Volume 1

The healing art, or, Chapters upon medicine, diseases, remedies, and physicians, historical, biographical and descriptive.

Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The healing art, or, Chapters upon medicine, diseases, remedies, and physicians, historical, biographical and descriptive. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Backingham^ and began to contract his practice, recommend- ing his patients to Dr. Mead. He made no figure in the House of Commons, though he is reported to have spoken twice; once in favour of the malt-tax bill, and again, in sup- port of a measure to prevent the growth of schism. In the following year, on the 28th of July, Queen Anne was seized with a mortal sickness. Eadcliffe, at the time, was suffering from a severe fit of the gout at Carshalton, in Surrey;* and when summoned to attend his royal mistres3,t pleaded this as an excuse, though the real motive of his refusal, said his enemies, was some informality in the summons. The populace were furious at his supposed professional scru- pulosity, and he durst not venture into London for fear of being mobbed. A member of Parliament went so 'far as to move that he should be ordered to attend in his place to receive the censure of the House for not waiting upon her Majesty in her last extremities. The doctor was greatly chagrined by these manifestations of public feeling, and warmly insisted that there was nothing in his conduct to justify or excuse them. In a letter to a friend he defended himself with his usual frankness. It is dated August 7th 1714 .— Deae Sir,—I could not have thought so old an acquaint- ance, and so good a friend as Sir John always professed himself, would have made such a motion against me. God knows, my will to do her Majesty any service has ever got the start of my ability, and I have nothing that gives me greater anxiety and trouble than the death of that great and glorious Princess. I must do that justice to the physicians that attended her in her illness, from a sight of the method * Carshalton House, on the Sutton road, occupies the site of his residence. t There is a Treasury entry- Wm. Nightingale, for his travellin.. charges in a journey to Carshalton to fetch Dr. Eadcliffe V>& Gd VOL. I. 20 '