It is very fitting that a new edition of the Gold Headed Cane should appear just at this time, as a memorial of the life and labours of its first owner, Dr. John Radcliffe. Here in Oxford, where his name is writ large in stone, we had hoped to have ceremonies appropriate to the 200th anniversary of his death, but at present the University has other things to think of. The Radcliffe Trustees have, however, arranged with Dr. Nias and the Clarendon Press to issue a brief life and an account of the Travelling Fellows, with whom his name is associated. When and where he got the celebrated cane is unknown. To the story of his life so well told here by Dr. Macmichael nothing need be added. There is probably no name in our profession with which are associated so many benefactions. The Radcliffe Infirmary, originally erected by his Trustees out of their funds, has become one of the most important of the county hospitals in England; but the Trustees no longer have any financial interest in its support. The Radcliffe Observatory was built by them and they pay the upkeep and the salary of the Radcliffe Observer. The Radcliffe Camera or Library, one of the most beautiful buildings in Oxford, was designed for the scientific part of the Bodleian Library. After the laboratories were centred about the museum it was found more convenient to have the scientific books close at hand, and one of the old Guilds, the Draper’s Company of London, put up a beautiful new building in which the Radcliffe Library is now housed, all the expenses of which are paid by the Trustees. Also under Dr. Radcliffe’s will £600 a year is paid to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. The property is largely in land not far from Stony Stratford. In addition, he left his Yorkshire estate to the Master and Fellows of University College, to provide for the maintenance of the Travelling Fellows: one is elected each year and holds the appointment, worth £200, for three years, one of the conditions being that he spends half of the time in studying abroad. These splendid benefactions keep alive the name of Dr. Radcliffe in Oxford and in professional circles.

In many ways the account of Mead is the best in the volume. Of him Johnson is reported to have said that he lived more in the sunshine of life than any man he knew. Dr. Macmichael in this little volume has done more for Mead’s memory than his published works. It is a pity that he did not hand over his wonderful collections to the College of Physicians. Now the bibliophile turns the pages of the printed catalogue of his books, which took twenty-seven days to sell, and mourns that the treasures of his lifetime should have been dispersed.

About the next possessor of the Cane, Anthony Askew, the memory lingers in connection with the famous Bibliotheca Askeviana, the priceless treasures of which were dispersed in 1775 in a twenty days’ sale. Only one of the great libraries collected by physicians in the 18th century remains. William Hunter had the good sense to leave his books, coins, manuscripts and specimens to his native place, and the Hunterian Library and Museum are among the most precious possessions of Glasgow University.

Pitcairn is remembered to-day solely from his association with the Cane. In the rambling section under his name, Macmichael does not tell us much about him, and leaves us a little in doubt when he died, and whether or not his nephew, David, was one of the possessors of the Cane. As a practitioner he appears to have picked up the secret of Sydenham’s success, the free use of opium, as in the book he speaks of his currus triumphalis opii.

Baillie, in many ways the most distinguished possessor of the Cane, had caught the inspiration from his uncles John and William Hunter, and to him more than to any other man is due that close combination of pathology with clinical medicine, still the distinguishing feature of the English school, and of which such splendid use was made by Bright, Addison, and Hodgkin.

Few books of its kind have been more successful, and that a new edition should appear from the press of Mr. Hoeber is an indication of the zeal with which the study of the history of medicine has been taken up by the profession of the United States.

Oxford,
February 26th, 1915.