xi DR. JOHN AIKIN 135 



DR. WILLIAM FALCONER 



Dr. William Falconer, afterwards well known as a 

 scientific physician at Bath, was another young man to 

 whom Fothergill gave his regard, and who, on his part, 

 looked up to Fothergill with grateful affection. The 

 elder physician encouraged and aided Falconer in his 

 experimental work, which brought him early into the 

 Royal Society. Falconer was the son of the Recorder 

 of Chester, and born there in 1744. He studied at 

 Edinburgh and at Leyden, and practised first in his 

 native city, and then at Bath for many years, dying in 

 1824 at that place. He wielded a busy pen, and his 

 numerous works dealt especially with the use of mineral 

 waters and with epidemic diseases. A man of many 

 attainments, he was conservative in temperament, and 

 of a refined mind, in which the noble ideals of Fothergill 

 had found a true response. 1 



DR. JOHN AIKIN 



Yet another of Fothergill's younger medical friends 

 was Dr. John Aikin, an Edinburgh student and graduate 

 of Leyden. Aikin was a man of much literary taste, 

 a lover of freedom and of truth, a poet and a botanist. 



He wrote much, especially on medical biography and 

 materia medica ; he edited various serials, and was the 

 author, in conjunction with his sister Mrs. Barbauld, 

 of the long popular volumes, Evenings at Home. He 

 practised as a physician at Yarmouth, but being an 

 outspoken dissenter was driven thence by church contro- 

 versy, and came to London, where he found employment. 

 But his main bent was literary, and this he pursued with 

 unwearied diligence despite habitually weak health. He 

 died from paralysis at Stoke Newington in 1822, aged 

 seventy-five years. Fothergill became acquainted with 



1 See Munk, Roll ; Foth., Works, iii. 149 ; M em. Lettsom, i., Corresp. 

 p. 176, iii. 176-184. Falconer, On the Influence of the Passions, Fothergillian 

 Prize Essay, 1788. 



