Background
Fryer was the oldest son of William Fryer of London.
Fryer was the oldest son of William Fryer of London.
On July 13, 1664 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, from which he graduated as a Bachelor of Medicine in 1671, then becoming a Fellow-Commoner at Pembroke College, Cambridge on July 23 of the same year.
In 1672 he was appointed as a surgeon for the British East India Company, to be paid "50s. While en route, at Johanna (Nzwani) in the Comoro Islands, he made important observations concerning the antiscorbutic qualities of oranges and limes. He arrived on June 26, 1673, at Masulipatnam (now Machilipatnam), the earliest English settlement on the Coromandel coast, and sailing onwards from there to Madras, ultimately arrived at Bombay one year after leaving England.
In 1697 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1698 his "Abstract with Some Reflections on a New Account of East-India and Persia" was published in the Society"s transactions, the same year as his magnum opus, A new account of East-India and Persia.
Fryer died on March 31, 1733, at his Bread Street home in All Hallows parish, London. Fryer"s books provide contemporary accounts of Mughal India, southern India, and Persia, where he visited Isfahan and the southern parts of the country, with accurate observations in geology, meteorology, and natural history.
Royal Society.
