Theophilus Lobb, M.D., was descended from a highly respectable family in Cornwall. His grandfather, Richard Lobb, had served the office of high sheriff of Cornwall, and in the year 1659 was returned member of parliament for the borough of St. Michael’s. Dr. Lobb was born in London 17th August, 1678, and was the son of Mr. Stephen Lobb, the pastor of a congregation of Independent dissenters in London. From his childhood he had evinced a partiality for the study of physic, but he was nevertheless educated for the ministry. In 1702 he settled as a dissenting minister at Guildford, and there made the acquaintance and cultivated the friendship of an intelligent medical practitioner, from whom he seems to have derived no small amount of medical instruction. After a residence of about four years at Guildford, he removed to Shaftesbury, where he remained about six years, and began actually to practise as a physician. In 1713 he removed to Yeovil, his residence in which town was marked by the prosperity of his worldly circumstances, and the success and reputation which accrued to his practice as a physician. He still continued in his ministerial duties; but it was even then predicted by some of his flock, that the doctor would spoil the divine, the consequence of which would be that he would eventually lay down the ministry. Owing to dissensions in his congregation at Yeovil, Mr. Lobb, in 1722, removed to Witham, in Essex, and remained for about ten years in the conjoint exercise of ministerial and medical functions. He was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society 13th March, 1728-9. In or about the year 1736, he resolved to devote himself exclusively to physic. He had been created doctor of medicine by the university of Glasgow as early as the 26th June, 1722; and on the 30th September, 1740, he was admitted a Licentiate of the College of Physicians. He practised in London; and dying on the 19th May, 1763, in the eighty-fifth year of his age, was buried in Bunhill-fields. Haller says of him: " Vir pius et simplex, practica laude celebratus."(1) His portrait, by N. Brown, was engraved by I. Hulitt. Dr. Lobb was a voluminous writer; the following is, I believe, an accurate list of his medical publications:
A Treatise of the Small-pox. 8vo. Lond. 1731.
Rational Methods of Curing Fevers. 8vo. Lond. 1734.
Medical Practice in curing Fevers exemplified in many Cases. 8vo. Lond. 1735.
A Treatise on Dissolvents of the Stone, and on Curing the Stone and Gout by Aliment. 8vo. Lond. 1739.
An Address to the Faculty on Miss Stephens’s Medicaments. 8vo. Lond. 1739.
A Treatise on Painful Distempers, their Causes and Remedies. 8vo. Lond. 1739.
Letters concerning the Plague, showing the Means to Preserve People from Infection, &c. 8vo. Lond. 1745.
A Compendium of the Practice of Physic. 8vo. Lond. 1747.
Medical Principles and Cautions. 8vo. Lond. 1753.
Letters on the Sacred Predictions. 8vo. Lond. 1761.
The Good Samaritan; or, Useful Family Physician. Selected from his Publications. 8vo. Lond.
The Practice of Physic in general, as delivered in a Course of Lectures on the Theory of Diseases, and the proper Method of Treating them. Published from his own MSS. 2 vols. 8vo. Lond. 1771.

William Munk

[(1) Biblioth. Anat., vol. ij, p. 271]