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Notes
Marjorie Hope Nicolson and G. S. Rousseau, "This Long Disease, My Life"; Alexander Pope and the Sciences (1968), pp. 109-115.
Warwick William Wroth, "Combe, Charles, M. D. (1743-1817)," DNB (1917); William Munk, The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London (1878), II, 337-338.
Gordon Goodwin, "Merriman, Samuel, M. D. (1771-1852)," DNB (1917); The Gentleman's Magazine (1853), 207-209.
I wish to thank John E. Ayres, Deputy Librarian, The Royal Society of Medicine, who furnished me with information from the Society's accessions register.
Merriman's notes and correspondence on the Mary Toft affair are in the Royal Society of Medicine scrapbook. His article on Hogarth's Cunicularii is in The Gentleman's Magazine (1842), 266-268.
N. H. Robinson, Librarian, The Royal Society, generously provided me with samples of the handwriting of Charles Combe. Specimens of the hands of both Merrimans are in the Royal Society of Medicine scrapbook.
This, in fact, is the history of a similar compilation, the Gough collection of Toft material, now in the possession of the Bodleian Library. This compilation was built around a core of eight printed tracts from a collection purchased in 1781 but gathered together
The best modern account of the Mary Toft incident is S. A. Seligman, "Mary Toft—The Rabbit Breeder," Medical History, 5 (1961), 349-360. For Douglas, see K. Bryn Thomas, James Douglas of the Pouch and his Pupil William Hunter (1964).
Manningham's Diary was announced as "This Day is publish'd" in The Daily Post, 12 December 1726. In an early draft of his reply to Manningham, dated 12 December, Douglas remarked that the Diary was "published this day" (Douglas Papers D330).
This allows us to date the composition of "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" fairly accurately. As I will show below, the first stanza refers to an incident that happened on the afternoon of 4 December and the fourth alludes to the actions of Sir Thomas Clarges, who first entered the case on the evening of the same day. Thus, the poem was written between 4 and 16 December 1726.
Hervey to Henry Fox, 3 December 1726, Hervey MSS. 941/47/4, pp. 28-32, Suffolk Record Office, Bury St. Edmunds.
The numerous drafts of An Advertisement are gathered together in the Douglas Papers D330. In the manuscript, it is clear that Douglas had in mind Arbuthnot in particular. He originally wrote, "This I told Dr Arbuthnot who was by" and then added "& others" above the line. This passage was considerably altered by the time An Advertisement was published: "But the most remarkable Thing that occurr'd to me that Day, was, that having desired to visit the Woman, I was denied Admittance, Mr. St. Andrè and Mr. Howard being both abroad. I told several Gentlemen, then at the Bagnio, that I was afraid some new Monster was breeding; and went away with a Resolution to return no more" (An Advertisement Occasion'd by Some Passages in Sir R. Manningham's Diary Lately Publish'd [1727], p. 15).
"What are the Lords? a few in Number, only possess'd (as one Author has it) of an imaginary Dignity; they represent nothing but themselves, and so can have no addition of Strength but from themselves; they are in no Circumstances which make them popular, but rather remain a Mark for Envy: the greatest part of them are poor, and none of them are possess'd of a dangerous Wealth; they have no Holdings which procure them Dependencies; they are possess'd of no Castles, or strong Places, nor have they any Being as to Action, but at the power of another; that is, when consider'd as a Body, they are dissolvable at pleasure: and can there be a Description of more harmless Creatures?" (Remarks on a Pamphlet, Entitled, The Thoughts of a Member of the Lower House [1719], p. 25).
Swift to Pope, 20 September 1723; Swift to Archbishop King, 12 July 1711; Swift to Charles Ford, 13 February 1723; in The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (1963-65), II, 464; I, 237; III, 7.
Pope to Swift, [November 1735]; The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn (1956), III, 509.
In fact, Peterborough was acquainted with St. André. An anonymous defender of St. André, "who knew him intimately . . . for the last twenty years of his life," remarked: "Though he was disgraced at Court [because of his role in the Mary Toft incident], he was not abandoned by all his noble friends. The great Lord Peterborough, who was his patron and patient long before he went to Lisbon, entertained a very high opinion of him to the last." (The defense, signed "Impartial," was first published in The Public Advertiser, 1781, reprinted in The Gentleman's Magazine the same year, and reprinted once again in the third edition of John Nichols, Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, from which I quote, p. 467.) The statement by "Impartial" is certainly correct, though I have not been able to establish how early the two men knew each other. Peterborough was cared for by St. André during the last few years of his life (see Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn [1966], I, 114-115; and William Stebbing, Peterborough [1890], p. 220). Peterborough was on friendly terms with him in
For Arbuthnot's close friendship with Peterborough, see George A. Aitken, The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot (1892), esp. pp. 120, 147, 150-53, 161, and 166. For Arbuthnot's willingness to tweak his friends, see his muted satire on Garth and his rather more harsh treatment of Harley in The History of John Bull, eds. Alan W. Bower and Robert A. Erickson (1976), pp. 67, 63, and 86.
Whiston's prophecy and his account of his discussion with Molyneux are in Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston. Part III (1750), pp. 110-122. The lampoon on Whiston is one sentence: "The learned Mr. Wh---on takes her to be the Whore of Babylon, with seven Heads and ten Horns; which the Divines of our Church have always interpreted to be the Church of Rome" (A Philosophical Enquiry into the wonderful CONEY-WARREN; lately discovered at Godalmin near Guilford in Surrey [1726], p. 2).
For a discussion of the contemporary reactions to Whiston, see John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660-1750 (1976), pp. 37, 118-119, 123-124, 130, 165-169, 182, 204-205, and 209-210.
