Thomas Fuller, MD, was born at Rosehill, co Sussex, and educated at Queen’s college, Cambridge, as a member of which he proceeded bachelor of medicine in 1676; and on the 10th February, 1678-9, was admitted an Extra-Licentiate of the College of Physicians. He proceeded doctor of medicine, at Cambridge, in 1681. Dr Fuller settled at Sevenoaks, in Kent, where he was greatly esteemed by the rich, and adored by the poor, to whom he was an especial benefactor, and a zealous assertor of their rights, having not long before his death prosecuted the managers of a considerable charity given to the inhabitants of the town by Sir William Senoke, and obliged them to produce their accounts in Chancery, and to be subject for the future to an annual election. By an epitaph in Sevenoaks church, it appears that Dr Fuller was born 24th June, 1654; that he married Mrs Mary Plumer 23rd September, 1703; and that he died 17th September, 1734, in the 81st year of his age, and made the following tetrastic for himself -
Ante obitum felix cantabo epicedia nostra;
Octoginta annos sum passus tristia terræ,
Mors dabit his finem: mecum lætamini amici,
Æternum posthac cælorum læta tenebo.
Dr Fuller’s medical publications were-
Pharmacopœia Extemporanea 8vo. 1702.
Pharmacopœia Bateana 12mo. 1718.
Pharmacopœia Domestica 8vo. 1723.
Exanthematologia; or, an Account of Eruptive Fevers 4to. 1730.
He was also the author of
Introductio ad Prudentiam; or, Directions, Counsels, and Cautions tending to prudent Management of Affairs in Common Life. Compiled for the use of the Author’s dear son, J(ohn) F(uller) 12mo. 1727.
Introductio ad Prudentiam; or the Art of right Thinking, assisted and improved by such notions as Men of Sense and Experience have left us in their writings, in order to eradicate Error and plant Knowledge 12mo. 1731.
Adigies, Proverbs, Wise Sentiments, and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British 12mo. Lond. 1732.
Dr Fuller’s death was prematurely recorded in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for 1731. The good old doctor, then far advanced in years, had probably at that time a serious illness; but he survived till 17th September, 1734, when another mistake was made by all the newspapers, he being then represented as the author of the Medicina Gymnastica. That work was not his, but the production of Francis Fuller, AM, of St John’s Cambridge, who died in June, 1706.(1) Dr. Fuller's portrait by J Tymewell was engraved by G Vertue.
William Munk
[(1) See Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes.]