The Doctors Stumble • 147six hours’ notice for appointments from plague sufferers.^17 Boghurst was ap-
palled at the thin coverage by the public medical corps, seeing the poor
people in his part of London in dire need. He lamented that two or three
young doctors were appointed to “handle 30 or 40 thousand sick people,
when two or three hundred was too few.”^18
Four private doctors took pity on the city’s infected poor and began treat-
ing them free of charge at various locations. Dr. Humphrey Brookes covered
the area around the eastern wall. Another Dr. Brookes cared for the poor in
Saint Bennett Gracechurch parish, where there were fifty-seven fatalities in
sixty-five households. The central wards were covered by Dr. Glover. Dr.
Parker offered his services at Saint Stephen Coleman and Saint Giles Crip-
plegate. He was a brave man, for these two parishes on either side of the
northern wall were overwhelmed with massive weekly death counts when he
made his offer. Cripplegate would reach a mortality count seven times that
of a normal year.
Dr. Barbone offered his services just beyond the western wall. He wished
to serve the plague-infested parishes by the Fleet stream and Thames river-
bank, which included Saint Bride’s and Saint Dunstan in the West. The
court of aldermen at the Guildhall demurred, for Barbone was both a for-
eigner and a dissenter. Instead, Barbone was assigned to medical service at a
pesthouse, where he eventually died of the plague.^19
Such stellar acts by individuals contrasted sharply with the institutional
response of the medical establishment. Sadly, the College of Physicians
closed its doors after updating its printed advice for the public and offering
the Guildhall that small cadre of its members to serve the infected poor. A
scant few financial entries were made in its books for the rest of this great
plague. The building’s custodian, Dr. Merritt, left town with his family.
Thieves had free entry to the empty headquarters and absconded with one
thousand pounds in silver and money from the college’s treasure chest. There
was the added blemish of the departure of all but ten or eleven of the college
physicians, who fled for their lives rather than remain to fight a hopeless,
perhaps suicidal, battle with plague.^20
From all available evidence, it seems, nevertheless, that London’s medical
corps acquitted itself more bravely in 1665 than in previous plague epidem-
ics.^21 Those who remained offered devotion and compassion, important
components of healing in any age. In these respects Hodges, Boghurst, and
many others who had braved the infection had not stumbled. Unfortunately,
they were tripped up by professional infighting.