may treatment, unless we ourselves employ all the means we possess of counteracting morbid feelings and vain imaginations. And surely, where an inability of resisting such painful apprehensions is deplored, it is our duty to seek and humbly to expect strength from Him, 'who giveth power to the faint, and who raiseth up them that are bowed down.' But then we must do our best, and not yield to visionary fears." Dr. Marshall Hall has pointed out what be called a variety of hypochondriasis, which he terms the Temper disease. He says, "it is a species of aberration of the intellect, but short of insanity, real enough, but exaggerated, fictitious, factitious, and real, at the same time. It frequently has its origin in dyspepsia, hysteria, or other malady, and in emotion of various kinds, such as disappointment, vexation, &c. Its object is frequently to excite and to maintain a state of active sympathy and attention, for which there is, as it were, a perpetual, morbid, and dangerous thirst. It was rather aptly designated by the clever relative of one patient, an ego mania." In these perplexing cases great wisdom, gentleness, knowledge of mankind, and elevated principle, are required by the practitioner to detect the disease, and to apply the proper treatment, which, as Dr. Hall excellently observes, lies in "mental discipline, in raising the ideas above the former standard, and fixing them upon some more elevated view than that point which has occupied them." BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF DR. RICHARD MEAD. How late I shuddered on the brink! how late YOUNG. Matthew Mead, the father of Dr. Mead, was a person well known in religious history. He was the author of the Almost Christian Discovered,' and other works, and was one of the two thousand ministers ejected from their livings on St. Bartholomew's Day, by the Act of Uniformity, during the reign of Charles II. Up to that time Matthew Mead had been parish minister of Stepney, and after his ejectment he continued to preach to a congregation of Nonconformists in the same place, and at Stepney his son Richard was born, August 11, 1673. In 1683 the aged minister was accused of entertaining some treasonable designs against the government, and obliged to retreat into Holland, where Richard also went to complete his studies at the University of Utrecht under Grævius. Having subsequently studied for three years at Leyden, where Boerhaave was his fellow-student, and Pitcairn his tutor, he made, according to the prevailing fashion, the tour of Europe, in company with Dr. Pellet, afterwards President of the London College of Physicians. At Padua he took the degree of Doctor, and returning to England in 1696, commenced practice at Stepney. In 1701 he published his work on Poisons. There is in it a degree of reserve in speaking of certain substances, which is easily traceable to the prevalence at that time of secret poisoning in Europe. He afterwards wrote on the Influence of the Sun and Moon upon Human Bodies, and having presented to the Royal Society an analysis of Bonomo's Letter on the Cutaneous Worms which generate the Itch, he was elected a fellow of that society. In 1703 he was chosen physician of St. Thomas's Hospital, and was appointed by the Company of Surgeons to read anatomical lectures in their hall. The University of Oxford conferred on him a doctor's degree in 1707, and in 1716 he became a fellow of the College of Physicians. Mead was now in extensive practice, and had a warm and firm friend in Dr. Radcliffe, to whose practice, and house in Bloomsbury-square he succeeded at his death. Two days before the death of Queen Anne, Radcliffe being confined by the gout, Mead was summoned to the royal patient to give his opinion on her case. Justly considering it a delicate thing to pronounce on the approaching demise of so illustrious a person, especially in the then state of parties, he merely advised that a faithful account of the symptoms should be sent to Hanover, by which he well knew the physicians of that court would prognosticate the fatal issue. He was employed to attend the family of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, and when that monarch succeeded to the throne he appointed him to be his own physician. During his attendance on him as Prince of Wales in 1721, he was deputed by him to superintend the inoculation of some condemned criminals; the experiment succeeded, and the criminals were set at liberty. In 1747 he published a treatise on Smallpox and Measles, in Latin. He also wrote a short discourse concerning pestilential contagion, &c., in which he gave directions as to a system of medical police for preventing the spread of the plague which, being then at Marseilles, was much dreaded in England. When Mr. Sutton's invention for expelling foul air from ships and other places was made public, it was mainly through the influence of Dr. Mead that the Admiralty was induced to adopt it. Dr. Mead was a Whig, and had considerable influence with the then dominant party in the state. His generous use of this influence in the case of Dr. Friend, is quoted in the letter. Dr. Friend had been committed to prison on suspicion of treasonable practices on behalf of the House of Stuart. Mead made many attempts to procure his discharge, but in vain, till being called in to attend Sir Robert Walpole, he made his friend's release the sine qua non of his attendance. The minister surrendered, and Friend was liberated; and, at an entertainment given at Mead's house to celebrate this event, the generous host put into the hands of his friend a bag containing 5000 guineas, being the amount of fees which he had received for him during his incarceration. It appears that Mead was consulted in the case of Queen Caroline, and that her death was hastened by an unsuccessful operation which was performed upon her by Dr. Sands, and contrary to the express opinion of Dr. Mead, who entered a decided protest against the measure. Dr. Mead was a munificent patron of literature and the arts, and was intimately acquainted with the wits and poets of the day. Pope was a frequent guest at his table, and has commemorated his medical friend and attendant in the well-known lines "Alive by miracle, or what is more- A similar tribute from Young is given at the head of this notice. He was often solicited to recommend physicians to public situations, as he was remarkably careful and conscientious in these recommendations. He was rich, for he began with a private fortune, and the average annual receipts of his practice amounted, for several years, to between six or seven thousand pounds, at a time when money was much greater in value than in our day. His charity and hospitality were free and ample, and he spent largely on his own tastes. In his house in Great Ormond street he had a spacious gallery filled with the treasures of art and literature. The catalogue of his library contained 6592 separate volumes, and his pictures sold, after his death, for 34007. Besides this he had splendid collections of statues, prints, drawings, coins, and articles of vertu. He corresponded with all the principal men of letters in Europe, and in the decline of his life he received an invitation to visit the King of Naples, and inspect the newlydiscovered city of Herculaneum, an invitation his advanced age compelled him to decline. He was, indeed, a remarkable instance of medical prosperity; and it has been said of him by Pettigrew, that of all physicians who had ever flourished he gained the most, spent the most, and enjoyed the highest favour during his lifetime, not only in his own but in foreign countries. He composed, in the decline of life, his Medica Sacra,' or commentary on the most remarkable diseases mentioned in the Bible, and his Medical Precepts and Cautions still later. He died on the 10th of February, 1754, aged eighty-one years. He had been the Mæcenas of his day, and amongst the benefits which he conferred on posterity was that of inducing the wealthy citizen Guy to bequeath his fortune to found the hospital which bears his name. |