High amongst literary, and higher yet amongst benevolent, physicians must be ranked John Coakley Lettsom, formerly president of the Philosophical Society of London. A West Indian, and the son of a planter, he was born on one of his father's little islands, Van Dyke, near Tortola, in the year 1744. Though bred a Quaker, he kept his heart so free from sectarianism, and his life so entirely void of the formality and puritanic asceticism of the Friends, that his ordinary acquaintance marvelled at his continuing to wear the costume of the brotherhood. At six years of age he was sent to England for education, being for that purpose confided to the protection of Mr. Fothergill, of Warrington, a Quaker minister, and younger brother of Dr. John Fothergill. After receiving a poor preparatory education, he was apprenticed to a Yorkshire apothecary, named Sutcliffe, who, by industry and intelligence, had raised himself from the position of a weaver to that of the first medical practitioner of Settle. In the last century a West Indian was, to the inhabitants of a provincial district, a rare curiosity; and Sutcliffe's surgery, on the day that Lettsom entered it in his fifteenth year, was surrounded by a dense crowd of gaping rustics, anxious to see a young gentleman accustomed to walk on his head. This extraordinary demonstration of curiosity was owing to the merry humour of Sutcliffe's senior apprentice, who had informed the people that the new pupil, who would soon join him, came from a country where the feet of the inhabitants were placed in an exactly opposite direction to those of Englishmen.

Sutcliffe did not find his new apprentice a very handy one. "Thou mayest make a physician, but I think not a good apothecary," the old man was in the habit of saying; and the prediction in due course turned out a correct one. Having served an apprenticeship of five years, and walked for two the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital, where Akenside was a physician, conspicuous for supercilious manner and want of feeling, Lettsom returned to the West Indies, and settled as a medical practitioner in Tortola. He practised there only five months, earning in that time the astonishing sum of £2000; when, ambitious of achieving a high professional position, he returned to Europe, visited the medical schools of Paris and Edinburgh, took his degree of M.D. at Leyden on the 20th of June, 1769, was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London in the same year, and in 1770 was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

From this period till his death, in 1815 (Nov. 20), he was one of the most prominent figures in the scientific world of London. As a physician he was a most fortunate man; for without any high reputation for professional acquirements, and with the exact reverse of a good preliminary education, he made a larger income than any other physician of the same time. Dr. John Fothergill never made more than £5000 in one year; but Lettsom earned £3600 in 1783—£3900 in 1784—£4015 in 1785-and £4500 in 1786. After that period his practice rapidly increased, so that in some years his receipts were as much as £12,000. But although he pocketed such large sums, half his labours were entirely gratuitous. Necessitous clergymen and literary men he invariably attended with unusual solicitude and attention, but without ever taking a fee for his services. Indeed, generosity was the ruling feature of his life. Although he burdened himself with the public business of his profession, was so incessantly on the move from one patient to another that he habitually knocked up three pairs of horses a-day, and had always some literary work or other upon his desk, he nevertheless found time to do an amount of labour, in establishing charitable institutions and visiting the indigent sick, that would by itself have made a reputation for an ordinary person.

To give the mere list of his separate benevolent services would be to write a book about them. The General Dispensary, the Finsbury Dispensary, the Surrey Dispensary, and the Margate Sea-bathing Infirmary, originated in his exertions; and he was one of the first projectors of—the Philanthropic Society, St. Georges-in-the-Fields, for the Prevention of Crimes, and the Reform of the Criminal Poor; the Society for the Discharge and Relief of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts; the Asylum for the Indigent Deaf and Dumb; the Institution for the Relief and Employment of the Indigent Blind; and the Royal Humane Society, for the recovery of the apparently drowned or dead. And year by year his pen sent forth some publication or other to promote the welfare of the poor, and succour the afflicted. Of course there were crowds of clever spectators of the world's work, who smiled as the doctor's carriage passed them in the streets, and said he was a deuced clever fellow to make ten thousand a-year so easily; and that, after all, philanthropy was not a bad trade. But Lettsom was no calculating humanitarian, with a tongue discoursing eloquently on the sufferings of mankind, and an eye on the sharp look-out for his own interest. What he was before the full stare of the world, that he was also in his own secret heart, and those private ways into which hypocrisy cannot enter. At the outset of his life, when only twenty-three years old, he liberated his slaves—although they constituted almost his entire worldly wealth, and he was anxious to achieve distinction in a profession that offers peculiar difficulties to needy aspirants. And when his career was drawing to a close, he had to part with his beloved countryseat because he had impoverished himself by lavish generosity to the unfortunate.

There was no sanctimonious affectation in the man. He wore a drab coat and gaiters, and made the Quaker's use of Thou and Thee; but he held himself altogether apart from the prejudices of his sect. A poet himself of some respectability, he delighted in every variety of literature, and was ready to shake any man by the hand—Jew or Gentile. He liked pictures and works of sculpture, and spent large sums upon them; into the various scientific movements of the time he threw himself with all the energy of his nature; and he disbursed a fortune in surrounding himself at Camberwell with plants from the tropics. He liked good wine, but never partook of it to excess, although his enemies were ready to suggest that he was always glad to avail himself of an excuse for getting intoxicated. And he was such a devoted admirer of the fair sex, that the jealous swarm of needy men who envied him his prosperity, had some countenance for their slander that he was a Quaker debauchee. He married young, and his wife outlived him; but as a husband he was as faithful as he proved in every other relation of life.

