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OCCASIONALLY DOCTORS' letters may be of more interest to medical historians than their published writings.In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the elegance of a physician's literary style was often more highly regarded than the astuteness of his clinical observations or the efficacy of his treatment.Medical books tended to be inflated with dubious hypotheses and the few worthwhile remedies were often buried beneath a welter of classical allusions and literary extravagances.Some doctors wrote medical treatises in order (as Smollett puts it) 'to force a trade' rather than to convey information.Smollett was able to write with authority as his own pamphlet On the External Use of Cold Water was intended to establish himself in fashionable practice.This was the age of the cynically successful Dr.Richard Mead who gave this advice to a young practitioner: Should you have an itching to make your name known by writing a book on physic, yet so customary, I will advise you to choose the subject by which you think you will get most money; or that will bring you the most general business, as fevers, smallpox, etc....The method of writing, if in your frontispiece you address not your book to some great man, is to club with some other physicians; and thus by way of letters to commend each other's good practice, and to support and make each other favour.But above all things, take particular care, let the subject be what will, that the words be well chosen, so to make up an elegant and fervid speech; since you have ten to one that mind the language more than the ideas.)In general, doctors' letters tend to be more direct and unaffected than the literary flourishes found in their books: they often contain precise recommendations as to the patients' treatment, and occasionally they illuminate aspects of the physician's social, domestic and material background.Thus correspondence between medical colleagues often gives the historian a better insight into the actual treatment of patients than is found in their rambling, inflated textbooks.It is not, however, intended to insinuate that the works of Thomas Willis were published for 'revenue purposes'.Nevertheless, his books throw little light on his actual practice or on his social or domestic life.Who were his friends and patients?How lucrative was his practice?What contact had he, in later life, with the Royal Society?These eleven, hitherto unpublished, letters supply some of the answers.Willis is too well known to warrant a lengthy introduction.Born in 1621 of yeoman stock, he virtually worked his way through Christ Church, Oxford, as a servitor to one of the canons.Graduating M.A. in 1642, the year the Civil War broke out, he served for a time in the Oxford garrison of the Royalist University legion of scholar- soldiers-probably in a medical rather than a military role, as there was a shortage of doctors during these unquiet times.He graduated M.B. in 1646 and began to
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