Life
1696-1776; b. Cork; ed. Leiden, MD 1719, and TCD 1740; FRS, 1733; fellow of Royal [King and Queen’s] College of Physicians, Ireland, 1740; President, 1749; Regius Professor of Physic, TCD, 1754; FCP London, 1762; baronet, 1775; professor of Physic, Dublin; published medical works; also Observations, Historical, Critical and Medical, on the Wines of the Ancients and the Analogy between them and Modern Wines (1775). ODNB
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Commentary
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1984), describes his Observations [ ...] on the Wines of the Ancients (1775) as the first scientific study of the subject in English, departing from comparisons with opium, tea, and tobacco [as drugs], he describes wine manufacture in Greece and Italy, with apt quotations from the classical authors incl. a correction of an interpretation of Horace in Bentley, and ending with a chapter on ‘convivial entertainments’ of the Greeks and Romans. He recommends that some of the ‘‘several gentlemen of fortune, who make improvement in agriculture their favourite stud and practice’, especially those ‘in the most southern parts of the county of Corke’, should plant vineyards and make wine, as giving ‘rational and elegant amusement.’ (p.189.)
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