James Mease (1771–1846), physician and author, was a native of Philadelphia. He received an A.B. from the University of the State of Pennsylvania in 1787, and five years later he was awarded an M.D. by the University of Pennsylvania. Mease served as a hospital surgeon during the War of 1812. Though he did not establish a private practice, he was an acknowledged expert on rabies and offered courses privately on medicine, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine. Mease was heavily involved in Philadelphia’s intellectual community and published on a wide range of topics, including agriculture, geology, medicine, and prisons. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1802, serving as a curator about 1824–30 and a councillor, 1832–39. Mease was also a member and sometime secretary of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture and a founder of both the Athenaeum of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. He corresponded sporadically with TJ for many years on agricultural, historical, and scientific topics. Mease died in Philadelphia (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 34 vols. description ends , esp. 23:620; APS description begins American Philosophical Society description ends , Minutes, 16 Jul. 1802, 2 Jan. 1824, 6 Jan. 1832 [MS in PPAmP]; Philadelphia North American, 15 May 1846).

In its memoirs (3 [1814]: 43–9, 392–5), the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture printed an article by Henry wynkoop on making cider from the Hewes (hughe’s) or Virginia crab apple and Timothy Pickering’s account of the apples cultivated by John Roane (roan).