The Linacre Foundation dating from 1524 is the oldest medical Lectureship in the University, for it was sixteen years later that the Regius Professorship of Physic was established by Henry VIII. Formerly this College Lectureship was held more or less indefinitely by Fellows of the College, with two eminent exceptions, namely, Sir George Paget and Dr. J.B. Bradbury; but in 1908 the Lectureship was made an annual and open appointment, and until this year no member of the College has held this office: I am therefore most deeply conscious of the high honour that has been conferred upon me.
Though the statute that the Lecturer should explain Galen’s treatises De Sanitate Tuenda and De Methodo Medendi as translated by Linacre, or De Elementis et Simplicibus, has long lapsed, his first words should be directed to the pious memory of the founder; but as in 1908 the late Sir William Osler1 devoted the first of the new series of Linacre Lectures to a sympathetic consideration of his brother scholar-physician, it would be worse than unwise to attempt more than the briefest reference.
Fig. 1.—William Heberden, M.D., F.R.S., in his 86th year. Linacre Lecturer, 1734–38.
From an engraving by James Ward of a portrait painted by Sir William Beechey, R.A.
Thomas Linacre (1460–1524) was born at Canterbury of parents who have eluded research, and his connexion with the old family that took its name (Linacre = flax farmer) from a hamlet near Chesterfield in Derbyshire was regarded by J.F. Payne as merely an assumption. Believing that those devoted to learning should be free from the obligations of the married state Linacre remained single, so that he had no direct descendants; his will2 contains references to his brother, who had the same Christian name—Thomas—as himself, two sisters Alice and Joan, two nieces Agnes and Margaret, and two cousins Robert Wright of Chester and Richard Wright; but according to Payne3 the family history cannot be traced any further. I recently had a faint hope that I had got on the track of collateral descendants, but on enquiry it was courteously made clear that though the family in question was descended from a Mrs. Linnecar, her connexion with T. Linacre rested on tradition only and that no documentary evidence or genealogical tree existed to justify any claim. It may be remembered that Linacre was one of the earliest English students (circa 1488), more than a century before William Harvey, to study medicine and take the doctorate at the ancient University of Padua, which celebrated its seven-hundredth anniversary in May 1922. It is, next, natural to look back to the first holder of this Lectureship, and to wonder what manner of man he was and what he taught. To the Master of St. John’s College I am indebted for the few details that are known of Christopher Jackson (B.A. 1524–25, M.A. 1527), who was buried in the old Chapel on July 2, 1528, his death according to a brass erected to his memory in the new antechapel being “e sudore britanico.”4 Some of the Lecturers were without a medical qualification, and of these Matthew Prior (1664–1721), the poet and diplomatist, who was a “Medical Fellow” for life and Linacre Lecturer from July 5, 1706, to July 7, 1710, was the most famous. That he ever lectured is more than doubtful, but he appears to have thought out reasons for not doing so: at any rate his Alma or the Progress of the Mind (written about 1715) contains in its third canto the lines:
how could I explain
The various labyrinths of the brain!
Surprise my readers whilst I tell them
Of cerebrum and cerebellum!
How could I play the commentator
On dura and on pia mater!
Three of the Linacre Lecturers under the old dispensation stand out for special remembrance on account of their influence on Medicine:
William Heberden the Elder (1710–1801), the author of the Commentarii de Morborum Historia et Curatione, published posthumously (1802), held office from 1734–38, and was described by Sir William Osler as the “English Celsus.”5
Fig. 2.—Sir Thomas Watson, Bt., M.D., F.R.S. President of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1862–67. Linacre Lecturer, 1822–26.
From an engraving by George Cousins, R.A., of a portrait painted in 1867 by George Richmond. R.A., now in the Royal College of Physicians of London.
