xvi JOHN HOWARD 225 



Although most of his benefactions were made in 

 private, Fothergill did not forget the duty of example, 

 contributing to funds raised in time of public calamity, 

 and for the setting up and support of schools and other 

 useful agencies both at home and in the colonies. During 

 the war with America, when the gaols of England were 

 filled with French prisoners taken in battle, a national 

 subscription was made to feed and clothe them. The 

 Friends contributed more than one-fourth of the total 

 amount ; and Fothergill, who gave liberally, acted as one 

 of the committee for dispensing the fund. Dr. Johnson 

 wrote a preface to the report of the charity, in which he 

 dwelt upon the nobility of its aim : " the relief of enemies 

 has a tendency to unite mankind in fraternal affection." 



France had then long been spoken of as " our natural 

 enemy." With true prescience Fothergill reasoned, so 

 Lettsom writes, that by promoting trade, by which she 

 would take our woollen and iron manufactures, and we 

 should receive her laces and wines, she would become our 

 natural friend. 



RECOVERY OF THE APPARENTLY DROWNED : 

 DR. W. HAWES 



Fothergill early showed his instinct for seizing upon 

 practical issues that promised good to the community, by 

 placing before the Royal Society in 1745 an abstract of a 

 case of recovery from apparent death that had occurred 

 in Scotland in 1732. A man was brought up from a 

 coal-pit, suffocated by smoke. A surgeon, William 

 Tossack of Alloa, applied his mouth to the patient's 

 mouth, holding his nose closed, and distended his lungs 

 with warm air from his own chest. The heart at once 

 began again to beat : the man was bled, drops only 

 coming at first, and he slowly recovered. Fothergill 

 proposes the trial of this method in cases of sudden 



1855, pp. 61, 62 ; Burke, Speech at Bristol, 1780 ; J. P. Malcolm, Manners 

 and Customs of London, and ed. i. 81 ; Stephen Hobhouse in Frds. Quart. 

 Exam., 1918, p. 251. Fothergill's aid in the liberation of an American sea- 

 captain from an English gaol is noted in Mem. Dr. Geo. Logan, p. 90. 



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