Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: John Coakley Lettsom

  • John Coakley Lettsom

    JMS PearceHull, England John Coakley Lettsom (aka Lettsome) MD FRCP Ed., FRS (1744–1815) is remembered as the physician who founded The Medical Society of London and for his monograph Reflections on the General Treatment and Cure of Fevers. He was born on Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands in 1744. He was sent at…

  • John Walker, vaccinator extraordinaire

    JMS PearceHull, England Medicine has bred many odd but audacious characters, eccentrics, polymaths and “truants.” One might argue that those characteristics attracted such people to careers in medicine: a chicken and egg dilemma. Conversely, some have argued that modern regulated uniformity has infected medicine and stultified originality. A little-known medical eccentric and heretic was John…