Sir George Baker and the Devonshire Colic

JOHN P1mLIPS was not a Devon man and the colic which he described with such evident personal feeling was not the Devonshire colic. In the eighteenth century the cider making counties of England were the shires of Devon, Hereford and Gloucester. Cider was being made in Devonshire in the thirteenth century. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Defoe visited the county he remarked on the large quantity of the beverage that was annually sent to London. The best cider has for many, many years, come from that part of the county which is called the South Hams; an area roughly enclosed by the river Dart running down to the sea from Totnes, by the foothills of Dartmoor in the north, and by the deep estuaries of Plymouth harbour to the west. It is a land richly intersected with small streams, hardly worthy to be called rivers, which run through deep ravines south to the open Channel: it is a land rich in pasturage, but difficult to cultivate; a land where orchards, in the shelter of the overhanging hills, flourish; where the almost perpetual moisture ensures that the ripe fruit is full and juicy. In 1865 this district was producing an average of ten hogsheads of cider an acre.' This South Hams countryside was the childhood home of three boys who were to make their mark on the medical world of their day. John Huxham (1692-1768) was born and educated at Totnes; William Battie (1704-1776), the mad-house doctor, was born in Modbury; George Baker, the son of the Reverend George Baker, the vicar of Modbury, and Bridget his wife, was born there on 8 February 1723. The young Baker was educated at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. in 1749, became a Fellow, and was made an M.D. in 1756. When he left Cambridge he set up in practice in Stamford in Lincolnshire; according to Munk, on the invitation of a large number of friends, but this situation was too limited for the exertion of his talents, and about the year 1761 he removed to London.2 He became a Fellow of the College of Physicians, was Censor four times, Harveian orator, elect and, finally, President from 1785-1795. In succession he was appointed physician to the Queen's household, physician-in-ordinary tp the Queen and physician-inordinary to King George III. He was created baronet in 1776. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1789 he was elected President