with Dr. Thomas Pellett [q. v.] of Cambridge, and with David Polhill, he travelled in Italy, visiting Turin, Florence, and then Padua, where he graduated M.D. on 16 Aug. 1695. He went on to Rome and Naples, and returned to London in the summer of 1696. A story, probable enough, but with one obvious inaccuracy, relates (Authentic Memoirs, 1755, p. 6) that he rediscovered among the lumber of a museum the bronze tablets inlaid with silver known as the Tabula Isiaca. They had been found in the Villa Caffarelli gardens in 1547, were carried with other plunder from Rome to Mantua, and thence to Turin, where Mead, who had heard much of their supposed Egyptian origin and meaning, asked leave to search for them, and was successful in finding them. They have ever since been duly exhibited in the treasury of the archives at Turin, but have lost their supposed interest, having been proved not to be Egyptian, but a Roman forgery of the time of Hadrian (Letter from J. H. Middleton, 30 March 1873).
Mead began practice in 1696 at Stepney, living in the house in which he had been born. To practise legally required a license from the College of Physicians, which he did not obtain, but was probably suffered as being on the outskirts of the jurisdiction. He certainly made no endeavour at concealment, for in 1702 he published ‘A Mechanical Account of Poisons,’ which excited so much attention that an abstract of it was printed in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1703, and in the same year he was elected F.R.S. The hypothesis of the work is a result of the teaching of Pitcairne, to whose school of medical thought Mead at this time belonged, and the subject was partly suggested by some remarks of Herman the botanist and by specimens of venomous snakes which he had shown to his pupils. Mead dissected vipers, and gives an exact account of the mechanism which provides for the erection of the fang when the snake opens its mouth. Quoting the remark of Lucan (Pharsalia, ix. 617), ‘Pocula morte carent,’ he swallowed the poison, and thus confirmed Galen's experiment (Theriaca, bk. i.) on fowls, in proof of the fact that puncture is necessary to produce the effect. He thence proceeds to the conclusion that hard particles in the poison mechanically produce in the blood the fatal effect. The rules of treatment laid down are sounder than the argument, which is, however, supported by much learning and many interesting observations. In the same year he communicated to the Royal Society (Phil. Trans. 1703) an account of Bonomo's discovery of the acarus scabiei, the mite which causes the disease known as itch, up to that time supposed to be a constitutional disorder. It is remarkable that this was then disbelieved in England, though clearly demonstrated in Italy in 1687. In 1704 he published a second iatromechanical treatise on the influence of the sun and moon upon human bodies, ‘De imperio Solis ac Lunæ in Corpora Humana et Morbis inde oriundis.’ He had mastered Newton's discovery of attraction, and was anxious to show that the heavenly bodies affected the human frame as they affected one another. This work is much shallower than that on poisons. He republished both later in life (1743), the former with many additions, and with a statement surrendering as untenable the mechanical hypothesis.
Mead was elected into the council of the Royal Society in 1705, and again in 1707 and till his death, being vice-president in 1717. On 5 May 1703 he was elected physician to St. Thomas's Hospital, and then went to live in Crutched Friars, in the eastern part of the city of London, whence in 1711 he moved again to Austin Friars to a house vacated by Dr. George Howe [q. v.] Here he was often visited by Dr. John Radcliffe [q. v.], who admired his learning, was pleased by his deference, and gave him much help and countenance. On 4 Dec. 1707 he had been made M.D. at Oxford, and on 25 June 1708 passed the examination, and was admitted a candidate or member of the College of Physicians. He was elected a fellow on 9 April 1716, and was censor in 1716, 1719, and 1724. On 16 Aug. 1711 he was elected anatomy lecturer for four years to the Barber-Surgeons (Young, Annals of Barber-Surgeons, p. 375). His practice soon became large, and in 1714 he took Radcliffe's former house in Bloomsbury Square, and was the chief physician of the day (cf. Spectator, ed. Morley, p. 671). On 5 Jan. 1715 he resigned his physiciancy at St. Thomas's Hospital, received the thanks of the authorities, and was elected a governor. He was called in to see Queen Anne two days before her death, which he predicted to be imminent, though this was a view of the case which the ministry desired to discourage. His reputation was enhanced under the new dynasty. On 19 Dec. 1717 Hearne wrote in his diary: ‘My great friend, Dr. Richard Mead, hath recovered the Princess of Wales (as she is called) when the other physicians had certainly killed her, had their prescriptions been followed. This hath gained Dr. Mead a great reputation at Prince George's court, and Dr. Garth and Dr. Sloane are now out of favour as well as others’ (Diaries, ii. 56). In 1720 (Letter to Dr. Waller) he removed to Great Ormond Street, where his
