A new exhibition in London celebrates Richard Mead, one of the pioneers of modern public health policy
By J.C.
IN 1720, George I’s Privy Council asked Richard Mead, an eminent physician, to prepare a paper on how best to prevent the spread of bubonic plague to England. A serious outbreak of the disease in the southern French port of Marseille, caused by the arrival of an infected ship from the eastern Mediterranean, was evidence that no trading nation was safe.
Mead’s snappily titled, "A Short Discourse Concerning Pestilential Contagion and the Methods to be Used to Prevent it", advocated a more compassionate approach to containing the disease. Shutting the sick and healthy up together in their homes and waiting for nature to take its course was unjustifiably cruel, he wrote, and a move away from this draconian system was required. Mead's recommendations were incorporated into the Quarantine Act of 1721. The original paper is now on display as part of a small but fascinating new exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London.
"The Generous Georgian: Dr Richard Mead" celebrates the physician’s career in public health alongside his role in setting up and running the Foundling Hospital, the first of its kind in the country. A third section explores his passion for culture—it took 56 days to sell off Mead’s collection of paintings, prints, antiquities, coins and books after his death in 1754. "The Generous Georgian" includes precious pieces such as a pen and ink drawing by Agostino Carracci and a 2nd century BC bronze known as the Arundel Head.
The shipwright and sailor Thomas Coram spent 17 years campaigning for the establishment of an institution for the “Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children”. It was well-connected supporters such as Mead that enabled Coram to see his plan realised and the Foundling Hospital built. As the physician to Queen Anne, George I and George II, Mead was able to use his influence to get the go ahead for the royal charter that established the hospital in 1739. Those unfamiliar with the Foundling Museum might want to race through the museum’s charming permanent exhibition to get a sense of this background.
Mead used his years of experience in clinical practice and public health when making recommendations for the children in the hospital’s care. Only babies free from infectious diseases were admitted, and the design for the site included covered colonnades so that the children could take exercise outdoors in bad weather. (These colonnades, now part of Coram’s Fields children’s park, are the only part of the original 18th-century property still standing today.)
Smallpox was a major cause of child mortality at the time and Mead instituted a massive programme of inoculation at the Foundling Hospital. On display in the exhibition is the 1763 inoculation record (in Latin) of a foundling by the name of Augusta Jones. Its dispassionate account of the little girl’s symptoms and recovery is brought to life by grim 20th-century photographs of individuals infected with the disease.
Inoculation, which saw ground up smallpox scabs introduced into the skin to induce a mild form of the disease and subsequent immunity, was not without its risks. But 60 years before Edward Jenner’s discovery of the much safer vaccination method, and many generations before the eradication of the disease, the Foundling Hospital was one of the first public institutions to implement an effective and widespread programme for the prevention of smallpox. With deadly, contagious diseases back in the news once again, this fine exhibition offers a fitting opportunity to remember one of the pioneers of modern public health policy.
"The Generous Georgian: Dr Richard Mead" is on at the Foundling Museum until January 2nd 2015. www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk
