Crawford, John (1746-1813)

To the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of his Majesty's Treasury. The Memorial of John Crawford M:D Chief Surgeon of the Colony of Demerary. Produced in London. Holograph, unsigned. A trenchant memorandum proposing, inter alia: a better site for the military hospital and barracks at Demerara [Georgetown]; loose, white, light clothing and headgear for the troops; and a physic garden in Essequibo.

1795

3 ll. 38.5 x 24 cm. Unbound.

Purchased 1962.

Crawford, brother of Adair Crawford, F.R.S. [1748-95] took his medical degrees at St. Andrew's (1791) and at Leyden (1794). In 1790 he was appointed Surgeon-Major to the Colony of Demerara [Guyana] by the Dutch Government, which ill-health forced him to leave in 1794. After a brief period in Europe he arrived in Baltimore in 1796 where he remained as practising physician, reformer, founder of societies, and active Freemason. A man of unusual vigour, originality and learning, he enjoyed a long correspondence with Benjamin Rush, introduced vaccination to Baltimore in 1800, and promoted the unpopular theory of contagium vivum. His library is preserved in the Medical Library of the University of Maryland. [See Wilson (1942); Doetsch (1964)].

Described in: Robin Price, An Annotated Catalogue of Medical Americana in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1983).

Formerly part of the Guerra Collection.