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How are a famous diarist, one of England's great novelists and a princess, destined to become Queen of England, connected optically? The man who provides the link is the physician and oculist known as Turberville of Salisbury. He was born at Wayford, near Crewkerne in Somerset in 1612, but lived and practised medicine for most of his life in Salisbury, hence the appellation.
Dawbigney Turberville was born into an old English family that could trace its heritage back to one Sir Payan D'Urberville, a Norman knight who fought under William the Conqueror at Hastings. Indeed, his name sometimes appears as D'Aubegney D'Urberville.
Here is our first connection: the surname in this form was, of course, used by Thomas Hardy for Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Whether our man was the inspiration for Hardy can only be surmised, but it is an unusual name and Hardy certainly knew Salisbury and most likely had heard of Turberville, one of the most notable inhabitants. In Hardy's Wessex, Salisbury is called Melchester and is where, in Jude the Obscure, Jude goes to study for entry into the ministry and where his soon-to-be lover, Sue Bridehead, is training to be a teacher.
When thinking of a famous diarist, one's mind is likely to turn to Samuel Pepys (pictured). This is the second connection with Turberville and by far his most well-known, or at least the best-documented, thanks to Pepys' Diary. That Pepys had problems with his eyes is common knowledge, since he mentions it many times in his Diary. The first entry concerning his eyesight is for April 25 1662, although this is in relation to the amount of alcohol he had imbibed that day: 'I was much troubled in my eyes, by reason of the healths I have this day been forced to drink.' The last reference to his eyesight comes in his final Diary entry on 31 May 1669: 'And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes, in keeping my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes every time I take a pen in my hand.'
Throughout these years of ocular discomfort, which he came to believe would make him blind if he continued writing, he recounts trying many potential remedies. He mentions, in order, being bled, changing his brewer, using green glasses, using 'young glasses' as opposed to 'old spectacles', wearing 'tube' spectacles, a vizard (a type of visor) with lenses and the use of a water globe. Yet it was some years before he took the advice of a good friend in getting proper medical attention. In his Diary entry for June 22 1668 Pepys, then aged 35, writes: 'My business was to meet Mr Boyle, which I did, and discoursed about my eyes: and he did give me the best advice he could, but refers me to one Turberville of Salisbury, lately come to town, who I will go to.'
Pepys did not waste time in consulting Turberville, who was up in London on one of his regular trips from Salisbury. The following day, writes Pepys: 'To Dr Turberville about my eyes, whom I met with: and he did discourse, I thought, learnedly about them and takes time before he did prescribe me anything, to think of it.' On June 29: 'To Dr Turberville's, and there did receive some direction for some physic, and also a glass of something to drop into my eyes: he gives me hopes that I may do well.'
On July 4 1668, Pepys records taking four of Turberville's pills but, by July 13, Pepys is seeking another cure: 'This morning I was let blood, and it bled about 15 ounces, toward curing my eyes.' And by the end of July he writes: 'The month ends mighty sadly with me. My eyes being now past all use almost and I am mighty hot on trying the late printed experiment of paper tubes.'
Biographical sources suggest Pepys never suffered the same level of ocular discomfort after his consultations with Turberville, although his eyes troubled him for the rest of his life.
A group of ophthalmologists, invited by the Samuel Pepys Club in 1911 to consider the available evidence, hypothesised that Pepys' problem was hypermetropia, with some degree of astigmatism. Later on presbyopia would, of course, have become relevant, and who knows what effect trying to read and write in smoky, dimly candlelit rooms must have had on his visual comfort.
At the same time as he was treating Pepys, Turberville was attending an even more illustrious patient: the third part of the connection. The Duchess of York, wife of the future James II, was worried about her daughter, Princess Anne.
Anne was suffering from a serious eye inflammation and facial skin eruption, which the Court physicians had been unable to cure. Turberville was sent for. The Court physicians protested at the presence of what they considered to be a mere country doctor in their midst and, in the ensuing argument, Turberville refused to communicate with them.
The deadlock was broken when the Duke and Duchess of York backed Turberville decisively, to the tune of a £600 fee if he took the case on - a huge sum at that time. Unsurprisingly, Turberville took up the offer, and successfully treated the future Queen Anne. He only ever received half his fee but, as this was still a substantial amount, the kudos of a happy royal patient was probably sufficient recompense.
Turberville's skills are attested to by his friend, Dr Walter Pope, in his Life of Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury. Pope says, with obvious gratitude: 'It was he who twice rescued me from blindness which, without his aid, had been unavoidable, when both my eyes were so bad that, with the best, I could not perceive a letter in a book, not my hand with the other, and grew worse every day.' Exactly what his problem was we don't know, except that he developed a severe eye infection that led to him resigning his teaching post in 1687. Pope also mentions, to illustrate his integrity, how Turberville once refused a fee of £100 from a peer because he could not cure the patient.
In one of his few correspondences to Philosophical Transactions, Turberville mentions his use of a new technique: 'A person of Salisbury had a piece of iron or steel stuck in the iris of the eye [probably at the corneal limbus] which I endeavoured to push it out with a small spatula, but could not but on applying a lodestone it immediately jumped out.' This very early report of retrieving a foreign body by magnet, together with reports of his performing enucleations and his skill in correcting ptosis and curing ulcers and inflammations, shows why he earned the reputation of a competent and honourable physician.
The epithet 'of Salisbury' speaks of the regard in which Turberville was held. Patients travelled from across England, and from as far as Jamaica, to consult him. Such was Turberville's reputation that, when he died in 1696, he was afforded burial in the nave of Salisbury Cathedral. His friend Pope supplied a fitting epitaph: 'Near this place, lies interred the most expert and successful oculist that ever was, perhaps that ever will be.' ?