Adams Papers Digital Edition

Papers of John Adams, volume 15

From Cotton Tufts

From Joseph Ward
From Edward Augustus Holyoke, 6 November 1783 Holyoke, Edward Augustus Adams, John
From Edward Augustus Holyoke
Sir Salem Novr. 6th. 1783.

Your Excellencys Favours done to the Massachusetts Medical Society, call for their most grateful Acknowledgments; and it is at their Desire I now enclose to Your Excellency, the Copy of a Vote from their Records, expressive of the Gratitude they feel, & the Obligations they are Under to Your Excellency, for Your kind Attention to their Interests, & for the Honour done them, by introducing them to an Acquaintance with so respectable a Body as the Société royale de Médicine at Paris.1

to which permit Me Sir to add my own personal Thanks,—and as while We continue to prosecute the Ends of our Institution, We are promoting the Cause of Science & Humanity, so We shall still hope for the Continuance of Your Excellencys. good Offices.— I have the Honour to be with great Gratitude & Respect / Your Excellencys. most Obedient / & very humble Servant

E. A. Holyoke

RC and enclosure (Adams Papers); internal address: “His Excellency Jno Adams Esqr. / Minister Plenipotentiary for / the United States / of America.”

 350 1.

For JA’s successful efforts, at the behest of Cotton Tufts in a letter of 26 Sept. 1782 ( AFC , 4:386), to establish a correspondence between the newly established Massachusetts Medical Society and the Société royale de médecine at Paris, see vol. 14 index and JA’s 10 June 1783 letter to Holyoke, above. On 15 Oct., the Massachusetts Medical Society voted unanimously to thank JA for “his early Attention to the Interests and Honor of the . . . Society, and for his assiduous Endeavours, to introduce the Institution to the Notice of the Royal Society of Medicine at Paris” (Adams Papers). It is uncertain when JA received this letter and its enclosure (see Tufts’ 5 Nov. letter, and note 4, above), for he did not reply to Holyoke until 3 April 1786 (MaSaPEM:Holyoke Family Coll.). For JA’s explanation for his failure to acknowledge Holyoke’s letter and the vote of the society, in response to an inquiry from Tufts, see his 11 March 1786 letter to Tufts, AFC , 7:87–88.