better known as the author of the six dullest epics contained in our literature. There is Sir Samuel Garth, a popular physician and a small poet, of whose verses Johnson has truly said that "no passages fall below mediocrity, and few rise mach above it." It was Garth who said he was tired of life, tired of having to put on his shoes and take them off every day. According to Pope, he was a Christian without knowing it, but the story runs that on his deathbed he sent to Addison to know if Christianity were true. With an anecdote of Dr. Babington, an Irishman by birth, and one of the most faultless of men, we must close our notice of this entertaining little volume. "He told the story of an Irish gentleman, for whom he prescribed an emetic, expostulating seriously with him about it. My dear doctor,' said he, it is of no use your giving me an emetic; I tried it twice in Dublin, and it would not stay on my stomach either time.'"