Letter 2893

Woolhouse congratulates Sloane on being elected President of the Royal Society. He writes that Sloane is succeeding a great person, Sir Isaac Newton, but should not be discouraged by ignorant and jealous critics. He thinks Sloane’s Natural History of Jamaica has important information on medicinal plants. He hopes he has earned Sloane’s patronage and protection. Bignon traveled to his ‘chateau de L’Isle Belle de Meulent’ before Woolhouse informed him of the election. 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]).