x LIBERATION OF HIS SLAVES 101 



He was touched by the attention : " Thy master," he 

 soliloquises, " will probably never see thee in this world ; 

 in the next thou mayest appear white as a European." 

 In later life Lettsom advocated gradual emancipation. 



In Tortola he entered into medical practice, for which 

 the young man showed so much aptitude as to attract 

 crowds of patients ; he would prescribe for fifty or one 

 hundred of these before breakfast ; and he acquired in 

 the space of five months nearly 2000. One half of this 

 sum he gave to his mother, and with the rest set out again 

 for Europe, determined to follow the example of Fother- 

 gill as a physician in London. Landing in England in 

 1768 he took under the latter's advice a further course of 

 medical training, studying at Edinburgh under Cullen, and 

 at Paris, where he was introduced by Franklin to Dubourg. 

 He heard Albinus and Gaubius at Leyden, and graduated 

 M.D. there in 1769, with a thesis on the medical qualities 

 of tea. Fothergill, who was a shrewd judge of character, 

 perceived his talents, and wrote to W. Logan 1 that he 

 was likely to make a considerable figure in the metropolis. 



After some further travel, Lettsom began practice as 

 a physician in the City of London, much aided by the 

 advice and countenance of Fothergill, who had lately 

 removed to the west. Fothergill's niece, who met him 

 often at her uncle's house, where he breakfasted almost 

 weekly, has much to say of the foibles of the young doctor, 

 to whom nevertheless she was indebted for many a 

 pleasant escort to visit objects of interest in the town. 

 His flow of conversation, his frequent confidences and 

 gallant trifling, seemed to her Friendly mind extra- 

 ordinary. The " volatile Creole," as he once styled 

 himself, was, however, soon adapted to English life, and 

 fixing his affections on Ann Miers, the daughter of a 



current, of " a Molater Boy named Sam and a Molater girl named Teresa " 

 with their reversion, profits, issue and increase, for ever. Lettsom may have 

 bought them for his mother before he left the island, perhaps setting them 

 free on purchase. 



1 MS. Letter, May 8, 1769, Coll. Phys. Philadelphia. Fothergill also 

 wrote a letter in 1768 recommending him to Friends in Edinburgh as having 

 " acquired a just degree of esteem " (Journ. Fds. Hist. Soc. ix. 123). 



