Locke and Sydenham / [Anon].

  • John Brown
Date:
[1850]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Locke and Sydenham / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    arose. It comes from this, that the included air had liberty to expand itself;—query^ ivhether this he air new generated. Take a bottle of fermenting liquor, and tie a bladder over its mouth, how much new air will this produce, and has this the quality of com^ mon airV^ We need hardly add, that about a hundred years after this Dr. Black answered this capital query, and in doing so, transformed the whole face of chemistry. We now find that, in contradiction to the generally received account. Wood, who was an Oxford man, and living on the spot, says, in his spiteful way, “ Mr. Locke, after having gone through the usual courses preparatory to practice, entered upon the physic line, and got some business at Oxford.” Nothing can be more explicit than this, and more directly opposed to Le Clerc’s account of his friend’s early life, which, it may be remembered, was chiefly derived from notes furnished by the second Lord Shaftesbury, whose information must necessarily have been at second or third hand. In 1666, Lord Ashley, afterwards the first Lord Shaftesbury, came to Oxford to drink the water of Astrop; he was suffering from an abscess in his chest, the con¬ sequence of a fall from his horse. Dr. Thomas, his lord¬ ship’s attendant, happening to be called out of town, sent his friend liocke, then practising there, who examined into his com¬ plaints, and advised the abscess to be opened; this was done, and, as the story goes, his lordship’s life was saved. From this circumstance took its origin the well-known friendship of these two famous men. That their connexion at first was chieflv that t/_ of patient and doctor, is plain from the expression, He, the Earl, would not suffer him to practise medicine out of his house, ex¬ cept among some of his particular friends,” impl3n‘ng that he was practising when he took him. In 1668, Locke, then in his 36th year, accompanied the Earl and Countess of Northumberland to the Continent, as their physician. The Earl died on his journey to Rome, leaving Locke with the Countess in Paris. When there, he attended her during a violent attack of what seems to have been tic-douloureux, a most interesting account of which, and of the treatment he adopted, was presented by the late Lord King to the London College of Physicians, and was read before them in 1829. We have, by the great kindness of Dr. Paris, the president of the College, had access to a copy of this medical and literary curiosity, which, besides its own value as a plain, clear statement of the case, and as an example of simple, skilful treat¬ ment, is the best of all proofs that at that time Locke was a regular physician. We cannot give this case higher praise, or in¬ dicate more significantly its wonderful superiority to the cases to be found in medical authors of the same date, than by saying that in expression, in description, in diagnosis, and in treatment, it differs very little from what we have in our own best works.
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