A FOUNDER OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY

Shannon News, 20 November 1925, Page 3

A FOUNDER OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY

Posterity is sometimes unmindful of its greatest men. The name of John Coakley Lettsom, for instance, is known to but a comparatively re. stricted circle to-day, though it survives in the words of an bfteii.quotcd lampoon: When any sick to me apply, I physicks, bleeds and sweats 'em; If after that they choose to die, What's that to me, I Lettsom Lettsom hardly deserves the neglect that has overtaken him. In his day he played many parts, all of them with .distinction, and a high place must be. claimed for him jiraong the benefactors of the human race. Ht was one of the founders of "the Medical ■ Society, he established the first General Dispensary in London as well as the Sea Bathing" Infirmary at Margate < and h c was the first man to introduce into Lnglarfd the mangelwurzel. Born in the West. Indi.es in 1744, he was sent to England at the age of six, and received his early education at Penketh, in Lancashire. Ho left school at fourteen, and the following year became apprenticed to'Abraham Sutcliff, an apothecary at Settle, in Yorkshire. Under Sutcliff's tuition he acquired a knowledge of Latin, which was to prove of the greatest assistance to him in his future career. At the age of twenty he se'" out for London to try his fortune. lui. deterred by the fact that he was without, a single friend or rc/ation in the whole of the Metropolis. After visiting Edinburgh and Leidon (where ho obtained his degree of M.D.) he removed once more to the West and settling down as a practising physician, contrived to earn an annual income of close upon £sOOo—an almost staggering sum in those days. Returning (o England, he built himself a house at Camberwell, known as Grove" Hill, where he was visited by some of the most eminent men and women of his day, among them being James Boswell, who commemorated his visit in some very indifferent verses. He was an incessant worker. His sole relaxation consisted in an annual visit to Margate, which he accomplished in a stage coach, the distance of the return journey being 144 miles, and the time allotted for the "holiday" seventy-two hours. This for a man already in his seventieth year, was surely no mean achievement. The coming of old age brought with it n-p diminution of Leltsom's-> interests. He wrote many books, among them "The Natural History of. the Tea Tre e with Observations on its Medical Qualities,' 'and during the Napoleonic Wars lie is busy recom. mending a substitute for wheaten bread. Ho. died on the Ist of the folio .ying Novemller, and is buried in the Friends' Burial Ground, Roscoo street Eunhill Row.