120 FOTHERGILL'S MEDICAL FRIENDS CHAP. 



he was a colleague of Akenside. Here he had a short but 

 honourable career, being highly valued for his ability, the 

 liberal and easy method of his teaching, and the kindness 

 of his character. He was consulted by the Privy Council 

 upon a threatened outbreak of plague, on account of his 

 special experience in the east, which had included visits 

 to the most famous lazarettos. His answers to their 

 enquiries were, we are told, so pertinent and satisfactory 

 that he was asked to draw up a plan for preventing the 

 spread of the disease, should it invade England. His 

 useful life was cut short by a putrid fever at his house, 

 No. i Church Court, Wallbrook, in 1768 ; the disease 

 proving fatal notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of 

 Fothergill and W. Pitcairn. The former read, a year 

 later, an Essay on his character before the Society of 

 (Licentiate) Physicians, a society in which Russell had 

 taken a leading part. Addressed as it is to a small 

 company who knew him well, this record of friendship for 

 " our Russell " strikes a tender chord. Fothergill dwells 

 upon his even, cool and consistent temper, polite without 

 flattery, with a freedom of behaviour as remote from con- 

 fidence as from constraint, disinterested and generous. 

 His mind was imbued with a just reverence for God and 

 with duty towards his fellows ; a gentleman, without 

 reproach. 



Russell was a good clinician, and wrote papers on palsy, 

 hydatids, general emphysema, and the use of corrosive 

 sublimate and of mezereon in syphilis. He seems to have 

 had much success in the treatment of fevers : 



At his calm bidding the fierce flames which burn 



Our mortal frame sank harmless : he subdued 



Unto an even heat their blazing fires ; 



And when he drew the poison fangs of Plague, 



Wresting from Fate itself her scissors keen, 



He left to these grim shapes but half their dread. 1 



1 " Innocuas placide corpus jubet urere flammas, 

 Et justo rapidos temperat igne focos. 

 Extorsit Lachesi cultros, pestique venenum 

 Abstulit, et tantos non sinit esse metus." 



Inscribed on Trotter's stippled portrait of Dr. A. Russell, published in his 

 Memoirs of Russell by Lettsom, 1786. The lines are taken from Locke's 



