Born of a Quaker family, John Fothergill studied medicine at Edinburgh University and St. Thomas's Hospital, London, becoming one of the city's most celebrated physicians and a noted bibliophile. His best known work, An Account of the sore throat attended with ulcers (London, 1748), went into six editions during his lifetime.
Robert James Graves (1797-1853), whose inscription is on this copy of Fothergill's Works, is described by John Thornton as "the greatest figure in Irish medicine during his period" (Medical Books, 1949, p. 112). He wrote A System of Clinical Medicine (Dublin, 1843) and Clinical Lectures on the Practise of Medicine (Dublin, 1848). It seems probable that Dr. Wilhelm Baum of Berlin, from whose library a number of books in this sale derive, was a physician of comparable stature.