Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/198

 kind of scarlet fever at St. Albans in 1749. Dr. Davies in 1732 bequeathed to him his papers on Cicero, and he gave them to Thomas, the nephew of Dr. Richard Bentley, in order to complete and bring out an edition of the ‘Offices.’ They were burnt by accident in Thomas Bentley's lodgings in the Strand, as is stated by Mead in a Latin letter, printed in the third edition of Davies's edition of Cicero, ‘De Natura Deorum’ (, Life of Bentley, ii. 357). Warburton, writing to Dr. Birch, 15 Dec. 1739, of a pamphlet of Crousaz, says: ‘I ordered him to send one to Dr. Mead, as a man to whom all people that pretend to letters ought to pay their tribute on account of his great eminence in them and patronage of them.’ Lewis Theobald acknowledges his help to him in the preparation of his edition of Shakespeare (, Illustrations, ii. 114, 732). William Lauder [q. v.], the literary forger, had received a subscription from him, and when detected wrote on 9 April 1751 a long letter of vain, feeble justification to him. The king of Naples wrote to ask for his works, and in return invited him to his palace, and sent him the first two volumes of Bajardi's book on the ‘Antiquities of Herculaneum.’ He gave an almost unique copy of Servetus to De Boze, the secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres in Paris. His name occurs in most of the subscription-lists of the historical and other learned books which appeared in his time. He took a large-paper copy when, in 1724, ‘The History of his own Time’ of his former patient, Bishop Burnet, appeared, and ten copies, five of them on large paper, of his friend John Ward's ‘Lives of the Professors of Gresham College.’ Endless appeals for influence came to him, and he was the one person who could approach every one, even the Duke of Somerset, who was so difficult of access (ib. iv. 249). The Rev. George Kelly, an Irish clergyman, shut up in the Tower for corresponding with Bishop Atterbury, was pardoned by his influence, and writes of him, ‘that great and good man, Dr. Mead, to whose intercession I owe my life, and all the liberties allowed me in confinement’ (Letter in ib. v. 149). He frequented, for social purposes, Rawthmell's Coffee-house in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, but used to see patients and give opinions on written cases at a given hour at a coffee-house in the city (usually Batson's, against the Royal Exchange) as well as at home, and made many professional journeys into the country in his coach-and-four. He used to drive six horses when he went to his country house near Windsor. The king, Sir Robert Walpole, and most people of fashion consulted him. He was intimate with Sir Isaac Newton, and attended him in his last illness, as he also did Bishop Burnet. His income from practice is stated by his librarian, Mr. Hocker, to have been for many years between five and six thousand pounds, while in one year he received more than seven thousand pounds; but if many fees were paid to him, he also saw numerous patients without fee, and gave money as well as medical advice to many who needed both. With the exception of one aggressive Johnian, he never took a fee from a clergyman.

In 1719, in consequence of the serious epidemic of plague at Marseilles, great alarm was felt in London lest an outbreak should occur. The king was in Hanover, and the lords justices, through Craggs, then secretary of state, desired Mead to draw up a statement concerning the prevention of the plague. He accordingly published in 1720 ‘A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion and the Methods to be used to Prevent it.’ Seven editions appeared within a year, an eighth, with large additions, in 1722, and a ninth in 1744. The book is lucid and interesting; every one could understand it, and it was effectual in allaying the public alarm. The practical conclusion at which the author arrives is in accordance with the views held by all sanitary authorities at the present day, and is that the isolation in proper places of the sick is more effectual in checking the progress of an epidemic than a general quarantine or than measures of fumigation. George Pye in 1721 and others wrote attacks upon the book. In 1721 he superintended the inoculation, at the request of the Prince of Wales, of seven condemned criminals. All recovered favourably, and this established the practice of inoculation at the time. On 18 Oct. 1723 he delivered the Harveian oration at the College of Physicians. It is for the most part a defence of the position of physicians in Greece and in Rome, showing that they were always honoured and often wealthy in ancient society. He supports his statements by a variety of passages in the classics, and by arguments drawn from representations on coins and medals. Conyers Middleton attacked the oration, and maintained that the physicians of Rome were slaves. Ward replied, and some lesser writers took part in the controversy.

Mead's first wife had died in February 1719. She was Ruth, daughter of John Marsh, a merchant of London; was married in July 1699, and bore eight children, of whom four died in infancy, while three