Never let any man ask me what became of our physicians in this massacre. They
hid their synodical heads as well as the proudest and I cannot blame them. For
their phlebotomies, lozenges and electuaries, with their diacat-holicons, amulets
and antidotes had not so much strength to hold life and soul together as a pot
of Pindar’s ale and a nutmeg... Galen could do no more good than Sir Giles
Goosecap.
—Thomas Dekker,The Wonderful Year( 1603 )Almost in every church in London or Vestry, there is to be found a Printed Me-
morial of [the doctors’] pains and care in [past] sickness-time.
—William Johnson,Agurto Mastix( 1665 )House Calls
Nathaniel Hodges, now in his thirty-sixth year, had come far for a village
vicar’s son. At Christ Church, Oxford, he had read widely in the liberal arts
and the medical classics that informed everything from physiology to anat-
omy. He had received his M.D. from Oxford University on the eve of the
Restoration and then opened a comfortable medical practice at Red Lyon
Court in the heart of London. Like Symon Patrick and Samuel Pepys,
Hodges had risen quickly within the ranks of his chosen profession, and he
was now a member of London’s College of Physicians, England’s most elite
medical organization.
Hodges’ parish of Saint Stephen Walbrook seemed the perfect place to
live and work, a well-to-do enclave of sixty-nine households with a very high
median of 6. 7 hearths. Assuming that the average family had six members,
including two or three servants, the population would have been about four
The Doctors Stumble
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