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). DNB
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Criticism
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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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)