Papers of John Adams, volume 18
I now do myself the Honour of inclosing to you, as President of the Medical Society, the original Letters of Monsieur De Lassone Monsieur Geoffroy and Monsieur Vicq D’Azyr Copies of which I Suppose have been before recd.— The Vote of the Royal Society of Medicine in Parchment authenticated by its Officers is also inclosed, and a Journal.1
I received in due Season your Letter, inclosing a Vote of the Medical Society,2 both of which do me great honour. I ought to make my Apology for not answering that Letter, and for not transmitting these original Papers, sooner: but many Removals of my Papers and my Family with various Calls of public Service, have been the real cause.
With my best Respects to the Medical Society / and the most Sincere Wishes for their Pros / perity, I beg Leave to subscribe myself your / most obedient and obliged servant
RC (MaSaPEM:Holyoke Family Coll.); internal address: “Edward Augustus Holyoke Esqr / President of the Medical society.” LbC (Adams Papers); APM Reel 113.
Since 1782 JA had facilitated a correspondence between the newly formed Massachusetts Medical Society and the Société royale de médecine at Paris. With this letter, JA resolved a query raised by Charles Storer in his of 23 Nov. 1785. The society’s receipt of published scientific research from Paris had been so slow, Storer wrote, that members worried “it has been stopped” (vol. 17:597, 598, 604, 605).