Books of Interest to Friends

BOOKS OF INTEREST TO FRIENDS.77 "How does thee manage to get time to do anything?" said he. I told him I took care to live away from the railroad, and kept a bull-dog and a pitch-fork, and advised him to do the same. (Letters of Lydia Maria Child, Boston, 1883, pp. 141, 142.) CORRECTION. Our friend, Norman Penney, of the Friends' Reference Library , Devonshire House, London, has kindly sent several corrections to be made in the paper " A Seventeenth Century Request for a Meeting" which appeared in the last number of the Bulletin (Vol. IX, no. 1, pages 14-16). They are as follows: The date should be ^- 1700. Lines 1, 2, 3 of the Letter should read, "... It being a desire of severall Friends in these parts to have a first day Meeting In the Parish of South Mims (on ye same day that Winsmerhill [Winchmore Hill] Meeting is) established amongst us," etc. (p. 16). The last two lines of the first paragraph in the Letter should read, "And assist us with your consents in ye re-establishing us in our former Priviledge." The last line but one of the Letter should read, " And with the consent of severall others." The original manuscript is No. 59, Vol. III. Gibson Mss. Friends' Reference Library, Devonshire House, London. BOOKS OF INTEREST TO FRIENDS. Dr. John Fothergill and his Friends, Chapters in Eighteenth Century Life. By R. Hingston Fox, M.D. London, Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1919. 5V2 X 9 in. Pp. xxiv, 434. Illustrations. 21s. net, $7.50, postage 30 cents. This long expected work has been well worth waiting for. Dr. Fox is to be congratulated on his success from every point of view. The book is scholarly, most carefully written from original and printed sources, no time or trouble has been spared in searching after authorities in both Great Britain and America, and care and diligence are apparent on every page, the literary style is good and the book is interesting. The subject and the author both being medical men, it must have been no easy matter to produce a work attractive both to the general reader and to the pro- 78BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY. fessional man. So far as a non-medical man can judge, Dr. Fox has been remarkably successful, for while there are portions which will appeal only to the physician, they are few and purely technical language is unfrequent. It was quite time that a life written on modern lines should be presented to the world, for except in the brief notices in encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries, no life of Fothergill has been published for more than a century. The greatest physician of his day in London, his fees amounting to about ¿5,000 per annum and sometimes more, consulted by persons of all ranks, the introducer of commonsense methods in practice and treatment of diseases, the real forerunner of modern treatment, he deserves more recognition than he has received in later years. Dr. Fothergill was not only a physician but a botanist who introduced many new plants and trees into Great Britain, he was one of England's chief philanthropists, an earnest forwarder of education, the founder of Ackworth School, a social reformer, a man interested in science of every kind, one of the first to bring electricity into prominence before scientific bodies1, a firm believer in hygiene and careful diet, and in fact a promoter of almost everything that tends to increase the welfare and comfort of society. He counted Franklin, Priestley, Collinson, the Bartrams, the Logans, Pembertons and other well-known men among his intimate friends. He was the warm friend of America and exerted his great influence on her behalf whenever possible. He was really one of the founders and for a long time one of the greatest benefactors of the Pennsylvania Hospital. He was a staunch Friend, a member of the Meeting for Sufferings when but twenty-nine, and was Clerk of London Yearly Meeting three times. All these phases of this remarkable man are well brought out in the biography before us. Dr. Fox has we believe chosen wisely in presenting not a chronological life...