ROCHE, John (2)
[The following letter is filed under P with the correspondence from William PARKER]
349/351
Dear Sir
In acceding to your terms and agreeing to go out the Cape of Good Hope with your Party I have thought it necessary to send you the enclosed statement which I trust will be found satisfactory.
Your terms, if I remember right, are as follows: first each free settler to pay annually to the Physician and Surgeon one pound sterling for each of his articled servants. 2ndly the respectable families to pay as they do on the British Islands. 3rdly the Physician to have a grant of 100 acres of land for himself, and 50 acres for each of five articled servants, subject to the regulations prescribed by Government. 4thly the Physician to pay the Deposit required by Government.
I shall wait on you tomorrow about 9 in the evening, previously to my going out of town for a few days to make some necessary arrangements. In the mean time I have the honour to be Sir
Your obedient servant
John ROCHE
London
October 29 1819
Dear Sir,
The following statement will, I trust, supply you with such particulars respecting my character and qualifications as it may be necessary for you to make known at the office for the Colonial Department.
I am in my 36th year, was married in 1807 and have, at present, three children. I am a regularly bred Doctor of Medicine having attended lectures in every branch of medical & chirurgical science in Edinburgh for five whole years; that is from 1805 inclusive till 1810. Family affairs having again rendered it necessary for me to visit Edinburgh in 1816 I attended the lectures over again for six months: having thus in fact studied six entire sessions at that university which falls to the lot of but few, either surgeons or physicians.
In the courses of lectures, so far as I can call them to mind, were two courses on Anatomy & Surgery under Doctor MUNRO; one on Comparative Anatomy under Doctor BARCLAY; three courses of the Practice of Physics under Doctor GREGORY; three of Chemistry under Doctor HOPE; three of Materia Medica & Pharmacy under Doctors HOME & MURRAY; one of Physiology under Doctor DUNCAN; one of Botany under Doctor RUTHERFORD; three on Surgery & on Military Surgery under Doctor THOMSON & three on the Theory & Practice of Midwifery under Doctor HAMILTON. Besides these I attended lectures on Rhetoric, Logic & Natural Philosophy and two courses on Moral Philosophy, and two on Political Economy under that eminent philosopher, my master & friend, Professor Dugald STEWART.
The certificates of all these teachers (or Professor’s Tickets as they are called in Scotland) together with my Doctor’s Degree, Midwifery Diploma &c &c are all at present among my papers in Dublin and shall be submitted if necessary to the Chief Secretary in Ireland, Mr. GRANT.
From 1810 to 1814 I practised in London: but being appointed Lecturer on Moral Philosophy to the Dublin Institution I went over to Dublin in the winter of the latter year and delivered public lectures there, & subsequently at the Institutions of Cork & Belfast on Moral Philosophy & Political Economy. These lectures it is my intention to publish at some future period. During my residence in Ireland I was always in the habit of practising my Profession as a Physician. During the winter of 1815 & the spring of 1816 I practised a little in Bath having gone there for the benefit of the waters. During that period I published a weekly Moral & Literary Paper on the Plan of the British Essayists, which was much esteemed in Bath. It was called The Sceptic and is to be republished.
While in Edinburgh I had the honour of being unanimously chosen President of the Royal Physical Society of that city owing to my reputation as a public speaker & scholar at the time. This can be seen by my Diploma as President and Honorary Member of the Society.
I am one of the authors of Dr. REES’ Cyclopaedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. You may see a contribution of mine in the former under the word “Instruct” and in the latter under the words “Semiplagians”, “Sense, pains & pleasures of” and “Smelling”.
In 1808 in Edinburgh I published a new edition of the Latin Medical Works of Celsus, an ancient Roman author. From this fact you form some idea of my classical acquirements.
I published in London, in 1813, a work (which I dedicated to my friend the Duke of Devonshire) on the Junius Controversy. You may see a long & elaborate account of it in The Antijacobin Review for September 1813 written by the late John GIFFORD Esq, the magistrate of Worship Street office. In the New Quarterly Review, of which Mr. GIFFORD was also editor, you may see a long essay of mine on The History of Political Philosophy and Jurisprudence in Europe. It is in the 2nd No. and was a Review of a work on Political Economy by a Mr. BOILEAU.
In the Reflector, a London quarterly magazine, you will find three long essays of mine (in Nos. 2, 3 & 4) on “The Instincts & mental Faculties of the Lower Animals as Compared with those of Man”, on “The Philosophy of Sensation & Perception” and on “The Origin, Progress, Corruption and Gradual Improvement of Medical Science” It is my intention, at some future time, to publish a history of medical science, for which I have been preparing materials for several years. I have been also, for some time, with the approbation of my friend Professor STEWART of Edinburgh, been preparing materials for a work on the Inductive Logic of Lord BACON.
The most recent of my literary labours, and on which I am at present engaged, is A Defence of the Protestant Religion in answer to a work recently published by the Roman Catholic Bishop Doctor MILNE, which he has called “The End of Religious Controversy” &c. A part of my MS has been submitted to the Rt.Hon. Robert PEEL, to whom my first letter is addressed.
In concluding this long statement permit me to add that it will afford me great pleasure to give you any further information that may be necessary for you at the office of the Colonial Department. Allow me to suggest that you ought still to exert your influence to obtain from His Majesty’s Government some annual salary for the Physician who is to accompany you. With every possible respect for the clergy & for Religion, which no one values more highly than I do, I must affirm that the Physician is a more necessary member of the new colony than any clergyman. In a climate so different from ours health can be injured without the constant attendance of a scientific Physician.
I have the honour to be Sir &c &c
John ROCHE MD