John Huxham.

IN THE first half of the eighteenth century there were few general hospitals in which physicians and surgeons could carry out any kind of research and, although London was, even then, the Mecca to which ambitious men gravitated, many rose to distinction in the provincial towns, and some achieved national and even international recognition, making observations and performing research in isolation, single-handed. Such was John Huxham who died 200 years ago on 10 August 1768, leaving behind a reputation so great as to justify the appellation 'the Sydenham of the West'. Little remains in the way of records of the life of John Huxham. He was born in the village of Harberton three miles from Totnes in the county of Devon in 1672. His father was a butcher and a careful man who had acquired property in the nearby parish of Staverton. When he died, leaving a young family, he directed in his will that the income of this property be devoted to the education of his eldest son, John, for any profession to which he was inclined or for which he was fit.' The young John Huxham was placed in the care of Mr. Thomas Edgerley, a dissenting minister in Totnes, who sent him to a grammar school in Newton Abbot run by Isaac Gilling, another dissenting minister. Gilling has been described as a genial and scholarly dominee who kept a flourishing boarding school, but got into trouble in the reign of Queen Anne through not having a bishop's licence.2 Under Gilling's guidance the young Huxham 'acquired a very good knowledge of the classics and showed that he had a great memory, though assisted by very little diligence and application. He was always esteemed to have very good parts and to perform his exercises well, but at the same time careless; but honest in making no pretensions to religion, i.e. he did not coincide exactly with the bigots of that time.' Later, he was moved to the dissenting academy at Exeter. Being a dissenter, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were closed to him and, having completed his schooling, he, proceeded to Leyden where on 7 May 1715 he was entered as a student under Boerhaave. Later in life he was to pay generous tribute to that great man. The medical course at Leyden required three years' study for a degree, but for financial reasons he was unable to complete his time there and, in 1717, he went to Rheims,** where residence for any specified time was not required, and there he obtained the degree of M.D. He then returned to Totnes to await an opening for practice. This occurred soon after in Plymouth, but success came only slowly. As his biographer says: