The proofs our young physician had already given of literary merit, recommended him soon after the above-mentioned communication, to a seat among that learned body; in the same year he was also elected one of the physicians of St. Thomas’s hospital, and was employed by the surgeons company to read anatomical lectures at their hall, which he continued to do for some years. In 1704 appeared his treatise _de imperio solis ac lunæ in corpora humana, & morbis inde oriundis_. At this time the Newtonian system of philosophy, from whence our author had chiefly deduced his reasonings upon this abstruse subject, were neither thoroughly understood, nor universally received: nevertheless whatever cavils were raised against his hypothesis, it was generally admitted, that his observations had their uses in practice. The doctor thought proper to revise this juvenile production, and to give a new edition of it in 1748; when he not only altered the disposition of some of the _old_, but also introduced more than a little _new_ matter into that work: particularly he has placed some mathematical points in a clearer light, than they before appeared; he has entered into the discussion of “a difficult question, which has raised great contention among philosophers: viz. whereas water is more than eight hundred times heavier than air, how does it happen, that the latter when replete with watery vapours, depresses the mercury in the barometer; so that its fall is an indication of rain?[11]” he has also enquired into “the weight of the atmosphere on a human body, and its different pressure at different times;[12]” and he has illustrated and confirmed the medicinal part by several additional observations and cases, that promise real utility to the practice of physic. To the whole is now first adjoined a corollary tending to strengthen his reasonings upon the subject, by observations of the effects of storms on the human body; wherein, from the case of a lady who was seized in an instant with a _gutta serena_, (that rendered her totally blind) on the night of the great storm which happened in 1703, he is led to give a distinct account of the cause and cure of that melancholly distemper. This work is also remarkably distinguished by many curious observations our author received from his ingenious preceptor in the art of healing, Dr. _Pitcairne_. [11] Stack’s translation of the influence of the sun and moon, p. 21. [12] Ibid. p. 30.