The London years of Benjamin Waterhouse / [Josiah Charles Trent].
- Josiah Charles Trent
- Date:
- [1946]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The London years of Benjamin Waterhouse / [Josiah Charles Trent]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
6/24 page 28
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The London years of Benjamin Waterhouse / [Josiah Charles Trent]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
![tember 25, 1778. This letter was the first of a long correspondence, lasting over twenty years; in the course of that time Waterhouse, who at first opposed Haygarth’s theory that the variolous infection was restricted to a narrow sphere, gradually became an advocate of the doctrine.10 It was John Haygarth who, in 1800, sent to Waterhouse the first sample of cow-pox virus.11 The American doctor’s earliest knowledge of Jenner’s great discovery, however, came to him from another friend acquired in these London years. John Coakley Lettsom, indebted, like Waterhouse, to the patronage of Fothergill, was an established physician when Water- house arrived in London. Lettsom’s practice, so pressing that it allowed him no holiday for nineteen years, probably prevented his seeing much of the young American student.12 It is certain, however, that they met: Lett¬ som frequently visited Fothergill, and we have Waterhouse’s own state¬ ment that Lettsom was among the persons he persuaded to sit for his friend Gilbert Stuart.13 That their meeting led to friendship is sufficiently established by the cordial correspondence which they carried on for many years thereafter. Throughout the 1790’s, Lettsom sent numerous gifts to Waterhouse, or to Harvard College through Waterhouse, including books, stuffed animals and birds, seeds, and a large collection of mineralogical specimens. And in November, 1798, Lettsom first informed Waterhouse of the discovery of small-pox vaccination, and sent him, early in 1799, a copy of the “golden treatise of Jenner.”14 Lettsom was one of those who in 1774 joined with Dr. Hawes to form the Humane Society of London, established to disseminate knowledge concerning the means of resuscitating persons apparently drowned. Lett¬ som, or perhaps Hawes himself, may have imparted his enthusiasm to Waterhouse, who, in 1782, made an unsuccessful attempt to arouse inter¬ est in the formation of an American humane society, and who succeeded in starting such a movement in 1785 with the help of Dr. Henry Moyes of Edinburgh. The “recovery of persons drowned and seemingly dead” was a matter of general interest in that day, and Fothergill, as well as Cullen of 10 For the material in this paragraph, see London, Longman, 1817, II, 53; “R.,” in the John Haygarth, Medical Transactions, London, Polyanthos (May, 1806, p. 76), expresses Cadell and Davies, 1801, I, [i93]-2oo; II, surprise that there is no reference to Lettsom [i]-2; III, 259 ff., 31 9-320, 569. in the journal which Waterhouse kept through- 11 Ibid., I, 211; Waterhouse, A Prospect of out this period. Exterminating the Small Pox Part If Cam- 18 Dunlap, op. cit., I, 172; see also Pettigrew, bridge, Printed for the author by William op. cit., II, 492. Hilliard, 1802, p. [5]. 14 Waterhouse, Prospect of Exterminating 12 T. J. Pettigrew, Memoirs of the Life and the Small Pox Part II, p. 77. Writings of the Late John Coakley Lettsom,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30632249_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
