I3 o FOTHERGILL'S MEDICAL FRIENDS CHAP. 



life his convictions deepened under the influence of silent 

 meetings, introspection and mystical literature, and he 

 began to keep at the age of fifty-four years a spiritual 

 diary, which was continued for over twenty years, and 

 was published by his direction after his death. This 

 diary, which was much read amongst Friends a century 

 ago, revealed the writer in his inmost thoughts. Its 

 style is brief, pungent, often epigrammatic ; severe on 

 his own failings, even when these were invisible to his 

 friends : the quaintness of its language provokes a 

 frequent smile " Oh, thou inflammable jack-straw ! " 

 he addresses himself. The tone of mind can hardly be 

 accounted quite healthy : he was a Quaker ascetic ; his 

 path was shadowed : " this is a life," he writes, " of 

 darkness, ignorance and imperfection " ; Lucifer is 

 " at my right hand." But the book must be read along- 

 side of the testimony of his many friends, who found the 

 busy physician and student a man of mild and guarded 

 temper, full of grace and good works. Dr. Rutty was 

 an early riser and lived simply ; he was very kind to the 

 poor, and records the prayer : " Lord, make them more 

 glorious in my view." * 



DR. WILLIAM HUNTER 



William Hunter, the distinguished anatomist and 

 physician, was nearly contemporary with Fothergill. 

 Both sprung from the north country and became leaders 

 in the medical world in London. Kept out of the fellow- 



1 His niece, Catherine Rutty, married in 1753 Thomas Fowler of Melksham, 

 and became the ancestress of a family some of whose members have been 

 distinguished in various lines of service : John Fowler, the inventor of the 

 steam- plough ; Sir R. N. Fowler, Bt., P.C. ; Wm. Fowler, M.P., and others. 

 See A Short Account of the Fowler Family, privately printed. The Diet. Nat. 

 Biog. contains a good notice of Rutty by Dr. Norman Moore ; see also Foth., 

 Works, iii. p. c ; Phil. Trans, xli. 63, xlix. 648, li. 275, 470 ; MS. Letters of 

 Dr. J. Rutty at Fds. Ref. Lib. ; Rutty, A Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies 

 (1776), reprinted in various editions down to 1840 ; it was the subject of a 

 scornful article in the Critical Review, 1777. Boswell, Johnson (ed. 1887), 

 iii. 170. Wesley records in his Journal a visit to the venerable man in 1775, 

 finding him " full of faith and love and patiently waiting till his change should 

 come." See also M. Leadbetter, Biog. Notices of Memb. Soc. Fds. p. 261 ; 

 J. Jenkins, op. cit. p. 93 (2nd). 



