Letter 2501

Richardson writes of several people who suffered from the same ailment. It fell ‘chiefly amongst the poor people’. The epidemic killed many people. Patients have a ‘depressed pulse’ and ‘malignant fever’. The man who brought the illness from Lincolnshire is still alive, but has headaches. Richardson tried to contact the Consul, but he is traveling in France and Holland. He congratulates Sloane on the success of smallpox inoculation, noting that ‘it was practised in Asia long agoe’. Richardson was a physician and botanist who traveled widely in England, Wales, and Scotland in search of rare specimens. He corresponded and exchanged plants with many well-known botanists and naturalists (W. P. Courtney, Richardson, Richard (16631741), rev. Peter Davis, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23576, accessed 31 May 2011]).