John Fothergill

1712-1780

English Physician, Botanist and Reformer

Fothergill added to the medical knowledge of diphtheria, scarlatina, trigeminal neuralgia, migraine, and other disorders. He created an important botanical garden in England and, through his philanthropy, helped found several educational and clinical institutions.

He was born into a yeoman Quaker family in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, England. His mother, Margaret, died when he was seven. His father, also named John, was a deeply religious man and spent much of his time on the circuit of Friends' meetings, even going to America three times.

Young John's education became the responsibility of his maternal uncle, Thomas Hough. After attending day school in Frodsham, Cheshire, and grammar school in Sedbergh, Yorkshire, he was apprenticed in 1728 to a Quaker apothecary, Benjamin Bartlett, in Bradford, Yorkshire. He served six years of his seven-year apprenticeship, then, with Bartlett's approval, decided to try the formal study of apothecary science. Because he was a Quaker, he was not allowed to attend institutions of higher learning in England. He therefore crossed the border into Scotland and enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1734.

At Edinburgh Fothergill immediately came under the kindly influence of Alexander Monro primus (1697-1767) who advised him to study medicine. (Monro, his son, and grandson, were all named Alexander, and were distinguished by the designation primus, secondus, and tertius [first, second, and third].) Fothergill received his Edinburgh M.D. in 1736 and spent the next four years at St. Thomas's Hospital, London. After traveling briefly in northern Europe, he established private medical practice in London in 1740.

His reputation was made with the publication of "An Account of the Sore Throat Attended with Ulcers" (1748), in which Fothergill presented careful observations of both diphtheria and scarlatina, although he failed to distinguish between the two. His work on these diseases was furthered by John Huxham (1692-1768) in "A Dissertation on the Malignant, Ulcerous Sore-Throat" (1757) and William Withering (1741-1799) in "An Account of the Scarlet Fever and Sore Throat, or Scarlatina Anginosa, Particularly as it Appeared at Birmingham in the Year 1778" (1779).

Fothergill published two important papers in a major journal of the time, Medical Observations and Inquiries by a Society of Physicians in London. In "Of a Painful Affection of the Face," (1776) the first description of trigeminal neuralgia, also known as Fothergill's neuralgia or tic douloureux, an excruciating pain along the path of the fifth cranial nerve. In "Remarks on that Complaint Commonly Known under the Name of the Sick Head-Ache" (1777) he offered one of the earliest accurate descriptions of migraine.

Fothergill was a close friend of Benjamin Franklin and a strong advocate of liberal policies toward the American colonies; until 1775 he strove for reconciliation between the two sides. Fothergill was an early supporter of the first hospital in America, the Pennsylvania Hospital, founded by Franklin in 1751. The books and anatomical teaching materials he donated to the Pennsylvania Hospital in the early 1760s helped William Shippen Jr. (1736-1808) become the first successful demonstrator of anatomy in America.

Encouraged by Edinburgh professor of botany Charles Alston, Fothergill made a serious hobby of botany. In 1762 he purchased a 30-acre country estate in Essex and created a botanical garden on the grounds. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) gave the scientific name Fothergilla to a genus of witch hazel that Fothergill brought from America to Essex.

Concerned with the lack of educational opportunities for Quaker children, in 1779 Fothergill founded a coeducational Quaker boarding school, the Ackworth School, near Pontefract, Yorkshire. Twenty years later a group of Philadelphia Quakers, inspired by Fothergill's example, founded a sister school, the Westtown School, near West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Few physicians have been as revered for their kindheartedness as Fothergill. He had no harsh words for anyone and was devoted to Quakerism's gentle, peacemaking ways. When he died of prostate cancer he was mourned by all of London. Seventy carriages made up his funeral procession. The frontispiece of the first posthumous edition of his works (1781) depicts him as the Good Samaritan. Fothergill never married. His maiden sister Ann lived with him the last 31 years of his life.

ERIC V.D. LUFT