Saturday was the day he devoted to entertaining his friends at Grove Hill, Camberwell; and rare parties there gathered round him—celebrities from every region of the civilized world, and the best "good fellows" of London. Boswell was one of his most frequent guests, and, in an ode to Charles Dilly, celebrated the beauties of the physician's seat and his humane disposition:—

The concluding line is an allusion to the Lord Chancellor's residence at Dulwich.

In person, Lettsom was tall and thin—indeed, almost attenuated: his face was deeply lined, indicating firmness quite as much as benevolence; and his complexion was of a dark yellow hue. His eccentricities were numerous. Like the founder of his sect, he would not allow even respect for royalty to make an alteration in his costume which his conscience did not approve; and George III., who entertained a warm regard for him, allowed him to appear at Court in the ordinary Quaker garb, and to kiss his hand, though he had neither powder on his head, nor a sword by his side. Lettsom responded to his sovereign's courtesy by presenting him with some rare and unpurchasable medals.

Though his writings show him to have been an enlightened physician for his time, his system of practice was not of course free from the violent measures which were universally believed in during the last century. He used to say of himself,

But his prescriptions were not invariably of a kind calculated to depress the system of his patient. On one occasion an old American merchant, who had been ruined by the rupture between the colonies and the mother country, requested his attendance and professional advice. The unfortunate man was seventy-four years of age, and bowed down with the weight of his calamities.

"Those trees, doctor," said the sick man, looking out of his bed-room window over his lawn, "I planted, and have lived to see some of them too old to bear fruit; they are part of my family: and my children, still dearer to me, must quit this residence, which was the delight of my youth, and the hope of my old age."

The Quaker physician was deeply affected by these pathetic words, and the impressive tone with which they were uttered. He spoke a few words of comfort, and quitted the room, leaving on the table as his prescription—a cheque for a large sum of money. Nor did his goodness end there. He purchased the house of his patient's creditors, and presented it to him for life.

As Lettsom was travelling in the neighbourhood of London, a highwayman stopped his carriage, and, putting a pistol into the window, demanded him to surrender his money. The faltering voice and hesitation of the robber showed that he had only recently taken to his perilous vocation, and his appearance showed him to be a young man who had moved in the gentle ranks of life. Lettsom quickly responded that he was sorry to see such a well-looking young man pursuing a course which would inevitably bring him to ruin; that he would give him freely all the money he had about him, and would try to put him in a better way of life, if he liked to call on him in the course of a few days. As the doctor said this, he gave his card to the young man, who turned out to be another victim of the American war. He had only made one similar attempt on the road before, and had been driven to lawless action by unexpected pennilessness. Lettsom endeavoured in vain to procure aid for his protÉgÉ from the commissioners for relieving the American sufferers; but eventually the Queen, interested in the young man's case, presented him with a commission in the army; and in a brief military career, that was cut short by yellow fever in the West Indies, he distinguished himself so much that his name appeared twice in the Gazette.

On one of his benevolent excursions the doctor found his way into the squalid garret of a poor woman who had seen better days. With the language and deportment of a lady she begged the physician to give her a prescription. After inquiring carefully into her case, he wrote on a slip of paper to the overseers of the parish—

"A shilling per diem for Mrs Moreton. Money, not physic, will cure her.

"Lettsom."

Of all Lettsom's numerous works, including his contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine, under the signature of "Mottles," the anagram of his own name, the one most known to the general reader, is the "History of some of the Effects of Hard Drinking." It concludes with a scale of Temperance and Intemperance, in imitation of a thermometer. To each of the two conditions seventy degrees are allotted. Against the seventieth (or highest) degree of Temperance is marked "Water," under which, at distances of ten degrees, follow "Milk-and-Water," "Small Beer," "Cyder and Perry," "Wine," "Porter," "Strong Beer." The tenth degree of Intemperance is "Punch"; the twentieth, "Toddy and Crank"; the thirtieth, "Grog and Brandy and Water"; the fortieth, "Flip and Shrub"; the fiftieth, "Bitters infused in Spirits, Usquebaugh, Hysteric Water"; the sixtieth, "Gin, Aniseed, Brandy, Rum, and Whisky," in the morning; the seventieth, like the sixtieth, only taken day and night. Then follow, in tabular order, the vices, diseases, and punishments of the different stages of Intemperance. The mere enumeration of them ought to keep the most confirmed toper sober for the rest of his days:—

"Vices.—Idleness, Peevishness, Quarrelling, Fighting, Lying, Swearing, Obscenity, Swindling, Perjury, Burglary, Murder, Suicide.

"Diseases.—Sickness, Tremors of the Hands in the Morning, Bloatedness, Inflamed Eyes, Red Nose and Face, Sore and Swelled Legs, Jaundice, Pains in the Limbs, Dropsy, Epilepsy, Melancholy, Madness, Palsy, Apoplexy, Death.

"Punishments.—Debt, Black Eyes, Rags, Hunger, Hospital, Poor-house, Jail, Whipping, the Hulks, Botany Bay, Gallows!"

This reads like Hogarth's Gin Lane.