Meyer Löw Schomberg


Meyer Löw Schomberg was a German-Jewish physician who moved to London and had a successful business there.

Life

His father, Löw Schomberg, was a physician in Meyer's birthplace and Meyer followed his father's trade, studying classics, then medicine, at the University of Giessen. Completing his MD degree in 1710, Meyer had practises in Schweinsberg, Blankenstein, and then Metz, but then moved to London and settled there in 1721. His first employment in London was a salary of £30 a year from the wardens of the Great Synagogue to look after the poor. The Royal College of Physicians admitted him as a licentiate on 19 March 1722, on 12 January 1726 he became a fellow of the Royal Society, and finally in 1730 he was admitted to the freemasons' lodge of the Premier Grand Lodge of England at the Swan and Rummer, Finch Lane.
By 1740 his professional income was said to be 4000 guineas a year, having established a successful practice. He was, however, greatly envious of his contemporary, Jacob de Castro Sarmento, making a failed attempt to sabotage Sarmento's election to the Royal Society in 1729 by blackening his name, and in 1738 publicly denounced Sarmento's prescription of an opiate to Benjamin Mendes da Costa, one of Schomberg's former patients, in Janneway's Coffee House. Sarmento complained of the latter event to the censors of the Royal College of Physicians, but their fine of £4 against Schomberg for breaching their moral statutes only led Meyer embarking on a feud against the College via his son Isaac. Becoming alienated from London's Jewish community in general and Sarmento and his allies in particular, he also got increasingly entangled in one expensive lawsuit after another. He also rejected the Jewish community by – after 1742 – encouraging his sons to become Anglican Christians if that would aid them in the liberal professions for which he had had them educated.
On his death, Meyer was buried in Hackney churchyard.

Family

Schomberg had at least seven sons and one daughter: