Letter 2159

Stuart informs Sloane that he received his degree at the price of ‘two hundred and fourty two Gilders’ or ‘twenty four pounds’. He names Sloane and Sir David Hamilton as his patrons. His thesis is on the ‘molu musculari’. Stuart wants to visit London when he has finished his business in Flanders. He has incurred student debt, which he charged to the accounts of Sloane and Hamilton. Medical theses are being sent to Petiver and Newton. Stuart will soon be in Flanders working as a physician if Mr Cardinal, the ‘Duke of Malbrough’s Secretary’, and his friends in the army find him a position. Stuart was a physician and natural philosopher. He served as a ship’s surgeon from 1701-1707 and corresponded with Sloane while at sea, sending him natural history specimens. Stuart contributed articles to the Philosophical Transactions from the 1720s, mostly on physiology (Anita Guerrini, Stuart, Alexander (1673?1742), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47081, accessed 3 July 2013]).