The largest income Mead ever made in one year was £7000. For several years he received between £5000 and £6000 per annum. When the great depreciation of the currency is taken into account, one may affirm, with little fear of contradiction, that no living physician is at the present time earning as much. Mead, however, made his income without any avaricious or stingy practices. In every respect he displayed that generosity which has for generations been the glorious distinction of his profession. At home his fee was a guinea. When he visited a patient of good rank and condition, in consultation or otherwise, he expected to have two guineas, or even more. But to the apothecaries who waited on him at his coffee-houses, he charged (like Radcliffe) only half-a-guinea for prescriptions, written without seeing the patient. His evening coffee-house was Batson's, frequented by the profession even down to Sir William Blizard; and in the forenoons he received apothecaries at Tom's, near Covent Garden. In Mead's time the clergy, as a body, were unable to pay the demands which professional etiquette would have required the physician to make on them if he had any. It is still the humane custom of physicians and eminent surgeons not to accept fees from curates, half-pay officers in the army and navy, and men of letters; and no one has more reason than the writer of these pages to feel grateful for the delicacy with which they act on this rule, and the benevolent zeal with which they seem anxious to drown the sense of obligation (which a gratuitous patient necessarily experiences) in increased attention and kindness, as if their good deeds were a peculiar source of pleasure to themselves.