"[Whiston] has at, last publish'd his project of the longitude; the most ridiculous thing that ever was thought on, but a pox on him he has spoild one of my papers of Scriblerus', which was a proposal for the longitude not very unlike his to this purpose, that since ther was no pole for East & west that all the princes of Europe should joyn & build two prodigious poles upon high mountains with a vast Light house to serve for a pole Star. I was thinking of a calculation of the time charges & dimensions. Now you must understand his project is by light houses & explosion of bombs, at a certain hour" (Arbuthnot to Swift, 17 July 1714; Correspondence of Swift, II, 70). The two jabs at Whiston in the Memoirs are Martin's "Method of discovering the Longitude by Bomb-Vessels" and his project "to build Two Poles to the Meridian, with immense Light-houses on the top of them; to supply the defect of Nature, and to make the Longitude as easy to be calculated as the Latitude" (Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus, ed. Charles Kerby-Miller [1950; rpt. 1966], pp. 167-168).
There is no complete scholarly study of Whiston. Discussions of his religious and scientific theories can be found in Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion; Frank E. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (1963); and Katharine Brownell Collier, Cosmogonies of our Fathers (1934), pp. 109-124. Whiston's religious ideas were scored by the Scriblerians in "Ode, for Musick"; Swift attacked him as one who "denies the Divinity of Christ" in Mr. C----ns's Discourse of Free-Thinking (The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis et al. [1939-68], IV, 31, 34, and 36); Pope referred to his "wicked Works" in "An Epistle to Henry Cromwell, Esq;" (The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt et al. [1939-69], VI, 25.) Two works are invaluable for detailing the reactions of the Scriblerians to Whiston: Nicolson and Rousseau, "This Long Disease," pp. 133-87; and Ernest Tuveson, "Swift and the World-Makers," Journal of the History of Ideas, 11 (1950), 54-74.
Prose Works of Swift, XI, 148-149. See David Charles Leonard, "Swift, Whiston and the Comet," English Language Notes, 16 (June 1979), 284-287.
God's Revenge Against Punning, in The Prose Works of Alexander Pope: The Earlier Works, 1711-1720, ed. Norman Ault (1936; rpt. 1968), pp. 169-170.
A True and Faithful Narrative of What pass'd in London during the general Consternation of all Ranks and Degrees of Mankind; in John Gay: Poetry and Prose, ed. Vinton A Dearing and Charles E. Beckwith (1974), II, 465.
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, pp. 167 and 149. See Kerby-Miller's footnotes to these passages.
An Exact Diary of what was observ'd during a Close Attendance upon Mary Toft, the pretended Rabbet-Breeder of Godalming in Surrey (1727), pp. 26-31.
Ahler's account of the fraud was published as Some Observations Concerning the Woman of Godlyman in Surrey (1726). I have been able to find only two mentions of Ahlers in the Mary Toft satires, and neither charges him with believing her. In the anonymous Much Ado about Nothing: Or, a Plain Refutation of All that has been Written or Said Concerning the Rabbit-Woman of Godalming (1727), he was briefly glanced at as "a fumblfisted fellar" who hurt Mary Toft when he examined her (p. 16). He appeared once more in the anonymous "A Song of the Rabbit Breeder" as the man who angered St. André by not believing the story.
Much Ado about Nothing also attacked Manningham, but it attacked him for his barbarous treatment of Mary Toft (Manningham had threatened her with a painful operation unless she confessed). Finally, Hogarth satirized Manningham in his print Cunicularii, but he appears to be attacking him for his credulity, not for changing his mind about Mary Toft. I have discussed this point in "Three Characters in Hogarth's Cunicularii—and Some Implications," Eighteenth-Century Studies, 16 (1982), 24-46.
The first notice of An Advertisement is in The Daily Post, which announced it as "This Day is published" 11 January 1727, but it probably came out a few days earlier, as is implied by the title of the reply to it, "A Shorter and Truer Advertisement By way of Supplement, To what was published the 7th Instant." "A Shorter and Truer Advertisement" was first announced as "This Day is publish'd" in The Daily Post, 19 January 1727.
The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, with the Characters, ed. John Bradshaw (1926), III, 1411-12.
Pope to John Gay, 11 September 1722; Correspondence of Pope, II, 133. For Arbuthnot's putting off his works on others, see Aitken, Life and Works of Arbuthnot, pp. 39-40.
For Arbuthnot's publication habits and his casual attitude about his works, see Aitken, Life and Works of Arbuthnot, passim; Robert C. Steensma, Dr. John Arbuthnot (1979), pp. 101 and 127. Arbuthnot mentions "a hundred incorrect Copys" of what apparently was one of his own works circulating around London, Arbuthnot to Oxford, 16 November 1726; Correspondence of Pope, II, 411.
See especially Kerby-Miller, Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, p. 12; Lester M. Beattie, John Arbuthnot: Mathematician and Satirist (1935; rpt. 1967), pp. 3-4, 64, 396-397.
John Arbuthnot, An Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments, and the Choice of Them, According to the different Constitutions of Human Bodies (1731), p. v.
An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, in Aitken, Life and Works of Arbuthnot, pp. 414 and 422.
Essay Concerning Air, pp. 173-174; Essay Concerning Aliments, p. v; Essay Concerning Air, p. vii.
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, pp. 144 and 93. See also Cornelius's defense of his own theories of anatomy when a professor proves him wrong by showing him a human body: "Ocular demonstration . . . seems to be on your side, yet I shall not give it up; shew me any viscus of a human body, and I will bring you a monster that differs from the common rule in the structure of it" (p. 125). This episode occurs in the chapter "Anatomy," which Arbuthnot, as the only physician among the Scriblerians, surely had a major hand in.
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