John Coakley Lettsom

John Coakley Lettsom was an English physician and philanthropist born on Little Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands into an early Quaker settlement there. He was the son of a West Indian planter and an Irish mother. He grew up to be an abolitionist. He founded the Medical Society of London in 1773, convinced that a combined membership of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries would prove productive. The Society, the oldest such in the United Kingdom, remains as a forum for all branches of medicine, housed in London's medical community at Lettsome House, Chandos Street, near Cavendish Square. Lettsom was its mainstay, as its founder, president and benefactor.