Though they all faced danger as children, some of Lord Macdonald Duncan’s sons were not meant to inherit. Benjamin Thompson’s uncle was Lord Louis Thompson, 9th Earl Thompson. If Louis had married and sired a son, then that son would have been the next earl. However, Louis was killed, along with Benjamin’s father, Ernest Thompson, a vicar. Duncan shielded Benjamin until the boy could inherit the earldom, but Benjamin’s heart was elsewhere. He always wished to serve mankind, and he held an interest in science and nature. Therefore, after Cambridge, Duncan sent Benjamin to Edinburgh to study medicine and surgery before he claimed his earldom. Throughout this fourth book and the series, the reader will notice Benjamin’s “mind” works a bit differently from those of his brothers.

In the early 18th century, Englishmen relied heavily on English medicines and remedies. The term ‘patent medicine’ itself originated from English patent medicines, whose ingredients were granted royal protection and exclusivity. 

Advances in early 1800s English medicine included the isolation of morphine (1803), which was a significant step in understanding active ingredients, the groundbreaking invention of the stethoscope in 1816, the first practical human blood transfusion in 1818, and the development of anesthetics like ether and nitrous oxide. The smallpox vaccine, developed in the late 1700s, began to be widely implemented, paving the way for modern immunology and vaccination programs. These advancements moved medicine away from ancient theories like the humoral theory and closer to a more scientific and measurable understanding of the body. 

René Laennec invented the stethoscope in 1816, allowing doctors to listen to the internal workings of the body, a significant leap forward in diagnosis. The anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide were announced in 1800, and the first surgical operations using ether as an anesthetic were performed shortly after. 

Edward Jenner’s work in the late 18th century on cowpox as a vaccine for smallpox led to the development of vaccination programs in the early 19th century, saving countless lives and laying the groundwork for future immunology. 

But such did not mean that there was a predominant method to surgery, etc. “Even in the 18th century the search for a simple way of healing the sick continued. In Edinburgh the writer and lecturer John Brown expounded his view that there were only two diseases, sthenic (strong) and asthenic (weak), and two treatments, stimulant and sedative; his chief remedies were alcohol and opium. Lively and heated debates took place between his followers, the Brunonians, and the more orthodox Cullenians (followers of William Cullen, a professor of medicine at Glasgow), and the controversy spread to the medical centers of Europe.”

By the 18th century the medical school at Leiden (in the Netherlands) had grown to rival that of Padua, and many students were attracted there from abroad. By the beginning of the 19th century, the structure of the human body was almost fully known, due to new methods of microscopy and of injections. 

History of Medicine tells us, “There was perhaps some danger that in the search for bacteria other causes of disease would escape detection. Many physicians, however, were working along different lines in the 19th century. Among them were a group attached to Guy’s Hospital in London: Richard Bright, Thomas Addison, and Sir William Gull. Bright contributed significantly to the knowledge of kidney diseases, including Bright disease, and Addison gave his name to disorders of the adrenal glands and the blood. Gull, a famous clinical teacher, left a legacy of pithy aphorisms that might well rank with those of Hippocrates.

“In Dublin, Robert Graves and William Stokes introduced new methods in clinical diagnosis and medical training, while in Paris a leading clinician, Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis, was attracting many students from America by the excellence of his teaching. By the early 19th century the United States was ready to send back the results of its own researches and breakthroughs. In 1809, in a small Kentucky town, Ephraim McDowell boldly operated on a woman—without anesthesia or antisepsis—and successfully removed a large ovarian tumor. William Beaumont, in treating a shotgun wound of the stomach, was led to make many original observations that were published in 1833 as Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion.”

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There’s a Cure for That