xi DR. GILBERT THOMPSON 127 



practitioner he was perhaps old-fashioned. He wrote 

 little, but part of a long medical letter to a Dr. Oliver, 

 dated 1755, in a close antique hand, has been preserved. 

 In this he deals with the external use of a certain oil, by 

 means of which a young lady had been cured of a true 

 ascites, after, however, tapping had been performed. He 

 gives copious quotations from Celsus and Aetius, Ascle- 

 piades, and Oribasius, showing how the ancients used 

 inunctions after bathing, as well as from Schenkius and 

 Piso among the moderns, and concludes with an elegant 

 compliment to his correspondent from the pages of 

 Cicero. 1 



DR. GILBERT THOMPSON 



Dr. Gilbert Thompson was a kinsman of Fothergill's. 

 His grandfather and namesake founded in 1687 a school 

 at Penketh, Lancashire, ancestor to the Friends' public 

 school at that place. Here many well-known Quakers 

 were educated, including Edmund Peckover, Lettsom, 

 George Harrison, and Samuel Hoare. G. Thompson was 

 the son of William Thompson of Warrington, and was 

 born in 1726. After serving as an usher in the family 

 school, he left it to study medicine, graduating at Edin- 

 burgh in 1758 with a thesis on Exercise. Coming up to 

 London, and having money left him by his uncle in 1768, 

 he entered into practice as a physician. 



Thompson had good abilities, but he was bashful, 

 cautious, and self-centred, and Fothergill, who opened 

 his house to his young relative, sought again and again 

 to arouse his dormant energies. He will be either a man 

 or a mouse, said the doctor, according as he exerts him- 

 self : " never any man hid his talents more under a 

 bushel." After Thompson and Lettsom had spent an 

 evening at his house, Fothergill was heard to remark 

 that he would like to shake the two together in a bag, 



1 See Foth., Works, ii. 368, iii. pp. Ixi, cxc, 115-142 ; Mem. Lettsom ; 

 Nichols, Lit. Anecd. iv. 713 ; Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, 3rd ed. ii. 391 ; Gent. 

 Mag., 1788, i. 278, 364; MS. Letters to Oliver, in possession of J. J. Green; 

 Foth. to Cuming, 1748, at Haverford College ; and Huxham to Cuming, 1765, 

 in the Author's hands. 



