Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/165

Mayern a bad pun on 'Turquet,' a cur, quoting several errors of hasty writing, such as 'palatin' for 'palato,' 'salia' for 'sales,' 'balsaurum' for 'balsamus,' and finally charging Mayerne with having injured several patients by his treatment. The College of Physicians in the university of Paris condemned Mayerne's apology by a unanimous vote, 5 Dec. 1603, ordered physicians to refuse to meet him in consultation, and recommended that he should be deprived of his office. He ceased to lecture, but took no further notice of the attack. In 1601 he had accompanied the Duc de Rohan to Spires and to Italy, and his favour at court rose every year. In 1606 he cured an English peer who had come to Paris. This peer took Mayerne to England and presented him to the king, who appointed him physician to the queen. He was incorporated M.D. at Oxford 8 April 1606, and afterwards returned to Paris, where he remained till 1611, when he was called to London early in the summer (Works, pp. 76, 90) by letters patent under the great seal, presented by the English ambassador. He was appointed first physician to the king, and the physicians of London, unlike those of Paris, recognised his ability and sought his friendship. He at once sprang into large practice, and went hither and thither to see great men. On 1 Aug. 1611 he examined, at Salisbury, Sir Robert Cecil, who had a tumour on the right side of his abdomen, and other symptoms pointing to cancer of the liver, secondary to an intestinal new growth (Opera, ed. Browne, p. 80); on 1 Sept. 1611 Lord Rochester for dyspepsia (ib. p. 90); Lord Monteagle's daughter for epilepsy, 22 Jan. 1612, in which year he was also consulted, though not at first, about Prince Henry, and after his death wrote, as a sort of state paper, in both Latin and French: 'Relation veritable de la Maladie, Mort, et Ouverture du Corps de tres Hault et tres illustre Henry, Prince de Valles, decedé a St. James lez Londres le ui de Novembre 1612.' This document gives a full and lucid account of the typhoid fever of which the prince died, and is a valuable monument of the medicine of the time. His account of the illness and death of Isaac Casaubon, 1 July 1614 (Opera, p. 144), is also a good illustration of the elaborate and exact method which he always followed in examining and prescribing for his patients. The regimen given by Mayerne is minutely and copiously recorded in each case. French patients often came over to consult him. Dunfermline, Montrose, Balmerino, and other Scots shared the confidence which their king felt in him. James I trusted him implicitly, and was treated by him for renal colic with hæmaturia 12 July 1613, and for an abscess of his arm from a fall, 28 July 1613, at Salisbury, for melancholy, for gout again and again, and for jaundice in 1619 (Sloane MS. No. 1679). On 25 June 1616 he was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians of London, and in 1618 wrote the dedication to the king of the first pharmacopoeia published by the college. In 1618 he revisited France for a short time, and from 1621 is spoken of as Baron d'Aubonne. He had a house at Aubonne, near Lausanne, in Switzerland. He was knighted at Theobalds 14 July 1624 (, Book of Knights).

Mayerne had attended Charles I as a boy (Sloane MS. No. 1679), and on his accession was appointed physician to the king and queen, who both regarded him as an old friend. In one of his case-books he has transcribed a long letter from the queen and one from the king: 'Mayerne, pour l'amour de moy allé trouver ma femme C. R.' He drew up a report to the king on a case of supposed poisoning referred to the College of Physicians, 31 May 1632 (, Royal College of Physicians, p. 435), and in 1635 the college at his instance prosecuted a quack named Evans. His leisure was occupied with chemical and physical experiments which he had begun in Paris (Sloane MSS. Nos. 2041, 2222). Some of his experiments were pharmacological, and their results are useful to this day, for he brought calomel into use, and first prepared the mercurial lotion known as black-wash. Other experiments related to pigments and enamels. He discovered the purple colour necessary for the carnation tints in enamel painting. He wrote from 1620 to 1646 a large manuscript volume (Sloane MS. No. 2052) entitled 'Pictoria Sculptoria et quæ subalternarum artium,' &c., which contains many trials of pigments (fol. 80), most of them now much faded. He made an ingenious kind of tablet-book, capable of being washed by covering parchment with a resinous compound, and used such a one (ib. No. 552) as a scribbling-book, in which he wrote prescriptions in red ink. Only one, dated 14 Dec. 1649, is now legible, as much of the varnish has chipped off. He kept notes of a great many cases, many at length, in twenty-three volumes of the Sloane collection in the British Museum. He usually divides his account of a patient into two parts: (1) Theoria, (2) curatio, and when the curatio is very elaborate he adds, 'recapitulatio ordinis agendorum.' He generally gives the patients' names, except where it was obvious that publication was undesirable, as 'pro Camilla, 15 Jul. 1642;' 'pro Ascanio, 23 Jul. 1642' (ib. No. 1998). He often wrote long counsels in reply to letters. The most