48 FOTHERGILL'S MEDICAL PRACTICE CHAP.V 



was in his own belief a main cause of his success in practice. 

 It was a day of large eating and drinking. 1 



Fothergill saw patients at his own house in the early 

 morning and on two afternoons in the week. Lady 

 Huntingdon tells a young friend to call " at nine or rather 

 before," when there would be " a chance of seeing him. 

 Press the doctor," she adds, " to take a guinea." He 

 went out soon after that hour in his coach, not infrequently 

 for the whole day, visiting patients, often meeting their 

 apothecaries, and coming in for a short time at five o'clock 

 to dine. On his return late in the evening he sat down 

 to his writing till eleven or twelve. 



Fothergill had a large medical and scientific library. 

 Public collections of books were few in those days, and 

 every man of letters or of taste who could afford it made 

 his own. 



In his later years he may have become old-fashioned, 

 for he had no sympathy or approval for the " new style " 

 of Macbride and Cullen, or for the systems in which their 

 advanced knowledge was set forth. 2 Looking back now 

 upon his practice, bereft as it was of so many aids which 

 to modern eyes seem essential to diagnosis, we may see, 

 nevertheless, that he and the best physicians of his time 

 had a strong and wise clinical instinct. They knew from 

 a wide experience what Nature could do and what she 

 could not ; their prognosis was generally sound, and it is 

 probable also that their success in treatment was not so 

 far behind our own as was their knowledge of pathology. 



1 There is a tale of a Quaker druggist, who told the doctor he should bring 

 his wife and family to be quartered in the doctor's house, because he prescribed 

 no medicine, only exercise, diet and change, and the druggist was losing his 

 living. See M. J. Taber, Just a Few Friends, Phila. 1907 ; and another 

 version in Professional Anecdotes, 1825, iii. 288. 



2 Letter to Dr. Chalmers, Oct. 23, 1772 ; Bartram MSS., Historical Society 

 of Pennsylvania. Allusions to FothergiU's methods of treatment are scattered 

 throughout his works, also in Lettsom's Memoirs. 



