John Fothergill (physician)

John Fothergill ( born March 8, 1712 Weiler Carr End of the municipality Bainbridge in Yorkshire, † December 26, 1780 in London ) was an English physician, botanist, Quaker and philanthropist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Foth. ".

Life and work

Fothergill was the second son of John Fothergill, sen. (1676-1745), a Quaker preacher and farmer, and his first wife, Margaret Hough ( 1677-1719 ). He received his early education at Frodsham in Cheshire, and at Sedbergh School Sedbergh in Cumbria. Around the year 1727-1728 around he was an apprentice to a pharmacist named Benjamin Bartlett in Bradfield in South Yorkshire. After the expiration of his apprenticeship he went to Edinburgh and studied medicine. He attended the lectures of Alexander Monro I, Charles Alston, John Rutherford, Andrew Sinclair (1726-1757), and Andrew Plummer, all students from the school of Herman Boerhaave.

Fothergill finished his studies in 1736. On Tuesday, August 14, 1736 he is a PhD in Edinburgh on the theme, Emeticorum Usu in variis morbis tractandis to the doctor of medicine. It was followed by another training at St Thomas' Hospital in London. After the visit of continental Europe, as Flanders and Holland in 1740, he was again in London, where he opened a practice. He is said to have treated daily during the influenza epidemics during the years 1775 and 1776 and to 60 patients.

He was a friend of Benjamin Franklin, with whom he was thinking of a plan for a reconciliation with the British American colonies in 1774. They met when the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania sent him in 1757 to London. On his arrival in London, Franklin became ill and thereby was Fothergill patient.

In 1745 he gave a short lecture at the Royal Society of London about the work of the Scottish surgeon William Tossach (1700? -1771 ), One of the first known lectures on the practice of mouth-to- mouth resuscitation. He was one of the first to in 1765 succeeded in the identification and description of trigeminal neuralgia.

Ehrentaxa

The plant genus Fothergilla from the family of witch hazel plants ( Hamamelidaceae ) was named after him.

Works (selection)

• Botanical album. Hortus siccus. Upton, Stratford about 1770.
• A Complete Collection of the Medical and Philosophical Works of John Fothergill. John Walker, London 1781 (online).
• The Works of John Fothergill. Charles Dilley, London 1784th