Dr John Frost FRSE FSA (1803–1840) was a short-lived but influential physician and botanist who founded the Medico-Botanical Society of London, studying and cataloguing the medicinal properties of plants.
In 1821 he left and resolved to establish a national study of Materia Medica, leading to his foundation of the Medico-Botanical Society of London.
The society proved a huge success and numbered in its members eleven sovereigns of Europe, the entire British royal family, over twenty members of other royal families and almost all foreign ambassadors in London, together with many learned men of the medical world.
He was then invited to be the official lecturer on botany at the Royal Institution in London and was made a Fellow of the Linnean Society.
He was, however, refused fellowship of the Royal Society of London, perhaps viewing his position one of luck and self-creation rather than skill.
[3] In 1830 he received the patronage of the Duke of Cumberland as his personal physician and resigned his envious role as Secretary of the Royal Humane Society.
However, he ran up huge debts which could not be repaid and he fled to Paris in 1833 adopting the pseudonym of John FitzJames.
He stayed here less than a year and moved to Berlin adopting the title Sir John Frost (but he was never knighted).