vii. SINCLAIR,
Sir John.
An Essay on Longevity.
London:
Strahan,
1802 [also in
French,
Paris,
1802].
First Edition. 8vo. 15 leaves; no copy was seen for collation.
Jefferson’s copy was a presentation from the author, who wrote to him from London on June 3, 1802: “. . . You will also herewith recieve two Copies of a paper on Longevity which may be reprinted in America, if you should approve
of that Idea. I hope to recieve by your obliging assistance very satisfactory answers from America to the questions in Appendix
N
o. 1.”
For a note on Sinclair see no. 726. In 1807 he published a book in four volumes entitled
Code of Health and Longevity
. Of this work he sent a Prospectus to Jefferson on August 13, 1807:“ Sir John Sinclair . . . cannot deny himself the pleasure of transmitting to his friends there [i.e. in America], Copies of
the prospectus of his Code of Health, and Longevity . . .”
[985]
98
Not in the Manuscript Catalogue.
1815 Catalogue, page 41. no. 87. Shattuk’s Dissertations, 8vo.
SHATTUCK,
George Cheyne.
Three Dissertations on Boylston Prize Questions for the Years 1806 and 1807. By George Cheyne Shattuck, M.D. Being the Dissertations to which the Boylston Prize Medals were Adjudged. To which is prefixed the Public Account of
their Adjudication . . .
Boston: Published by
Farrand, Mallory, & Co. [and others;] by
Hopkins & Bayard,
New-York; and
Hopkins & Earle,
Philadelphia;
Belcher and Armstrong, Printers,
1808.
R117 .S6
First Edition. Sm. 4to. 98 leaves; the last two leaves contain a
Catalogue of Law Books recently published by
Farrand, Mallory, & Co.
Sabin 79871.
Surgeon General’s Library Catalogue I, xii, 970.
Jefferson’s copy was a presentation from the author, who wrote on October 28, 1808, from Boston, Massachusetts, to Thomas
Jefferson, L.L.D. President of the United States: “The author of the Boylston Prize Dissertation takes the liberty to send Your Excellency a copy, of which he must beg your
acceptance; not that they contain any peculiar merit, which should entitle them to Your Excellency’s high notice, but that
they are a humble expression of the great respect their author feels for the man, who has so successfully cultivated physical
science, and who has ever patronized those, who have made honest efforts to be useful to others . . .”
To this Jefferson replied from Washington on March 11, 1809: “
Th: Jefferson presents his compliments to m(
~
r)
Shattuck, and his thanks for the copy of the Boylston prize dissertation which he was so kind as to send him. he shall read
it with pleasure in the leisure of Monticello, to which place he is now in the moment of departure . . .
”
This is in the manuscript catalogue, where it is entered by Jefferson in his chapter 40, Orations: The Boylston prize dissertations, by Shattuck. 8vo. This is chapter 44 in the 1815 Catalogue, and the unnumbered entry reads: [The Boylstor [sic] Prize Dissertations, by Shattuck, 8vo] ante C. 10, No. 87. The book may have been transferred to Chapter 10, Medicine, by Jefferson in his later manuscript catalogue.
The Boylston academic foundations in Harvard University were founded by Ward Nicolas Boylston, a relative of John Adams; see no. 4659. Those in the Medical School were in honor of Zabdiel Boylston, the first to introduce the practice of inoculation for smallpox into Colonial America.
