Letter 3028

Woolhouse reports that none of the patients Sloane recommended to Deidier consulted him, preferring British physicians. Only Woolhouse can confirm that Deidier was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, for he lacks any official proof. Woolhouse would like a copy of Sloane’s Natural History of Jamaica, information on his cabinet, and other books on opthalmology. Zollman was seized at Calais with the books Sloane sent. Abbé Bignon has had to make alternate arrangements to get them to Paris. Woolhouse has done many surgeries as of late and received honours ‘from most of ye Princes of Europe’ for his efforts. 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]).