Springtime and Other Essays Part 11

In a transaction of 14th June 1423 is the first appearance of the arms at present used by the hospital (ii., p. 16), namely, party per pale argent and sable a chevron counter-changed. It was probably Wakeryng's coat of arms, but ended by being regarded as that of the hospital. The author suggests that the chevron "might symbolise the hospital roof, while the equally divided and counter-changed argent and sable suggested that each patient admitted had an even chance of recovery or of death."

In 1432 arrangements were made for a water-supply to the hospital from Islington (Iseldon); and the "waste of water at the Cisterne" was to be conveyed "to the Gailes of Newgate and Ludgate for the reliefe of the prisoners."

c.o.c.k Lane, near the hospital, has, I fear, no connection with brother John c.o.k (ii., p. 53); it was so called from the shops of the cooks who prepared refreshments for the crowds who came to Smithfield. It was at the end of c.o.c.k Lane that the fire of London stopped in 1666, but it is better known as the scene of the c.o.c.k Lane ghost.

Sir Richard Owen, who had been a student at St Bartholomew's, told Dr Moore (ii., p. 54) a grim story of c.o.c.k Lane. It was there that the hospital authorities hired a house for the reception of the dead bodies of criminals hung at Newgate. "Owen was in a room on the first floor with Sir William Blizard, the President, who was attired in court dress as the proper costume for an official act. They heard the shouts of the crowd and then the noise of an approaching cart, which turned down c.o.c.k Lane and stopped at the door. Then came the heavy steps of the executioner tramping up the stairs. He had the body of a man who had been hanged on his back, and entering the room, let it fall on a table. . . .

Sir William Blizard with a scalpel made a small cut over the breast-bone, and bowed to the executioner. This was, I suppose, the formal recognition of the purpose for which the body had been delivered.

The rumbling of the cart, the contrast between the stiff figure of Sir William Blizard in his court dress and the executioner in coa.r.s.e clothes, and the thud of each dead body on the table remained in Owen's memory to the end of his days; and his skill in telling the story has made me remember it nearly every time that I have walked down c.o.c.k Lane."

On 1st March 1711, a piece of literature destined "to be famous as long as English is read, was published near the end of Duck Lane in Little Britain." This was the first number of the _Spectator_, and "all London read it and enjoyed it, from the motto to the end." The author (ii., p.

63) imagines Mr Addison walking down Duck Lane the Wednesday evening before its appearance, from Mr Buckley's in Little Britain where he had corrected his last revise.

Sir Norman Moore adds: "For me . . . Duke Street, Little Britain, has innumerable memories of twenty-one happy years. I lived there as a student and as house physician, and then as Warden of the College of St Bartholomew's." He adds that his election as Warden was his first professional success, which was followed by a place on the permanent staff of the hospital. It was the home of his early married life, and here his eldest child was born. He need not have apologised (as he does); such details will surely please all sympathetic readers.

There is an interest in even the modern inhabitants of Little Britain.

We hear of dealers in gold lace and gold leaf, and also a representative of that rare genus the teapot-handle maker. These handles could not be worked on a lathe, and had to be sawn out of the ivory. Dr Moore learned that in all London there was but one other teapot-handle maker: he felt what a favour it was when the great man mended a fan for Mrs Moore.

It is pleasant to meet with the well-known lines from Wordsworth's poem of "Poor Susan":-

"Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside."

I regret to say that our author quotes only to criticise, since he denies that the mists of Lothbury are visible in Cheapside.

In 1535 the hospital estate was valued at 305, 6s. 7d. according to one authority, and at 371, 13s. 2d. by another. St Bartholomew's was then the third hospital in London in order of wealth. Henry VII.'s Hospital in the Savoy and the New Hospital of Our Lady outside Bishopsgate were richer (ii., p. 125).

The Act of Dissolution was pa.s.sed in 1536, and the property of the hospital was given into the King's hands in 1537. Thus the "old order, which had existed for more than four hundred years, was at an end, and the hospital was in the eye of the law vacant and altogether dest.i.tute of a master, and of all fellows or brethren" (ii., p. 126).

"Augustinians, Benedictines, Carthusians, Gilbertines, Franciscans, Dominicans, and more, all were banished from their ancient homes. . . .

St Bartholomew's Hospital was one of the few places where the injured tree of charity began to put forth new branches, and soon flourished again" (ii., p. 148).

The King, after five years' delay, granted, on 23rd June 1544, {150} letters patent reconst.i.tuting the hospital for its original uses.

William Turges, the King's Chaplain, was the first Master, and "the body corporate was to be called 'The Master and Chaplains of the Hospital of St Bartholomew in West Smithfield, near London.'" The grant did little for the poor, but it prevented the destruction of St Bartholomew's and carried on its existence.

The figure of Henry VIII. is above the Smithfield Gate of the hospital.

