at Rheims on 15 Dec. 1718, and, like Richard Mead, who was his first patron, began practice without the necessary license of the College of Physicians, residing in Wood Street in the city of London.
In 1721 he published ‘A Compleat Treatise of the Gravel and Stone,’ in which he condemns the guarded opinion which Charles Bernard had given on the subject of cutting into the kidney to remove renal calculus, and declares himself strongly in favour of the operation.
He describes a tinctura lithontriptica, pulvis lithontripticus, and elixir lithontripticum devised by him as sovereign remedies for the stone and the gravel.
He mentions in it, from the report of eye-witnesses, the last symptoms of Marlborough's illness, which are generally known from Johnson's poetical allusion to them, and relates as example of the occasional danger of the disease then known as vapours that a Mrs. Davis died of joy because her son returned safely from India; while a Mrs. Chiswell died of sorrow because her son went to Turkey.
In 1729 he published a ‘Discourse on the Nature and Cause of Sudden Deaths,’ in which he maintains that some cases of apoplexy ought not to be treated by bleeding, and describes from his own observation the cerebral appearances in opium poisoning.