ficians of their fons. Oldfield, Clark, Nefbit, Lobb, and Munckley were the fons of diffenting teachers, and they generally fucceeded. The hofpital of St. Thomas, and that of Guy, in Southwark, were both under the government of diffenters and whigs; and as foon as any one became physician of either, his fortune was looked upon as made. The mention of this circumftance brings to my remembrance a contest, that, to a degree, proves the truth of my affertion. Dr. afterwards Sir Edward, Hulfe had been fome years physician to St. Thomas's hofpital, and being minded to refign, had set his eye upon Dr. Jofeph Letherland, a man of profound erudition, for his fucceffor. Hoadly, bishop of Winchester, had about that time a fon, who having finished his ftudies. in phyfic at Cambridge, had taken his doctor's degree, and was about to fettle in London. Hoadly was ever the idol of the whigs: he encouraged his fon to offer himself, and the intereft was divided. Every nerve was ftrained, and Hoadly miffed his election by fewer than ten votes

*

The

* It is remarkable of this perfon, that upon this failure he abandoned his profeffion; not fo much perhaps because of his disappointment, as of his principles. To a friend of mine he confeffed that he was, as to the effects of medicine, a fceptic; for that upon the principles of philofophy, he could not account for the operation of any one medicine on the human body. He feemed in this instance to have adopted the fentiments of Montaigne, who entertained the fame doubt, and, fomewhere in his effays, defcribes a phyfician putting a pill into a patient's mouth, with a commiffion to follow the circulation, and act only on that part, the toe for instance, to which it is directed. Of a different opinion was the father

of

The fame advantage attended the election of a physician to the hofpitals of Bethlehem and St. Bartholomew, which are of royal foundation, and have been under tory government. By cultivating an intereft with either of the two parties, the fucceffion of a young phyfician was almoft infured. The frequenting Batfon's or Child's was a declaration of the fide he took, and his business was to be indifcriminately courteous and obfequious to all men, to appear much abroad and in public places, to increase his acquaintance and form good connexions, in the doing whereof, a wife, if he were married, that could vifit, play at cards, and tattle, was oftentimes very ferviceable t. A candidate for practice, purfuing these methods and exercifing the patience of a

of the perfon above-mentioned, 'Hoadly, bishop of Winchester, when, writing against the free-thinkers, he put this fhrewd queftion: Were all the mistakes and errors of phyficians, from the beginning of the world to this day, collected into a volume, would they afford a good reafon against taking phyfic?'

+ The medical character, whatever it is now, was heretofore a grave one it implies learning and fagacity, and therefore, notwithstanding lord Shaftesbury's remark, that gravity is of the very effence of impofture, the candidates for practice, though ever fo young, found it neceffary to add to their endeavours a grave and folemn deportment, even to affectation. The physicians in Hogarth's prints are not caricatures; the full drefs, with a fword and a great tye-wig, and the hat under the arm; the doctors in confultation, each smelling to a gold-headed cane shaped like a parish-beadle's staff, are pictures of real life in his time, and myself have seen a young phyfician thus equip ped, walk the streets of London without attracting the paffengers.

eyes

and

of

fetting-dog

fetting-dog for half a score years in the expectation of deaths, refignations, or other accidents that occafion vacancies, at the end thereof either found himself an hospital physician*, and if of Bethlehem a monopolist of one, and that a very lucrative branch of practice; or doomed to struggle with difficulties for the remainder of his life.

Jurin, Shaw, James, and fome few others, recommended themselves to practice by their writings, but in general the methods of acquiring it, I speak of the city, were fuch as are above described. One and only one of the profeffion I am able to name who pursued a different conduct, and under the greatest difadvantages fucceeded.

This person was Dr. Meyer Schomberg, a native of Cologne, who being a jew, and as I have heard related of him, librarian to fome perfon of diftinction abroad,

• To these observations on the profeffion of phyfic, and the fate of its practitioners, I here add an anecdote of no less a perfon than Dr. Mead himself, who very early in his life attained to this ftation of eminence, and met with all the fubfequent encouragement due to his great merit, and who nevertheless died in a ftate of indigence.

The income arifing from his practice I have heard estimated at 7000l. a year, and he had one if not two fortunes left him, not by relations but by friends no way allied to him; but his munificence was fo great, and his paffion for collecting books, paintings, and curiofities, fo ftrong, that he made no favings. His manufcripts he parted with in his life-time to supply his wants, which towards his end were become fo preffing, that he once requested of the late lord Orrery the loan of five guineas on fome toys, viz. pieces of kennelcoal wrought into vases and other elegant forms, which he produced from his pocket. This ftory, incredible as it may feem, lord Orrery told Johnson, and from him I had it.

left

left that occupation, and came and settled in London. Being of no profeffion, and having the means of a livelihood to feek, he was at a paufe, but at length determined on one, and took it up in a manner that will be best described by his own words to a friend of mine. ' I said I was a physician.' Having thus affumed a profeffion, he cultivated an intimacy with the jews in Duke's place, and by their means got introduced to the acquaintance of fome of the leading men, merchants and others of that religion, who employed him, and by their intereft recommended him to a practice that, in a few years amounted, as he once told me himself, to a thousand pounds a year. He was a man of an infinuating addrefs, and as he understood mankind very well, having renounced the ritual distinctions of his religion, he foon found out a method of acquiring popularity, which had never been practifed by any of his profeffion; he took a large house in the city, and kept a public table, to which, on a certain day in the week, all the young furgeons and apothecaries were welcome, and at which all that were present were treated with an indifcriminate civility, that had very much the appearance of friendship, but meant nothing more than that they should recommend him to practice. The fcheme fucceeded in the year 1740, Schomberg had outstripped all the city-phyficians, and was in the annual receipt of four thousand pounds.

To enable him to practice, he had, at his setting out, procured to be admitted a licentiate of the college, but that permiffion had been granted him with fo ill a grace, or was followed by fome circumftances that

provoked

provoked his resentment fo highly, that he feemed refolved on a perpetual enmity against the members of that body; who, on their part, looking on him as little better than a foreign mountebank, declined, as much as poffible, meeting him in confultation, and thereby, for fome time, checked his practice.

He had a fon whom he brought up to his own profeffion, who took it into his head, that having been admitted a licentiate, he was virtually a fellow, and claimed to be admitted as fuch: his father encouraged him, and inftituted a procefs in his behalf, of which there had been no precedent fince the time that Jefferies was chancellor. It was no less than a petition to the king, requesting him, in the person of the lord-chancellor, to exercife his visitatorial power over the college, and restore the licentiates to their rights, which, by their arbitrary proceedings, the prefident and fellows had, for a fucceffion of ages, deprived them of. This petition came on to be heard at Lincoln's-inn hall, before the lord chief juftice Willes, the lord chief-baron Smythe, and Sir John Eardley Wilmot, lords commiffioners of the great feal, but the allegations therein contained not being fufficiently fupported, the fame was difmiffed; it was nevertheless looked on as the most formidable attack on the college it had ever fuftained, and may be faid to have fhaken its conftitution to the very centre.

Political affociations and religious fects are excellent nurses to young men of profeffions, especially of that of which I am fpeaking; Ratcliffe and Freind owed their fortunes to the fupport of the tories and jacobites; Mead and Hulfe to the whigs, and Schomberg to the jews. The quakers alfo, no contemptible VOL. I.

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