Mas’s in 1815.16 His nineteenth-century biographer, Samuel Squire Sprigge, portrays Wakley as a diligent, almost puritanical pupil, who threw himself into his studies, shunning the `orgy of porter, the Fleet Street amour, and the cutty of black tobacco, which played so large a part in the lighter side of student life’. What hobbies he did entertain were of a vigorously physical nature, for Wakley was a `very muscular, energetic and hearty young man’, a noted sportsman and accomplished boxer.17 Sprigge attributes this physicality to his country upbringing, claiming that he had inherited the values of a `self-respecting, sturdily independent labourer’. The same rustic simplicity also accounts for an independence of mind which would later mature into political radicalism. As he claims, `His youth had been spent among a Olmutinib chemical information simple folk, to whom truth was everything’: As member of a large family he was [also] endowed with a deep sense of what was fair [and] it was freely recognized in [his father’s] house that share and share alike in common goods was the only fair plan. So that there was early implanted in his breast a keen sense of rudimentary justice ?that crude kind of socialism so often seen in children ?only developed to an extraordinarily high degree. He desired that everyone should have his due.18 Superficially, this emphasis upon an inchoate and unreflexive sense of distributive justice seems deeply apolitical. Rather than a product of intellectual development, Wakley’s buy Lumicitabine politics are figured as rustic, crude, even childlike. And yet these associations performed a decidedly political function, presenting Wakley’s opposition to the contemporary medical establishment as the natural response to a self-evident injustice. In this sense, his biography has marked parallels with that of Cobbett, the plain-thinking, plain-speaking farmer whose own opposition to the political and commercial `system’ was as much an instinctual reaction as a point of philosophical principle.Sprigge, op. cit., 1 ?. 6 ?. 17ibid., 21 ?.16ibid.,ibid., 7, 30. Brinton, English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1962), 61 ?;19C.MayThe Lancet, libel and English medicineWakley’s experience at the Borough Hospitals failed to live up to his high ideals and expectations. The great lecturers whom he had paid to hear would frequently delegate work to inferior subordinates, access to the dissecting room was secured only through bribery and the attendance of staff was irregular and inadequate: And, to cap all these injustices, he found that he was relegated to a class in his profession marked out from the beginning to constitute the rank and file, not in the least through want of personal merit, but because he had not paid exorbitant fees to apprentice himself to a great man.20 Despite these impediments, Wakley appeared to be flourishing, for a mere two years after completing his studies he moved into a grand fifteen-room townhouse on Argyll Street in the West End and in February 1820 he married Elizabeth Goodchild, daughter of a wealthy governor of St Thomas’s Hospital.21 However, in a bizarre twist of fate, that very summer the promise of Wakley’s new life came crashing down when masked assailants attacked him on his doorstep and burned his house to the ground.22 Theories abounded as to the motive for the assault. The most likely explanation is that it was conducted by the remnants of Arthur Thistelwood’s radical Spencean gang who erroneously suspected Wakley o.Mas’s in 1815.16 His nineteenth-century biographer, Samuel Squire Sprigge, portrays Wakley as a diligent, almost puritanical pupil, who threw himself into his studies, shunning the `orgy of porter, the Fleet Street amour, and the cutty of black tobacco, which played so large a part in the lighter side of student life’. What hobbies he did entertain were of a vigorously physical nature, for Wakley was a `very muscular, energetic and hearty young man’, a noted sportsman and accomplished boxer.17 Sprigge attributes this physicality to his country upbringing, claiming that he had inherited the values of a `self-respecting, sturdily independent labourer’. The same rustic simplicity also accounts for an independence of mind which would later mature into political radicalism. As he claims, `His youth had been spent among a simple folk, to whom truth was everything’: As member of a large family he was [also] endowed with a deep sense of what was fair [and] it was freely recognized in [his father’s] house that share and share alike in common goods was the only fair plan. So that there was early implanted in his breast a keen sense of rudimentary justice ?that crude kind of socialism so often seen in children ?only developed to an extraordinarily high degree. He desired that everyone should have his due.18 Superficially, this emphasis upon an inchoate and unreflexive sense of distributive justice seems deeply apolitical. Rather than a product of intellectual development, Wakley’s politics are figured as rustic, crude, even childlike. And yet these associations performed a decidedly political function, presenting Wakley’s opposition to the contemporary medical establishment as the natural response to a self-evident injustice. In this sense, his biography has marked parallels with that of Cobbett, the plain-thinking, plain-speaking farmer whose own opposition to the political and commercial `system’ was as much an instinctual reaction as a point of philosophical principle.Sprigge, op. cit., 1 ?. 6 ?. 17ibid., 21 ?.16ibid.,ibid., 7, 30. Brinton, English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1962), 61 ?;19C.MayThe Lancet, libel and English medicineWakley’s experience at the Borough Hospitals failed to live up to his high ideals and expectations. The great lecturers whom he had paid to hear would frequently delegate work to inferior subordinates, access to the dissecting room was secured only through bribery and the attendance of staff was irregular and inadequate: And, to cap all these injustices, he found that he was relegated to a class in his profession marked out from the beginning to constitute the rank and file, not in the least through want of personal merit, but because he had not paid exorbitant fees to apprentice himself to a great man.20 Despite these impediments, Wakley appeared to be flourishing, for a mere two years after completing his studies he moved into a grand fifteen-room townhouse on Argyll Street in the West End and in February 1820 he married Elizabeth Goodchild, daughter of a wealthy governor of St Thomas’s Hospital.21 However, in a bizarre twist of fate, that very summer the promise of Wakley’s new life came crashing down when masked assailants attacked him on his doorstep and burned his house to the ground.22 Theories abounded as to the motive for the assault. The most likely explanation is that it was conducted by the remnants of Arthur Thistelwood’s radical Spencean gang who erroneously suspected Wakley o.
