John Frost

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. He was a controversial and flamboyant figure of the early 19th century. Life He was born in 1803 in the Charing Cross area of London. He was born two months premature and a twin and was a delicate child. He attended school in Langley, Berkshire. He was then sent as an apprentice to Dr Wright, the apothecary at Bethlem Royal Hospital. 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. Having been introduced by Dr Bree to King George IV, he was placed as botanical tutor to Prince George of Cumberland and Cambridge (later to become George V of Hanover). Dr Bree also introduced Frost to Sir James McGrigor of the army medical board, who was elected first president of the Medico-Botanical Society, whilst Frost served as director. 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. Frost reportedly carried around an autograph book containing all these famous persons in a single volume.