Sir Thomas Watson (1792–1882), whose Lectures on Physic held its place longer than any medical text-book of modern times and set an example of style that still commands our admiration and imitation, was Lecturer 1822–26, and in the first year of office was also a Proctor. Subsequently (1862–67), he was President of the Royal College of Physicians of London, the most magnificent of Linacre’s Foundations; this appropriate association was shared by William Baronsdale (P.R.C.P. 1589–1600), by Thomas Gisborne, who was President on three separate occasions (1791, 1794, 1796–1804) alternately with his senior Sir George Baker, and by Sir Norman Moore of St. Catherine’s College (P.R.C.P. 1918–22), who gave the Linacre Lecture under the new regulations in 1913 on The Physician in English History.6
John Haviland (1785–1851), the only one of these three who remained in Cambridge, and the only one who did not become a nonagenarian, was Linacre Lecturer for two periods (1817–22, 1826–47), Sir Thomas Watson intervening. As Professor of Anatomy (not human anatomy) from 1814–17 he delivered the first regular course of lectures on human anatomy; and when he succeeded Sir Isaac Pennington (also Linacre Lecturer, 1767–1816) as Regius Professor of Physic (1817–51) he was the first to give courses in pathology and the practice of medicine, thus rousing the post from the sleep of a sinecure, and to make the medical examinations a real and rigid test instead of little more than a farcical form consisting of a few viva voce questions. Further, had it not been for his influence and insistence the medical faculty might have been abolished, and it was said7 after his death that the subsequent success of the medical school was due to his exertions. He wrote little and perhaps for that reason his name is seldom mentioned now, but if the work that has since been done by this medical school be his monument he could hardly have a greater.
Fig. 3.—John Haviland, M.D., F.R.C.P. Professor of Anatomy 1814–17, Regius Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge, 1817–51; Linacre Lecturer, 1817–22 and 1826–47.
From a drawing done in 1851 by Wageman. For this I am indebted to H.A. Haviland, M.B.
The somewhat neglected subject of Old Age has a very pertinent connexion with the most essential aim of medicine as a whole, namely, the prevention of disease. For when the ideal of the prophylaxis of infection and of other causes of morbid action is attained, a healthy old age and physiological death without attendant disabilities and horrors should be the common lot of man instead of being somewhat exceptional in the case of the first and extremely rare as regards the final act. The conditions favouring longevity and mens sana in corpore sano are those necessary to make the future of the human race a happy and beneficent prospect instead of a problem inspiring doubt if not pessimism; or in Descartes’ words, “we might be free of an infinity of maladies both of body and mind, and even of the infirmities of old age, if we had sufficient knowledges of their causes and remedies.” But in addition to this broad ground of interest there are reasons why a discussion of this subject has a special claim for consideration in Cambridge. The objects of a University include the preparation of its alumni for life in its fullest and best sense, and from this point of view the permanent ornaments of the community ever set an unobtrusive example of the way to deserve and enjoy a healthy, happy, and useful old age, namely, activity of mind and body and moderation in all things; such a life of 75 years (that of Professor G.D. Liveing) in the University must be in your recollection as described by the Public Orator as tam honesta, tam utilis. Further, as in private duty bound, I cannot forget that Sir George Humphry, to whom this great medical school owes so much, greatly interested himself in the subject of old age and published the results of an elaborate collective investigation. Lastly, it is desirable that the problems of old age should be attacked by young and active minds in the laboratories of the University and not left as a semi-personal field of enquiry and observation to those whose “way of life is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,” and who hear old age’s stealthy footsteps catching them up in the race; for in the past most of the writers on geriatrics have written with at least some personal qualification and interest, such as Cornaro, Sir John Sinclair, Sir Anthony Carlisle, Charcot, Sir George Humphry, Sir Hermann Weber, R. Saundby, Metchnikoff, Stanley Hall. As an exception, however, we may point to Dr. John Smith,8 who, in his thirty-fifth year, was the author of King Solomon’s Portraicture of Old Age, which paraphrases in 266 pages the “six former” verses of the 12th Chapter of Ecclesiastes containing 205 words.
