 A FRS in regular attendance at the society’s London meetings would be acquainted with Hartley, and would know that he had emerged the victor in a public medical controversy ten years earlier, which established his reputation in medical circles both in Britain and on the Continent. Hartley, working with Stephen Hales, researched the chemical basis for what they thought an effective folk remedy for bladder stones—a painful and hazardous condition that impaired the lives of Hartley himself and many others, including Benjamin Franklin. In the course of the controversy, Hartley had published a self-revealing account of the prolonged and intense suffering he had endured, while undergoing the treatment.