Identifier: doctorspatientso01unse (find matches)
Title: Doctors and patients; or, Anecdotes of the medical world and curiosities of medicine
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Timbs, John,1801-1875
Subjects: Medicine Medicine
Publisher: London, R. Bentley and son
Contributing Library: Yale University, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons and Yale University, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library

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mate companion of Dr. Mead, grew so wild in politics that he
subjected himself to a charge of treason, and was either in
prison, or forced to conceal himself for a considerable time.
Dr. Mead generously supplied his place among his patients,
and when his Jacobite tendencies were forgiven, presented him
with a purse containing 11,400 guineas, ' which,' said he, ' I have
received as your deputy.'

VISITS TO PATIENTS.

Previous to the reign of Charles II., physicians were in the
habit of visiting their patients on horseback, sitting always
on foot-cloths like women. Simeon Fox and Dr. Argent
were the last Presidents of the College of Physicians to got
heir rounds in this undignified manner. With the Restora-
tion came the carriage of the London physicians. The ' Lex
Talionis' says :— ' For there must now be a little coach and
two horses; and being thus attended, half-a-piece, their
usual fee, is but ill-taken, and popped into their left pocket,
and possibly may cause the patient to send for his worship
twice before he will come again to the hazard of another
angel.'
Text Appearing After Image:
Guy's Hospital. 97
——————————

Though physicians began generally to take to carriages in the
reign of Charles II., it must not be supposed that no doctor of
medicine before that time experienced the motion of a wheeled
carriage. In Stow's London we read :—
' In the year 1563 Dr. Langton, a physician, rid in a car, with
a gown of damask lined with velvet, and a coat of velvet, and a
cap of the same (such, as it seems, doctors then wore), but
having a blue hood pinned over his cap; which was (as it
seems) a customary mark of guilt. And so came through
Cheapside on a market-day.'

GUY'S HOSPITAL

Guy's Hospital, Southwark, on the south side of St. Thomas's
Street, was built by Dance, the City architect, in 1722-4, at
the sole expense of Thomas Guy, the bookseller in Lombard
Street, who by printing and selling Bibles made a fortune : this
he greatly increased by purchasing seamen's tickets at a large
discount, and afterwards investing them in the South Sea
Company.
Guy was the son of a lighterman at Horselydown, where he

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