An address on the medical history of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Pepys : Read before the Abernethian Society on March 6th, 1895 / by D'Arcy Power, M.B. Oxon, F.R.C.S. Eng., surgeon to the Victoria Hospital for Children.
- D'Arcy Power
- Date:
- [1895]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An address on the medical history of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Pepys : Read before the Abernethian Society on March 6th, 1895 / by D'Arcy Power, M.B. Oxon, F.R.C.S. Eng., surgeon to the Victoria Hospital for Children. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Feb. 8th, 1659-60, he records that he “went to bed with my head not well by too much drinking to-day, and I had a boil under my chin which troubled me cruelly.” The boil increased in size and there was some stomatitis, for on the following day he “went home and got some alum to my mouth where I have the beginnings of a cancer, and had also a plaster to my boil underneath my chin. The scare of his having a cancer in his mouth subsided after Feb. 10th, when he had been into “London to Mr. Fage about the cancer in my mouth, which begins to grow dangerous, who gave me something for it.” Pepys had repeated attacks of nettlerash, which came on annually as soon as the weather began to get cold in the autumn. He cured himself by keeping warm and sweating. He only records one occasion on which he was bled. It was on May 4th, 1662, a very hot Sunday, that he was let blood to the amount of sixteen ounces, when he began to be sick ; “ but lying upon my back I was presently well again, and did give [Mr. Hollyard, the surgeon] five shillings for his pains.” He dined well after the operation and went out walking with his wife after dinner, “my arm being tied up with a black ribbon, our boy waiting on us with his sword, which this day he begins to wear to outdo Sir W. Pen’s boy.” A few days later he felt constrained to whip this boy with “my whip till I was not able to stir, and then, not being willing to let him go away a conqueror, I took him to task again.and so to bed, my arm very weary ”; and on several other occasions he administered “salt eel ” to the boy, doubtless to neutralise the effect of the sword. The illnesses of Mrs. Pepys are of less general interest than those of her husband. She was married at the age of fifteen years, so that she had been a wife for four years when the Diary commences. Mr. Wheatley remarks that it is a most curious fact that so methodical and careful a person as Pepys should be in doubt as to the date of his wedding day. Yet so it was, for the register certifies that he was married on Dec. 1st, 1655, in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, and yet both fie and his wife kept the anniversary of their marriage upon Oct. 10th in each year. Mrs. Pepys was child¬ less owing as I have endeavoured to show, to the sterility of her husband. She had, however, on several occasions a belief that she was pregnant ; indeed, the Diary opens with the statement that “my wife .gave me hopes of her being with child ” Again, on Nov. 6th, 1663. “This morning waking my wife was mighty earnest with me](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30799193_0011.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
