422
NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. iv. NOV. 25, 1011.
Diary,' Surtees Soc., vol. Ixxiii. p. 233).
He acquired reputation through his skill
in anatomy. He was lecturing on that
branch of medical science in 1728 (Wilks
and Bettany, ' Guy's Hospital,' p. 87),
became F.R.C.P. of London 26 June, 1732,
and was Censor in 1735 and 1736. In 1734
and again in 1736 Nicholls was Gulstonian
Reader of Pathology, his subject in the
former year being the heart and its circula-
tion, and in the latter year the urinary
organs and the disease of stone. In 1739
he read the Harveian Oration, which was
duly printed in the next year ; and for a term
of five years (from 30 August, 1746) he was
Lumleian Lecturer, his prcelectio ' De Anima
Medica' being printed in. 1750, and reprinted
in 1771 and 1773. He was appointed
on 13 August, 1730, Visceral Lecturer to
the United Company of Barbers and Sur-
geons , Osteology Lecturer on 17 July, 1735 ;
and on 19 August, 1736, became both
Osteology and Muscular Lecturer (J. F.
South, 'Craft of Surgery,' 1886, pp. 372-3).
These lectures marked a new era in the history of medicine. The young students of London, and not a few from Oxford and Cambridge, attended them in crowds. For " the novelty of his discoveries, the grace- fulness of his manner, and the charm of his delivery " attracted both them and persons of all ranks and professions. Dr. Thomas Lawrence, his future biographer, was one of his audience, and formed there the acquaintance of Bathurst, the friend of Johnson. Dr. William Hunter attended the lectures in 1742, and an autograph abridg- ment by him of the discourses on anatomy and physiology remains in No. 437 of the MSS. in the Hunterian Museum Library at Glasgow. " The syllabus of the lectures 39 in all of Nicholls in 1743 included anatomy, physiology, the general principles of pathology, and midwifery " (Wilks and Bettany, ' Guy's Hospital,' p. 87).
Abstracts of seven of his anatomical lectures are in Addit. MS. 401 8 b at the British Museum, and through the interces- sion of W. N. Boylston, a patron of Harvard University, with John Nicholls, " a valuable part of the injected anatomic preparations " made by him was presented to that institu- tion. Stonhouse (afterwards Sir James Stonhouse, Bart., M.D.) lived with him for two years in his hoiise in Lincoln's Inn Fields, " and dissected with him, which was a great privilege, and for which he paid a large sum." Stonhouse complains that Nicholls was a professed Deist, who took great pains to instil his principles into
the minds of his pupils (' Letters from
Orton and Stonhouse,' ii. 261-2).
In the early part of 1749, on the death of Dr. John Coningham, one of the eight elects, or council, of the College of Phy- sicians, a junior to Nicholls was appointed to the place; Nicholls thereupon resigned his lectureship, and for the future took little part in the affairs of the College. Every one was surprised at the slur, and Dr. Mead, whose youngest daughter and coheiress Elizabeth was married to Nicholls in 1743, resigned in the next year his place among the elects. From 1753 to 1760 Nicholls was physician to George II. His chief paper in the Philos. Trans, wa? an account of the dissection of that monarch's body, which resulted in proving that he died from the bursting of the right ventricle of the heart. This paper was submitted through the Lord Chamberlain to the new monarch, who saw no reason why it should not be made public.
With the accession of this new king, George III., trouble arose. " Lord Bute," said Dr. Johnson, who seems, besides giving "somewhere or other an account of the discourse 'De Anima Medica,' " to have been personally known to our physician " showed an undue partiality to Scotchmen- He turned out Dr. Nicholls, a very eminent man, from being physician to the King', to make room for one of his countrymen, a man very low in hi& profession [Duncan, afterwards Sir William Duncan, Bt.]."
The pension which was proffered to him Nicholls rejected with disdain. Johnson told Boswell that
" whatever a man's distemper was, Dr. Nicholls would not attend him as a physician if his mind was not at ease ; for he believed that no medicines would have any influence. He once attended a man in trade, upon whom he found none of the medicines he prescribed had any effect ; he asked the man's wife privately whether his affairs were not in a bad way ? She said, No. He continued his attendance some time, still without success, At length the man's wife told him she had dis- covered that her husband's affairs were in a bad way." ' Boswell,' ed. Hill, ii. 354, iii. 163.
Sir John Hawkins records ('Life of Johnson,' 2nd ed., p. 407), a saying of Nicholls, which Johnson had repeated to him with high commendation. " that it was a point of wisdom to form intimacies and to choose for our friends only persons of known worth and integrity, and that to do so had been the rule of his life." Philip Thicknesse preserves this anecdote:
" Twenty years ago I called in Dr. Nicholls to
near and dear friend whose sudden disorder
alarmed me exceedingly. The honest doctor
would neither write nor take a fee, and the only
