Dr Robert Levet: An Obscure Practiser in Physic

servant and then to Paris, being employed there as a waiter in a restaurant which was patronised by members of the medical profession. He showed a lively interest in their work and must have impressed them not only with his intelligence and enthusiasm, but with a natural aptitude for their profession: they gave him informal instruction in medicine, supplemented no doubt by what he overheard during his duties in the restaurant: and he got some formal training in pharmacy and anatomy, the cost of which was met by contributions made by some of the doctors to whom he served their meals. He eventually considered that he was well enough equipped to practise medicine himself, and returned to London, gaining a small reputation as a surgeon. He was unlicensed (Boswell makes a derisive reference to the habit of Johnson's servant of calling him 'Dr.' Levet) and wholly without influence or formal qualifications, so that his practice lay among the 'lower people'. His remuneration was pitifully small: he appears to have accepted what his patients could spare from their own penury, and it sometimes took the form of provisions, both solid and liquid. He had