Letter 3720

Woolhouse was glad to hear that Sloane appreciated the theses and books he sent. The package of theses from Montpellier and Marseilles have not yet arrived in England. These are in the care of Mr Robinson, secretary to the ambassador. Woolhouse has sent an older ophthalmological book, which he hopes the Royal Society finds agreeable. He has forwarded the book Sloane asked Beaumont Woolhouse to procure and what Père Castel has been working on. Woolhouse notes that Maupertui, Beaumont’s wife, and others are grateful for what Sloane has done for them. Lastly, he received the three lists 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]).