“Piecing together the story of Philip de la Cour (1710-1785): A Jewish Physician in Enlightenment Britain”
Philip de la Cour (Abraham Gomez Ergas) (MD Leyden,1733) is a shadowy but intriguing figure. He was a founding physician of the Beth Holim: the “Portuguese Hospital” in London. He also supported the effort by British nonconformist physicians to overturn the rigid religious barrier of the London College of Physicians by helping fund the lawsuit that accompanied the “Siege of Warwick Lane,” when the licentiates rioted in the College. After moving to Bath, he became a fashionable, “venerated,” and apparently successful physician but he seems to have died in Amsterdam in poverty in 1786. Using an assortment of fragmentary materials, I will reconstruct his story as far as possible to supplement a brief profile recently published by historian Kenneth Collins. I will also analyze the way it reveals and reflects the role of Jewish doctors and their community in the eighteenth-century British medical profession.
Margaret DeLacy is the president of the Northwest Independent Scholars Association and the author of three books including Contagionism Catches On: Medical Ideology in Britain, 1730-1800 (New York: 2017). She has a PhD in British History and is currently working on a study of eighteenth-century medical networks . She plans to present this talk at the Scientiae conference in Brussels this summer.
