Letter 3033

Woolhouse recommends the bearer, Worlet, a young surgeon known for treating cataracts and other ocular conditions. Abbé Bignon is pleased that Sloane’s new book will soon be available. Woolhouse requests a summary of the work and that two copies are sent with Zollman; one for Woolhouse and the other for Deidier. Zollman was detained at Calais while transporting books for Sloane. Abbé Bignon will make sure the books arrive in Paris. Woolhouse asks for the latest catalogue of the Royal Society; one copy for himself, one for Deidier, and one for Geoffroy. John Thomas Woolhouse was an English oculist and physician. He practiced physic in London, served James II for a time, and in 1711 secured a position at Paris’s Hospice des Quinze-Vingts. He served as the King of France’s oculist, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1721, and a member of both the Berlin Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Sciences of Bologna. Woolhouse was criticized for charlatanry by some contemporaries (Anita McConnell, Woolhouse, John Thomas (16661734), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29954, accessed 17 July 2013]).