A full-length portrait of him hangs at the end of the Great Hall. He is also represented in a window of the hall handing the letters patent to the Lord Mayor and citizens. "Thus," says the author, "do we commemorate this destroying King, who might have taken away all the estate of St Bartholomew's, but only took a small portion of it" (ii., p. 161).

The const.i.tution under which the hospital is ruled was established in 1547, and confirmed, with an alteration in but one important particular, in 1782. "Most of the offices created by the Deed of Covenant of December 1546, and the letters patent of January 1547, exist at the present day. The treasurer, the almoners, the physician, the surgeon, the rentar, the steward, the matron and sisters, the porter bearing a figure of St Bartholomew on his staff of office, and the beadles with silver badges engraved with the hospital arms, are all parts of the present life of the hospital" (ii., p. 191).

Beside the grave benefactors of the hospital we hear of serio-comic personages who remind us of the curious lunatics recorded by de Morgan in his _Budget of Paradoxes_. Thus in 1774 Mr W. Gardiner offered 2000 to St Bartholomew's "as a sacrifice for G.o.d's having put it in his power to overturn Sir Isaac Newton's system" (ii., p. 245).

From 1547 the treasurer was "a very important officer, but the president also took an active part in the affairs of the hospital." But now the treasurer is the responsible head of the administration.

In 1518 the College of Physicians was founded by Henry VIII. (ii., p.

408) on the advice of Dr Thomas Linacre. Its active existence began in his house in Knightrider Street. The most pious and the most learned men of England were Linacre's intimate friends, and the "example of his life, as felt in the College of Physicians, continues a living force to this day" (ii., p. 411).

Dr John Caius (ii., p. 412) was a devoted follower of Linacre; he was born 1510, went to Cambridge in 1529, and in 1533 was elected Fellow of Gonville Hall. In 1539 he went to Padua, where Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, was Professor. In 1547 Caius was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and not long after he came to live within St Bartholomew's Hospital.

Caius wrote on the sweating sickness in 1552, and his work was printed near St Bartholomew's. "Thus were the proofs of the first medical monograph in the English tongue, and, indeed, the first book written by an English physician . . . on a particular disease, corrected in St Bartholomew's" (ii., p. 418).

Caius was in 1555 elected President of the College of Physicians, to which he presented their silver caduceus with four serpents at its head, a book of statutes, and a seal. In 155769 he was engaged in the refoundation and building at Cambridge of what was to be known as Gonville and Caius College. On his death his viscera were buried in St Bartholomew's the Less, while the rest of his body was placed in an alabaster tomb in the chapel of his college with the inscription: "Fui Caius."

We meet with many proofs of the consideration shown by the authorities towards the patients. For instance (ii., p. 279):-

13_th March_ 1568.-"This day it is graunted by the courte that Griffen Davye shall departe forthwith into his countrye, and also that he shall have 20s. in his purse to bringe him home in consideracion that he is lame and impotent."

Again (ii., p. 293), "30_th April_ 1597.-Ordered that curtaynes be provided for certain beds of the poor." The author adds that "moveable curtains hang over the beds to this day, and are of great use in providing privacy when patients are was.h.i.+ng and dressing."

We meet with some trifling records of great events. Thus on 7th May 1660 it is ordered that "the s.h.i.+eld of the States armes being the Redd Cross and Harpe be taken downe in the Court Hall and the King's arms put in the Roome thereof."

But even the King could not impose on the hospital. Thus in 1661 there was a vacancy for a surgeon at the Lock. The King wrote in favour of John Knight, but John Dorrington was elected (ii., p. 316).

In 1666 the great fire of London was only prevented from reaching the hospital by pulling down houses. The consequent loss to the hospital may be set down as 2000 per annum. We are constantly meeting in the history of St Bartholomew's interesting lights on the natural history of the patients. An entry as to the supply of beer (of which, by the way, the patients were allowed three pints daily) pleases me:-"Sir Jonathan Reymond, Knt. and Alderman, is to serve the matron's cellar. Alderman Lt.-col. Freind is to supply small beer" (ii., p. 339). These personages doubtless belonged to the established church, for dissenters were not allowed to serve the hospital with any commodity.

An entry under 26th February 1704 throws a sinister light on the condition of the wards:-"Elizabeth Bond did propose to kill and clear the beds and wards of bugs within this house for 6s. per bed." I hope Elizabeth Bond was more careful in her work than was the writer of the resolution (ii., p. 352).

It is interesting to come across the following:-

21_st July_ 1737.-It was resolved "that the thanks of this Court be given to William Hogarth, Esquire . . . for his generous and free gift of the painting of the great staircase. . . ."

5_th Jan._ 1758.-A committee considered the subject of visiting prisoners in Newgate, but the plan was apparently thrown over because prisoners were found entirely dest.i.tute of clothes, bedding, etc.

