CHAPTER VIII 



THE DISPUTE WITH DR. LEEDS 



He who overcomes others is strong, but he who overcomes himself 

 is mighty. Lio-TszE, 600 B.C. 



Calamitas virtutis occasio est. Illos merito quis dixerit miseros qui 

 nimia felicitate torpescunt. Hos itaque deus quos probat, quos amat, 

 indurat, recognoscit, exercet. SENECA, De Providentia. 



FOTHERGILL'S medical and scientific life was singularly 

 free from the misunderstandings and quarrels into which 

 the scientists of his time, jealous for their own reputation 

 and rights, were too often led. There is however one 

 episode in his career which should not be passed over, 

 because it has been made the cause of reproach to his 

 character. We must disturb the dust which has long 

 settled on forgotten records, but the story may illustrate 

 the manners of the time, and the history of the society 

 to which Fothergill belonged. 



A certain Samuel Leeds, an illiterate man, who had been 

 a brush-maker, succeeded in obtaining the degree of Doctor 

 of Medicine from Edinburgh University in 1766 after attending 

 classes during two sessions, and presenting as his own a thesis 

 " De Asthmate Spasmodic." He was a member of the 

 Friends, and on coming to London was taken up by his own 

 community, and partly by their help elected a physician to 

 the London Hospital in May 1768. Fothergill, himself an 

 old and honoured Edinburgh graduate, was imbued with a 

 sense of the dignity of a physician's degree, as indicating both 

 a thorough medical training and a groundwork of classical 

 and other learning. He was vexed that the diploma had been 

 given to Leeds, the more so as he had reason to think that the 

 professors had favoured him as an Englishman, a Quaker, 

 and one supposed to be a particular friend of Fothergill. The 



74 



