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death’s door and was thus blistered, bled and purged at
both ends once more. On the Friday they emptied most of
the remaining blood from his frail body and fed him one
last anecdote prepared from extracts of all the herbs and
animals of the kingdom. But on the Saturday following
a week of the very best in 17th century medical care the
King woke up dead.
Compared to the torments of the King Samuel Pepys was
relatively lucky having endured and survived just one
medical procedure. As a young man he
developed a bladder stone the size of a billiard
ball and by the age of 25 years, accepting that
only surgery could deliver him from his agony,
he had the stone removed. At the sign of the red
pole (for the blood and bandages) the barber surgeon,
with neither anaesthetic nor antiseptic, went in through
the perineum. Pepys survived probably because he
was sufficiently wealthy enough to be second on the
barber-surgeons list that day. Instruments of the type
used on Pepys are on show at Greenwich. The surgery
left Samuel Pepys sterile but not, as we know from his
diaries, impotent. And with that I shall leave you with
just one final image to dance in your minds as you
walk the dogs this January. The perpetually fruity
Pepys wrote his diaries in a secret code so that his
wife couldn’t read of his extra-marital exploits. Pepys,
like most of his contemporaries wouldn’t have seen bath
water more than once or twice a year. Back in October,
when the nights had started drawing in, his maid had
smeared his body with goose fat and sewn him into his
long underwear to keep him nice and toasty until the
following Spring.
He’d be about four months ripe round about now.
Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution is at the National
Maritime Museum until 28 March 2016.
You can still visit with City & Village Tours as part of
our Pepys, Plague & Fire itinerary described here or
as part of our London’s Burning day described here.
Corpse medicine is just one of the delightful topics
featuring in on our popular Kill or Cure tour
described here.
