n6 DR. LETTSOM CHAP. 



of age. Let him look upon its wide-framed windows and 

 enter its antique doorway, and if he can disregard the 

 bustle of close packed offices which now fill the house, let 

 him note its massive walls and an arched recess upon the 

 staircase where perchance a statue of Hygeia once stood. 

 Above all let him gaze at the tablet above the door, where 

 the genius of the place has left his mark. Little touched 

 by age, the graceful mouldings still portray the Isis of 

 Sais : she is standing before a pyramid, having a sphinx 

 on either hand : and below, within the coiled serpent of 

 eternity, are the words, Em EIMI HAN TO TErONOS, 

 KAI ON, KAI E20MENON, KAI TON EMON IIEIIAON 

 OTAEI2 im NHTftN AIIEKAAT^EN. (I am all 

 that hath been, and is, and shall be, and no mortal hath 

 yet drawn aside my veil.) Here let our pilgrim pause, ere 

 he turns back into the stream of action, and ponder, as 

 Lettsom would have us ponder, before the majesty of 

 knowledge and the riddle of life. 1 



1 Plutarch, De I side et Osiride, c. ix. " The temple of Athene, whom they 

 account to be Isis, at Sals, had this inscription " [then follows as in text]. Isis 

 was the " universal mother nature " (Apuleius), the revealer of medical know- 

 ledge. See also Diodorus Siculus, 1. i. ; and The Times Literary Supplement, 

 Nov. 1917. According to Routh (Oration, 1859, Hist, of the Medical Society 

 of London, p. 20) the bas-relief (excepting only the snake) is taken from a 

 design of Gravelot's, engraved by Foudrinier, as a head-piece to section xii. 

 of Warkwall's Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer. 



Since the text was written the house in Bolt Court has been sold for demoli- 

 tion, and the tablet removed to the library of the Medical Society. 



Pettigrew brought out in 1817 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of J. C. 

 Lettsom, with a Selection from his Correspondence, in two volumes, to which a 

 third was added later. See also Mem. Pettigrew in M ed. Port. Gallery, iv. ; 

 Lettsom, Mem. Fothergill ; his Hints to promote Beneficence, etc., 3 vols., and 

 his other works, including, besides some already mentioned, The Natural 

 History of the Tea Tree, etc., 1772 ; Of the Improvement of Medicine in London ; 

 The Plan of a General Dispensary, 1773 ; Observations on Dr. Myersbach's 

 Medicines, 1776. His Fothergillian essay (1791) on The Diseases of Great 

 Towns and the Means of Preventing them does not seem to have been printed. 

 MS. Letters to Lettsom and his friends from Sir Mordaunt Martin and Dr. 

 James Anderson, 1789 and 1790, on the cultivation of roots, and from John 

 Player, 1802 and 1803, on the diseases of plants, etc., are in Lib. Roy. Soc. Med. 

 See also Nichols, Lit. Illust. and Lit. Anecd. ; Archaologia, vii. 414 ; Europ. 

 Mag., 1786, ii. 395 ; 1815, ii. 392 ; Gent. Mag., 1815, ii. 469, 577 ; J. Jenkins, op. 

 cit. pp. 891 ff. A picturesque sketch of the old Quaker burial-ground in Tortola 

 is in Friends' Intelligencer, Ix. 419. Dr. J. F. Payne's article on Lettsom in 

 Diet. Nat. Biog. contains a few inaccuracies. An excellent appreciation of 

 him is contained in Sir St. Clair Thomson's Presidential Address to the Medical 

 Society of London ; see its Transactions, xli., 1918. A letter of counsel to 

 Lettsom on the occasion of his marriage, from his early patron Samuel 

 Fothergill, is often found in Friendly collections ; see J. and I. Comly, Friends' 



