16 FOTHERGILL'S BIRTH AND TRAINING CHAP. 



not without rigorous self-examination, and viewing the 

 possible courses that lay before him, and in these and in 

 all that he did he sought for Divine guidance. 



Meanwhile a few patients came to him ; he bought 

 books on botany, chemistry, and travel, and carried on 

 studies in the materia medico, and in minerals and salts. 

 He kept up correspondence with his old teachers in 

 Edinburgh, and with his college friends ; he wrote also 

 often to his family. 



When his two years' hospital training in London was 

 over, Fothergill had to decide where to' establish himself 

 as a physician. He was a very loyal Friend and favour- 

 ably known in the society, then a large and prosperous 

 community in the metropolis, and including already some 

 medical members. He had drawings to the American 

 colonies, where his father had laboured, and where he 

 already had ties of friendship. His constitution was not 

 at this time robust, and he did not himself look forward 

 to a long course of life. In the end he concluded to 

 remain in the city of London. 



Fothergill had long wished to pay a visit to the con- 

 tinent of Europe, such as was customary as part of the 

 training of a physician. The death of Boerhaave in 1738 

 had damped his zeal for studying at Leyden, but in the 

 summer of 1740 an opportunity came to him for making 

 a tour in company with some Friends. They visited 

 Brabant and the Low Countries, including Liege, cele- 

 brated for its long siege, Spa, and Aix-la-Chapelle, where 

 he observed the mineral waters, " and made some experi- 

 ments upon them common ones indeed, for want of 

 suitable apparatus." They also travelled to Leyden, 

 where he met Gronovius, and to Amsterdam, and on the 

 Zuyder Zee, and later passed through part of Northern 

 Germany to Bremen, where Fothergill was much interested 

 in the cave under the cathedral with its dry mummified 

 human bodies. During the journey they came into some 



visiting London, who, with his men, was to be heard of at " George Thompson's, 

 at the Quakers' Meeting House in the Savoy." MS. Letter in the hands of 

 Miss Fothergill of Darlington ; see also J. H. Tuke, pp. 12, 13. 



