104 DR - LETTSOM CHAP. 



The scientific pursuits of Lettsom were also varied. 

 As early as the year 1773 he was elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society. He followed Fothergill in his interest in 

 botany, and brought out the " Naturalist's and Traveller's 

 Companion " in 1774 a book containing instructions for 

 preserving plants and other objects of natural history. 

 In his garden at Camberwell he cultivated rare plants and 

 trees, and he took thither the chief contents of Fothergill's 

 greenhouses after the latter's death. 



In 1786 he had a collector searching North America 

 for plants and ores. He was a liberal supporter of his 

 friend William Curtis, the apothecary and botanist, 

 helping him freely with money in the issuing of his Flora 

 Londinensis, and the second volume of that magnificent 

 work was dedicated to Lettsom, " the friend of humanity, 

 the patron of science." Curtis had a Botanic Garden and 

 Library in Higler's Lane, Lambeth Marsh. A genus of 

 convolvulaceous plants was named after Lettsom by 

 Roxburgh in I8I4. 1 His interest in minerals led him in 

 1784 and later years to send out to Professor Waterhouse 

 more than seven hundred specimens of metallic ores, 

 crystals, etc., for the use of the students in the Cambridge 

 University, New England. The collection was the finest 

 of the kind in the United States ; it was catalogued and 

 kept in a spacious room devoted to the purpose. 2 



he gave Pot. Super-[Acid] tartrat. with Inf. Jump. He treated fluor albus 

 with turpentine, rhubarb and extract of hop. For dyspepsia, chalk and 

 magnesia, with cardamoms and infusions of clove and quassia ; or rhubarb, 

 Pot. Sulph., Syr. Papav. and peppermint. Amongst laxatives, he used senna, 

 jalap and Magn. Sulph., made up with tamarind infusion. [Nesbitt], Memoirs 

 of Physicians and Surgeons, and ed. 1818, pp. 550-561. Also MS. prescription 

 in the Author's hands. Phil. Trans. Ixxvi. 313. 



1 The Lettsomia are handsome climbing plants from the East Indies, and 

 ,have long been known as Ipomcea, but the earlier name is now restored to 

 them. See Bot. Mag. 2628 ; Kew Index. A beautiful shrub now included 

 in Freziera has also been known as Lettsomia, the name bestowed in 1794. 



2 Dr. John E. Wolff, professor of Petrography and Mineralogy at Harvard 

 University, informs the Author that Lettsom's specimens are now presumably 

 incorporated in the great collection which is under Dr. Wolffs care. Lettsom 

 also sent plants of Turkey Rhubarb to America in 1786 for cultivation ; and 

 he presented books to Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on its founda- 

 tion in 1783. See Mem. i. 101, 192. Dr. Rush named a tract of land in 

 Pennsylvania after Lettsom ; it was situated on Sugar Creek, which empties 

 itself into the northern branch of the Susquehanna, and is shown in old 

 maps of the district, as is another tract named after Fothergill. Sir St. C. 

 Thomson, Trans. Med. Soc. L. xli. 



