M. Turner

Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever (Dodo Press) M. Turner

Matthew Turner (? -1788) a Liverpool physician, is considered (for example by Berman, 1990) to be the author or co-author of the 1782 pamphlet, Answer to Dr. Priestleyâ??s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, the first published work of avowed atheism in Britain. Turner was also a pioneer in the use of ether for medical purposes, and wrote a pamphlet on the subject: An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid Called Aether (1759). In a footnote, Turner was the man who introduced Josiah Wedgwood to Thomas Bentley in Liverpool, a friendship which led to the formation of the company that produced the famous pottery.