Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/74

 58 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. judges were then accustomed to ride to West« minster Hall. Every one will naturally wish to know what sort of practitioner so eminent a physiologist was, and in what esteem he was held as a physician by his contemporaries. It appears that he died worth ^^20,000, a sum not very considerable, when we reflect that he must have been at least fifty years in practice, and was besides a court physician. One who, living with him on terms of intimacy, ought to have known the truth, has asserted that he was acquainted with several practitioners who would not give threepence for one of his hills; that his prescriptions were so comphcated *, that it was diflScult to make out what he aimed at — that he was no chemist, and that generally his Thera- peutique was not admired. indeed, in their combination, to have deserved this sarcasm, for the fashion of those days was to give very complex remedies. Perhaps the moderns err in the other extreme, and affect too much sim- plicity, since it must be known to every physician of experience that a combination of similar remedies will produce a more certain, speedy, and considerable effect, than an equal dose of any one, even of the most powerful, of the drugs, that enter into the pre- scription ; and this is in acccordance with that universal maxim in cookery, never to employ one spice if more can be procured. The very curious prescriptions ordered for his Majesty Charles II., on his death bed, are preserved in the library of the Society of Anti- quaries, but they are more remarkable for the multiplicity of the signatures attached to them, than for the variety of their composi- tion ; they are signed by no less than sixteen doctors ; the name of Charles Scarburgh (the young physician whom Harvey patronized during his stay at Oxford) standing the first of this large consul- tation, which is, with great propriety, denominated Medicorum Chorus. According to court etiquette, the names of all the sub- scribing doctors are written at full length, and not, as in ordinary circumstances, indicated by their initials only.
 * The prescriptions of Harvey must have been multifarious