Even in the history of Mr Pickwick (chapter xlii.) we read that "not a week pa.s.ses over our heads, but, in every one of our prisons for debt, some . . . must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they were not relieved by their fellow prisoners."

It is curious to find that in 1821 the function of the hospital as a school for students of medicine was something of a novelty. The reform seems to have been due to Abernethy.

In 1845, on 13th May, a unanimous resolution against female governors was carried. Dr Moore adds that "about half a century later they were admitted, and no disastrous consequences have ensued." In 1851 Miss Elizabeth Blackwell was actually admitted as a student, and strange to say with satisfactory results.

The author relates {154} how he was walking back to St Bartholomew's one hot summer afternoon when he saw at a small second-hand book shop Paulus Jovius' history of his own times, printed in 1550. Within it Woodhull the collector had noted that he bought it at the sale of Dr Askew's books. Next day Sir Norman met Robert Browning and mentioned the book to him: "He had read it, and recalled pa.s.sages in it, and told most pleasantly how the bishop had concealed the ma.n.u.script in a chest . . .

when the Spaniards took Rome, and how a Spanish captain found out that Paulus Jovius valued the ma.n.u.script, and so only gave it up on receiving a promise of the emoluments of a living in the gift of the church" (ii., p. 539).

Sir George Burrows became physician in 1841:-"He did not hesitate to express censure where he thought censure required. A clergyman at St Bartholomew's rather aggressively invited his criticism on a sermon which he had just delivered. 'Let me tell you, sir,' said Burrows, 'that many a man has been put in a lunatic asylum for much less nonsense than you preached to us to-day'" (ii., p. 561).

Dr Frederic John Farre was elected physician, 1854. Farre was captain of Charterhouse School during Thackeray's first year there. And in _The Adventures of Philip_ the author tells how one of the boys laughed because Firmin's eyes "filled with tears at some ribald remark, and was gruffly rebuked by Sampson major [_i.e._, Dr Farre], the c.o.c.k of the whole school; and with the question, 'Don't you see the poor beggar's in mourning, you great brute?' was kicked about his business."

Percivall Pott was elected a.s.sistant surgeon at St Bartholomew's in 1745 and surgeon in 1749, holding office till 1787. There is in the hospital a fine portrait of him in a crimson coat, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. A very old lady, whose mother's medical attendant had been dresser to Percivall Pott, told Dr Moore, on the authority of the above pract.i.tioner, that Pott often came to the hospital in a red coat, and sometimes wore a sword.

Occasional teaching in medicine had been carried out from the seventeenth century onwards, but the originator _par excellence_ was John Abernethy, who was born in 1764 and became a pupil at St Bartholomew's in 1779. He taught anatomy in a really scientific manner, but he did not succeed in permanently raising it from the region of cram which in my day at Cambridge it shared with Materia Medica.

Many stories are told of his abrupt manner with his private patients.

Charles Darwin used to tell us of a patient entering Abernethy's consulting room, holding out his hand and saying, "Bad cut," to which Abernethy replied, "Poultice"; the patient departed, only to return in a day or two, when his laconic report, "Cut worse," was answered by "More poultice." Finally he came back cured and enquired what he owed the surgeon, who replied, "Nothing; you are the best patient I ever had, and I could not take a fee."

Sir James Paget was a.s.sistant surgeon at St Bartholomew's in 1847; he became surgeon in 1861; he resigned the position in 1871, and died in 1899. He was the chief surgeon of the Victorian age, and his success may be estimated by the fact that his professional income rose to 10,000 per annum. He freely gave of his store of knowledge, for instance in Charles Darwin's _The Expression of the Emotions_. William Morrant Baker was elected a surgeon of St Bartholomew's in 1882. He was noted for the neatness of his dress, and Dr Francis Harris, who sometimes wore country clothes, told Dr Moore that he occasionally hid in the porter's lodge to avoid Baker's critical eyes. He warned Dr Moore (who was a candidate for the Wardens.h.i.+p of the College) that those same eyes were on him in the matter of dress.

Sir William Church, who wrote on the Hospital Pharmacopia, gives some astonis.h.i.+ng facts. From 1866 to 1875 the annual consumption of sulphate of magnesia was 42 hundredweights, _i.e._, about two cart-loads. "In 1836 8 tons of linseed meal were used, while from 1876 to 1885 the annual average was 15 tons, but in 1911 the poultice was so nearly obsolete that 3 cwt. sufficed. In 1837 96,300 leeches were used; . . .

in 1868 the number had sunk to 2200. . . . It is now (1911) about 700"

(ii., p. 714).

Chloroform first appears in the apothecaries' ledger on 22nd November 1847, just one week after the publication of Sir James Y. Simpson's treatise.