Anthony Fothergill (ca. 1737-1813) earned a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh and subsequently gained the patronage of the prominent London physician John Fothergill (no relation). Although unsuccessful in establishing a lucrative practice in London, Anthony Fothergill achieved great success in Bath. The Royal Humane Society awarded him a gold medal for his paper on resuscitating victims of drowning. The American Philosophical Society elected him a member in 1792, and after retiring to Philadelphia in 1803 he became active in the organization’s activities (DNB description begins H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, In Association with The British Academy, From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, Oxford, 2004, 60 vols. description ends ; APS description begins American Philosophical Society description ends , Proceedings, 22, pt. 3 [1884], 201; Christopher Lawrence, Paul Lucier, and Christopher C. Booth, eds., “Take Time by the Forelock”: The Letters of Anthony Fothergill to James Woodforde, 1789-1813 [London, 1997]).

Fothergill wrote a number of tracts on subjects such as rabies, temperance, and copper and lead poisoning. TJ owned a copy, possibly already acquired, of the second edition of A New Enquiry into the Suspension of Vital Action, in Cases of Drowning and Suffocation (Bath, 1795; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, D.C., 1952-59, 5 vols. description ends No. 965; TJ to Caspar Wistar, 7 June).