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APPENDIX
The third Monckton Copeman Memorial Lecture
(entitled "Medicine and the River Thames") delivered by
W.G. Swann, M.D., B.Ch., B.A.O., B.Sc., D.P.H., D(Obst), R.C.O.G., D.P.A.,
on 6th February 1969 at The Apothecaries'Hall, Blackfrairs Lane, E.C.4.
I count it a signal honour to have been invited to deliver the third Monckton Copeman Lecture
My two predecessors in this task came from the staff of the central Government Department concerned
with health as did Monckton Copeman so that I am the first Medical Officer of Health
of a Local Authority to undertake this distinguished duty, I have no doubt that it is_ one more
instance of the privilege of the office that I hold that this lot has fallen to me. Although Dr. S.
Monckton Copeman was engaged as a Medical Officer in Central Government he, of course, had
close contacts, interests, and associations with local government. The theme given to me for this
paper is "Medicine and the River Thames".
First of all what can one say of the Thames and its inevitable association with the life and
culture of London including medicine? Whether one goes back to the earliest times and conjectures
whether the name London was derived from the early Celtic Llyn don which means the lake fortress
or whether one agrees with the great John Evelyn when he writes "In fact the City of London is
built on a sweet and most agreeable eminency of ground at the north side of a goodly well conditioned
river towards which it had an access by a gentle easy declivity", there is this closest
of links between City and River. It is said that the Nile is Egypt and Egypt is the Nile.
One has only to fly by plan from Cairo to Luxor or Aswan to vividly realise this — the real Egypt
is a mere green strip on either side of the Nile — the rest an arid sandy wilderness. The lifeof
London is not so physically correlated with the Thames as this, nevertheless culturally, economically
and in a great number of ways they are both bound up in the bundle of life. The Royal
Charter of King James I states: "It is notorious that the river of Thames is so necessary, commodious
and practicable to the City of London that without the said river our City could not long
subsist, flourish or continue." In the Library of the Port of London Authority is a document
signed by the Rt. Hon. John Burns, P.C., containing the story of the Canadian from the banks of
the Great St. Lawrence and an American from the banks of the great Missouri who asked, rather
derisively, John Burns' comparative view of the St. Lawrence, the Missouri and the River Thames.
He replied: "The St. Lawrence is mere water, the Missouri i's muddy water, the Thames is liquid
history." A lot of this history is intimately concerned with medicine and health. Edward Chamberlayne
in his "Present State of England" 1682 (a sort of Whitaker's Almanack) says: "In the most
excellent situation of London the profound wisdom of our ancestors is very conspicuous and
admirable. It is seated in a pleasant evergreen valley, upon a gentle rising bank in an excellent
air, in a wholesome soil mixed with gravel and-sand upon the famous navigable river Thames,
at a place where it is cast into a crescent, that so each part of the City might enjoy the benefit
of the river, and yet not be far distant one from the other; about sixty miles from the sea; not so
near, that it might be in danger of surprise by the fleets of foreign enemies or be annoyed by the
boisterous wind and unwholesome vapours ot the sea; yet not so far but that by the help of the
tide every 12 hours ships of great burden may be brought into her heaving bosorm
Chamberlayne in speaking of the Thames excelled himself in admiration: "The river whereon
is seated the great city, for its breadth, depth, gentle, straight even course, extraordinary wholesome
water, and tides, is more commodious for navigation than any other river in the world
The river opening eastwards towards Germany and France, is much more advantageous for traffic
than any other river of England.
Mrs. C. Fox-Smith has put the commercial life on the River in doggerel verse, thus:
"All alone I went a-walking by the London Docks one day,
For to see the ships discharging in the basins where they lay;
And the cargoes that I saw there they were every sort and kind,
Every blessed brand of merchandise a man could bring to mind:
There were things in crates & boxes, there was stuff in bags & bales,
There were tea-chests wrapped in matting,there were Eastern looking frails
There were baulks of teak and greenheart, there were stacks of spruce and pine,
There was cork and frozen carcasses and casks of Spanish wine
There was rice and spice and coconuts and rum enough was there
For to warm all London's innards up and leave a drop to spare."
So much for the Thames and its situation in relation to the City. What about medicine? I think
I cannot do better than remind you that the "Doctourpf Phisick" described by Chaucer, set out
from the "Tabard" on the south bank of the Thames in Southwark with the other pilgrims bound for
St. Thomas' shrine at Canterbury about 1380:
"There was also a Doctour of Phi si k
In all his world ne was ther non him'lyk,
To speke of Phisik and of Surgerye".