Letter 3467

Woolhouse received a visit from Dr Seb, who is staying with Mr Mead, and forwards a packet of books from Mr Geoffroy. One of the books has to do with ancient funerary rites and another is about mathematics. He discusses the work of the ‘grands mecaniciens qu’il y ait dans ce Royaume’ in detail. Woolhouse saw ‘Mr la Charette’ for himself, who had ‘un Privilege exclusif du feu Regent Duc D’Orleans’. He recounts his return from Italy 30 years earlier when he saw ‘deux Galeres du Roy à Marseilles’. Woolhouse hopes to become an honourable member of the Royal Society. 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]).