102 DR. LETTSOM CHAP. 



wealthy tin-plate merchant in the city, a Quaker like 

 himself, he married her in July 1770. His wife, to whom 

 he was ever kind and attentive, survived her husband. 



Meanwhile he was constantly pursuing medical and 

 scientific studies. Although his type of. mind was not 

 that of the patient student, he had an uncommon power 

 of work, and great readiness in the use and display of his 

 knowledge ; whilst his easy and familiar manners 

 Fothergill was rather " perpendicular " for his taste 

 made him many friends. He obtained the licence of the 

 College of Physicians in 1770, and was elected a Fellow 

 of the Society of Antiquaries in the same year. 



Lettsom lived in Sambrook Court (now the Wool 

 Exchange), Basinghall Street, hard by the Guildhall of 

 the City of London. The house has long since gone. 

 There for many years he carried on the largest medical 

 practice in the city. The death of his patron, Fothergill, 

 in 1780, and that of Dr. Thomas Knowles, another Quaker 

 physician, in 1786, much increased his work. Quick of 

 perception, ready and resourceful, and full of the bon- 

 homie of life, Lettsom acquired a repute which his medical 

 attainments alone would hardly have given him. " I 

 live with my patients," he said, " in the most frank 

 sociality." He had, too, a sincere sympathy with the 

 suffering. He held no hospital appointments, but was 

 physician to the General Dispensary in Aldersgate Street, 

 which he helped to found in 1770 ; it became the parent 

 of many like institutions. 



In 1772 Lettsom published a small work on Fevers, a 

 subject which interested him all his life. 1 In his " Medical 

 Memoirs of the General Dispensary," 1774, he attributes 

 fevers to a specific human contagion rather than to 

 miasmata and other reputed causes. His treatment of 

 these disorders was ever marked by courage and good 



1 ReflectionsontheGeneralTreatmentandCureof Fevers, 1772, an anonymous 

 work, based upon authorities, ancient and modern, including Cullen, to whom 

 he refers. Lettsom does not therefore seem open to the charge, which has 

 been brought against him, of using Cullen's views without due acknowledg- 

 ment. His own practice in the West Indies had afforded him experience in 

 this department of medicine. 



