Letter 0472

Ray is sorry to hear that Sloane’s wife has been ill and hopes it is because of a pregnancy, ‘especially because I have not heard that you have as yet had any issue by her. I am glad she is in a hopefull way of doing well & pray ut pulchria facint te prole parentum, if she hath not already done’. Ray laments that Sherard left so suddenly. While he is excited for Sherard going overseas, Ray will no longer be receiving the dried plant samples that Sherard had promised him. Sloane had previously inquired about a gentleman ‘unable to pay the Debito conjugale’. Ray gives Sloane a list of plants that are said to be helpful for erectile dysfunction, as Sloane had apparently previously inquired on behalf of a gentleman unable to consummate his marriage. Ray concludes that in terms of medical treatments, Sloane himself probably knows more than Ray does. Ray was a theologian and naturalist who collected and catalogued his botanical findings in the much lauded Historia plantarum (1686, 1688) (Scott Mandelbrote, Ray , John (16271705), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2005 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23203, accessed 18 June 2013]).