Mead did not long occupy Radcliffe's house in Bloomsbury Square. In 1719 he moved to the imposing residence in Ormond Street, to which in 1732 he added a gallery for the accommodation of his library and museum. Of Mead's various contributions to medical literature it is of course not the province of this work to speak critically. The _Medica Sacra_ is a literary curiosity, and so is the doctor's paper published in 1735, in which he recommends a compound of pepper and _lichen cinereus terrestris_ as a specific against the bite of a mad dog. Dampier, the traveller, used this lichen for the same purpose. The reader need not be reminded of the popularity attained by this antidote, dividing the public favour, as it did, with Dr. James's _Turpeth Mineral_, and the _Musk_ and _Cinnabar_. Mead was married twice. His first wife was Ruth Marsh, the daughter of a pious London tradesman. She died in 1719, twenty years after her marriage, leaving behind her four children--three daughters, who all married well, and one son, William Mead. If any reliance is to be placed on the statements of the lampoon writers, the doctor was by no means fortunate in this union. He married, however, a second time--taking for his bride, when he was more than fifty years old, Anne, the daughter of Sir Rowland Alston, of Odell, a Bedfordshire baronet. One of the pleasant episodes in Mead's life is his conduct towards his dear friend and political antagonist, Freind--the Jacobite physician, and Member of Parliament for Launceston. On suspicion of being concerned in the Atterbury plot, Freind was committed to the Tower. During his confinement, that lasted some months, he employed himself calmly on the composition of a Latin letter, "On certain kinds of Small-Pox," and the "History of Physic, from the time of Galen to the Commencement of the Sixteenth Century." Mead busied himself to obtain his friend's release; and, being called to attend Sir Robert Walpole, pleaded so forcibly for the prisoner, that the minister allowed him to be discharged on bail--his sureties being Dr. Mead, Dr. Hulse, Dr. Levet, and Dr. Hale. To celebrate the termination of Freind's captivity, Mead called together on a sudden a large party in Ormond Street, composed of men of all shades of opinion. Just as Freind was about to take his leave for his own residence in Albemarle Street, accompanied by Arbuthnot, who resided in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, Mead took him aside into a private room, and presented him with a case containing the fees he had received from the Tory doctor's patients during his imprisonment. They amounted to no less than five thousand guineas.