Thomas Jefferson Papers

From Thomas Jefferson to William Tazewell, 23 January 1803

To William Tazewell

Washington Jan. 23. 1803.

Th: Jefferson returns his thanks to Doctor Tazewell for his Medical Vademecum. it has really brought the whole science of diseases & remedies within the shortest compass possible, and, not meddling with the details of the science himself, it presents exactly such a general view of every part of it, as he often wishes to take. he presents to Doctr. Tazewell his respectful salutations.

PrC (MHi); endorsed by TJ in ink on verso.

William Tazewell (d. 1832), a Virginia-born physician who completed his medical training at Edinburgh, was author of Vade-Mecum Medicum in duas Partes divisum, quarum Prior, Nosologiam Cullinæam, Posterior, Compendium Materiæ Medicæ et Pharmacopœiæ, Exhibet, printed in Paris, Edinburgh, and Philadelphia in 1798. From 1797 to 1798, Tazewell served as the Paris-London messenger for American envoy to France, Elbridge Gerry. Captured by a French privateer and imprisoned in his first attempted return passage to the United States in 1799, he successfully petitioned Congress in May 1800 for reimbursement of travel expenses. He practiced medicine in Williamsburg in 1800 and later moved to Richmond and became a member of the Virginia Medical Society (Madison, Papers description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962–, 33 vols. Sec. of State Ser., 1986–, 9 vols. Pres. Ser., 1984–, 6 vols. Ret. Ser., 2009–, 1 vol. description ends , Sec. of State Ser., 1:54; Washington, Papers description begins W. W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig, Philander D. Chase, Theodore J. Crackel, Edward C. Lengel, and others, eds., The Papers of George Washington, Charlottesville, 1983- , 56 vols. Confed. Ser., 1992-97, 6 vols. Pres. Ser., 1987- , 16 vols. Ret. Ser., 1998-99, 4 vols. Rev. War Ser., 1985- , 20 vols. description ends , Ret. Ser., 4:253–5; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, D.C., 1952-59, 5 vols. description ends No. 898).

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