Medicine -- Anecdotes; Physicians -- Great Britain
The uses to which the doctor applied his wealth every one knows.
Notwithstanding his occasional acts of munificence, and a loss of
£5000 in an East Indian venture, into which Betterton, the tragedian,
seduced him, his accumulations were very great. In his will, after
liberally providing for the members of his family and his dependents,
he devoted his acquisitions to the benefit of the University of
Oxford. From them have proceeded the Radcliffe Library, the Radcliffe
Infirmary, the Radcliffe Observatory, and the Radcliffe Travelling
Fellowships. It is true that nothing has transpired in the history of
these last-mentioned endowments to justify us in reversing the
sentiment of Johnson, who remarked to Boswell: "It is wonderful how
little good Radcliffe's Travelling Fellowships have done. I know
nothing that has been imported by them."
After lying in state at his own residence, and again in the
University, Radcliffe's body was interred, with great pomp, in St.
Mary's Church, Oxford. The royal gift of so large an estate (which
during life he had been unable thoroughly to enjoy) to purchase a
library, the contents of which he at no time could have read, of
course provoked much comment. It need not be said that the testator's
memory was, for the most part, extolled to the skies. He had died
rich--a great virtue in itself. He was dead; and as men like to deal
out censure as long as it can cause pain, and scatter praise when it
can no longer create happiness, Radcliffe, the physician, the friend
of suffering humanity, the benefactor of ancient and Tory Oxford, was
spoken of in "most handsome terms." One could hardly believe that this
great good man, this fervent Christian and sublime patriot, was the
same man as he whom Steele had ridiculed for servile vanity, and to
bring whom into contempt a play was written, and publicly acted, only
ten years before, to the intense delight of the Duchess of
Marlborough, and the applauding maids of honour.
The philosophic Mandeville, far from approving the behaviour of the
fickle multitude, retained his old opinion of the doctor, and gave it
to the world in his "Essay on Charity and Charity Schools." "That a
man," writes Mandeville, "with small skill in physic, and hardly any
learning, should by vile arts get into practice, and lay up great
wealth, is no mighty wonder; but that he should so deeply work
himself into the good opinion of the world as to gain the general
esteem of a nation, and establish a reputation beyond all his
contemporaries, with no other qualities but a perfect knowledge of
mankind, and a capacity of making the most of it, is something
extraordinary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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