Letter 2710

Barwick apologises for the ‘ill natured humour’ he was in when Sloane and Mr Poultney the apothecary came to see him. He says the apothecary and Dr Cole were in his parlour not two hours before. Barwick has been composing a letter to a person of quality: ‘every word of which I was to ponder well; because I knowe into which hands it might come’. He asks Sloane to become involved in his daughter’s business. Peter Barwick (1619-1705) was a physician. He served Charles II in 1651 and was censor of the College of Physicians in 1674, 1684, and 1687. Sir Hans Sloane was one of the executors of Barwick’s will (Peter Elmer, ‘Barwick, Peter (1619–1705)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1614, accessed 9 July 2014]).