Mead, Richard

In Latin: Sacred to the memory of Richard Mead, the eminent physician, born of an ancient Buckinghamshire family, who acquired during his earliest youth no common reputation in the practice of medicine; and subsequently brightened his name with such celebrity that he was esteemed the leading physician of his age. He was mild [lenis] and full of pity [misericors] in healing the sick and ever ready to assist the poor free of charge; amidst his assiduous occupations in the healing art, he published for the benefit of human nature not a few learned and elegantly written works which were notable for their perspicuous genius [ingenio] and practical daily use. A matchless patron of letters and the learned, he assembled a most choice library filled with the best and rarest books and monuments of ancient arts, where he relieved his daily labours by conversing with the learned. Thus endowed with an excellent [excelso] mind and the most humane manners, and covered from all quarters with the praises of the literary world, with great splendour and dignity, full of years and fame, he peacefully died on 16 February 1754 in his eighty-first year. An injury not easily reparable to the politer arts of which he was so great an ornament and defender. He was twice joined in marriage. By the first he had ten children, of whom only three survived him, two daughters married to eminent physicians and one son, bearing his own name, who in piety erected this monument to the best of fathers. [Translation courtesy of Westminster Abbey website, adapted.]