FOTH EltOILL, JOHN, was born of a Quaker family, on the 8th of Mareh 1712, at Carr-End, near Richmond, in Yorkshire. After obtaining the elements of education in the school of Sedbergh, in the same county, he learned pharmacy from an apothecary named Bartlett, and then proceeded to Edinburgh. Hare he took his degree of M.D. in 1737, the thesis which he published on this occasion being on the use of emetics. (' De Etneticorum Um in varlis Morbis traa Landis!) In order to become a physician in practice as ;sell as theory, he now diligently attended St. Thomas's Hospital, in London. In 1740 ho travelled into Holland, Emcee, and Germany, and then settled in London. In 1748, an ulcerated or gangrenous sore throat, which bad prevailed epidemically, gave Fothergill an opportunity of display ing his great practical talents. This kind of sore throat is now believed to be related to scarlet fever, and indeed to be the essential and dangerous part of that disease, of which the eruption is merely the outward and harmless indication. In Fothergill's time however this malady was confounded with the ordinary or inflammatory sore throat, and being treated accordingly, with bleeding and purgatives, was very fatal. Fothergill, on the contrary, used emetics, mineral acids, bitters, and a little wine, and lost but few cases.
The two most prominent points in the life of Dr. Fothergili are the remarkable success with which be practised his profession and the unwearied benevolence with which be distributed the fruits of his labours. It is supposed that he gave away at least 200,000/.
Dr. Fothergili published several papers in the ' Philosophical Trans actions' on the origin of ambergris, the rupture of the diaphragm, /1:e. ; and be is also the author of essays on the plant producing Aleppo scammony ; on the use of bark combined with small doses of calomel in scrofula, and calomel alone in sciatica, lumbago, and worms; on the use of hemlock in cancer ; on the botanical, chemical, and medical history of the cortex Winteranus and catechn ; on the treatment of booping-cough by very small doses of tartar emetic combined with an absorbent earth; on dropsy, and the disadvantages of putting off tapping too long; on chronic ulcers of tho legs; on plithisis, and the abuse of balsams and bark in this disease; on febrile rheumatism of the face ; ou angina pectoris; on the ulcerous sore throat; on hydrocephalus' internue, an essay thought by Vicq-d'Asyr to be one of the most perfect descriptions to be found in medicine ; and advice to women between forty and forty-five years of age, or rules to be observed on the cessation of the catamenia.
Fothergill improved the art of recovering the drowned; showed the necessity of prohibiting burials in towns, and the means of diminishing the frequency of fires. The editions of his works are those of London, 1781, 8vo ; 1783, 3 vols., Svcs; 1784, 4to. Fother gill died on the 26th of December 1780, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.