Letter 2940

Woolhouse is having trouble finding the two books Sloane requested. He sends ‘the new edition of Magnoli’s Hortus Monspeltensis’ and Deidier’s manuscripts, called ‘de morbis Venerois’. Sloane is to read and comment on the manuscripts. Abbé Bignon is taking the waters in Abcourt. Woolhouse offers his service to Sloane, adding that he has a correspondence network from ‘the Indies, Turky, Moscovy’ and elsewhere to utilize. 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]).