Volume 1

The healing art, or chapters upon medicine, diseases, remedies and physicians, historical, biographical and descriptive. / By H. Davenport Adams.

  • Adams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport), 1828-1891.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The healing art, or chapters upon medicine, diseases, remedies and physicians, historical, biographical and descriptive. / By H. Davenport Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    308/348 (page 296)
    then the custom for the London doctors to meet for profes- sional chit-chat; and it was one of Hannes's small stratagems to send his servant to these well-attended reunions to inquire, with a good deal of impressement, for his master. One day, he thrust his head into Garraway's. Gentleman, can your honours tell me if Dr. Hannes is here ? Who wants Dr. Hannes, fellow ? growled RadclifFe, who had his own table at Garraway's, and attended daily. Lord A and Lord B , your honour.'^ Nay, friend, said the doctor, with grim irony, ''you are wrong. Those lords don't want your master; 'tis he who wants them. When the hapless boy-prince, the young Duke of Glou- cester, was seized with his last illness in 1700, Sir Edmund Hannes and Sir Richard Blackmore were called in to attend him. But when their advice and prescriptions had effected no improvement in his condition, Radcliffe was summoned. He quickly satisfied himself that the case had been mismanaged, and a fatal character imposed upon an ordinary malady. After reproaching them, justly enough, for their want of skill, he exclaimed : It would have been happy for this nation had you, sir [to Hannes], been bred up a basket-maker; and you, sir [to Blaclcmore], had remained a country schoolmaster, rather than have ventured out of your reach in the practice of an art to which you are a perfect stranger, and for your blunders, in which you ought to be whipped with one of your own rods. Sir Richard, we may explain, had at one time served as an usher; and Hannes's father was a basket- maker. In 1686, Radcliffe was appointed physician to the Princess Anne. About the same time, he was exposed to urgent solicitations from the Court Chaplains to embrace the faith of the Roman Catholic Church. He sturdily resisted their arguments, promises, and entreaties; and to Mr. Obadiah Walker, of University College, Oxford, who had written to