Letter 2919

This document is a copy of the King of Prussia’s order recognizing Woolhouse ‘dans l’Art d’Opthalmiatrie de Scavants Medicines et Chirurgions’. It was written by ‘J D. de Gunling Prases’ and ‘Joh: Theod: Jablonsky’. 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]).