Wilfully forgotten? Simon Webb remembers John Coakley Lettsom

‘He dared to attack one of our most sacred traditions.’

by Simon Webb 6th March 2026

I discovered the Quaker physician John Coakley Lettsom (1744-1815) in Roy Porter’s book Enlightenment: Britain and the creation of the modern world. In a twenty-five page chapter on ‘The Culture of Science’, Porter devotes just under two and a half pages to Lettsom. To give this some context, the author covers Isaac Newton in fewer than five and a half pages. Who, then, was this Friend, who was over forty percent as important as Newton?