The little treatise was Zollickoffer, A Treatise on the use of Prussiate of Iron, (Or, Prussian Blue,) in Intermitting and Remitting Fevers (Frederick, Md., 1822). On this day Zollickoffer sent a nearly identical letter and two copies of the work on Prussian blue to James Madison, who likely sent one of them to Thomas Cooper shortly thereafter (Madison, Papers description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, John C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, 1962– , 43 vols.: Congress. Ser., 17 vols.: Pres. Ser., 11 vols.: Retirement Ser., 3 vols.: Sec. of State Ser., 12 vols. description ends , Retirement Ser., 2:620, 623).

William Zollickoffer (1793–1853), physician and botanist, graduated from the school of medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore in 1818 and settled in Middleburg, Carroll County, Maryland. He was the author of A Materia Medica of the United States (Baltimore, 1819) and lectured on materia medica and medical botany at the University of Maryland. Zollickoffer was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians and Surgeons (later part of Columbia University) in 1833. He received a patent in that year for a device to secure wagon wheels when the axle breaks, and others in 1838 and 1842 for his methods of “bating” (softening) hides and skins. Zollickoffer listed one free black in his household in 1830, and a decade later he owned one slave. He died in Carroll County (Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell, Historical Sketch of the University of Maryland School of Medicine [1891], 206; Howard A. Kelly and Walter L. Burrage, American Medical Biographies [1920], 1284; Thomas, Columbia University Officers and Alumni description begins Milton Halsey Thomas, Columbia University Officers and Alumni, 1754–1857, 1936 description ends , 41, 93; List of Patents for Inventions and Designs, issued by the United States, from 1790 to 1847 [1847], 212, 293; Journal of the Franklin Institute, new ser., 22 [1838]: 412–3; DNA: RG 29, CS, Md., Baltimore, 1830, Carroll Co., 1840; gravestone inscription in Uniontown Methodist Cemetery, Carroll Co.).