1744-1815

English physician and Quaker philanthropist who founded the Medical Society of London in 1773. Lettsom was one of Britain's most distinguished physicians and a friend of the American physicians Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Waterhouse. It was Lettsom who called Rush the "American Sydenham." In 1799 Lettsom sent a copy of Edward Jenner's paper on cowpox vaccination to Waterhouse, who published an account of Jennerian vaccination in an American newspaper. Lettsom's publications include History of the Origin of Medicine (1778) and papers on alcoholism, chlorosis (anemia) in boarding schools, and the value of drinking tea.