Oliver Goldsmith and medicine / by Raymond Crawfurd.

  • Crawfurd, Raymond Henry Payne, 1865-1938.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Oliver Goldsmith and medicine / by Raymond Crawfurd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from the Procee cine, 1914, Vol. PP- 7—Ml e Royal Society of Medi- hc History of Medicine), OLIVER GOLDSMITH AND MEDICINE. By Raymond Crawfurd, M.D.Oxon. The relations of Oliver Goldsmith with the profession of medicine, and the vexed question of his medical graduation, have recently been the subject of two illuminating papers1 by Sir Ernest Clarke. On the strength of these he asks us to accept it, as established beyond reason- able doubt, that Goldsmith obtained the degree of Bachelor of Physic (M.B.) from Dublin at some date prior to 1763. Believing, as we do, that the evidence is compatible only with the presumption that Goldsmith had no degree in medicine at all, other than that con- ferred by Oxford University in 1769, probably under a misapprehension, we venture to indicate some of the difficulties that seem to need explanation before acceptance of his conclusion. Perhaps from the autograph letters and intimate memoranda, with mention of which he has tantalised but not gratified us, he may produce other information to substantiate his claim. Dates are of such material importance to the inquiry that it is necessary at the outset to determine a few prominent landmarks in Goldsmith’s career. Born on November 10, 1728, he was admitted a sizar at Dublin on June 11, 1745, and took a belated degree of Bachelor of Arts, also at at Dublin, on February 27, 1749, at the age of 20. After this, still resident all the time in Ireland, he successively read for holy orders, held a private tutorship for a year, coquetted with the profession of law, and wasted much time and money in indolence and adventure, till some date in 1752, when the family oracle, Dean Goldsmith, of Cork, 1 “Oliver Goldsmith as a Medical Man,” Nineteenth Century and After, April, 1914; 9 ‘1 The Medical Education and Qualifications of Oliver Goldsmith,” Proc. H . Soc. Med., 1914, vii (Hist. Sect.), pp. 88-98.