Letter 2490

Massey thanks Sloane for sending the Philosophical Transactions with Mr Innys. He has been ‘drawing after my fashion the flowers of seeds and plants in water colours […] I partly copy after Tournefort’. Massey occupies his time with painting and examining his ‘small collection of Roman Coins’. He ‘laid out fifty guinneas in books being the conjoyn librarys of a french and English Clergyman at Thorney abbey’. The postscript reads: ‘Some Apothecarys in my neighborhood have a notion they may easily for a little mony be admitted by the colledge ad Practicanda. I hope through yr means to prevent those who have no just qualification’. Massey includes a list of books, indicating the title, location of its publication, and date. Richard Middleton Massey (1678-1743) attended Brasenose College, Oxford but left before obtaining a degree. In 1706 he was admitted Extra-Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and settled in Wisbech where he practiced medicine. Massey was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1712. He compiled the catalogue of the library of the Royal College of Physicians in 1727 (http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/2969).