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Dr. John de Sequeyra (b. c. 1712 Lisbon, d. 1795 Williamsburg, Virginia) was born into a Portuguese Jewish family. He moved to Virginia in 1745 and excelled in the practice of medicine. He became the first visiting physician of the Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg.

Family and early life
John de Sequeyra, alias João de Sequeira, was born in Lisbon around 1712 into a New Christian family from Rio de Janeiro. His father was Francisco Machado de Sequeira (later Abraham de Sequeira Machado), a physician who was arrested in Rio de Janeiro in 1706 and taken to Lisbon two years later. His Inquisition's trial lasted until June 1709. Francisco Machado de Sequeira moved to London in the early 1730s, where he was circumcised and took a Jewish name, Abraham de Sequeira Machado. Sequeira Machado became a member of Bevis Marks Synagogue in London.

Medical career
Sequeyra studied medicine in Holland beginning in 1736 and received his degree in 1739 from the University of Leiden with a dissertation entitled "De Peripneumonia vera", which he dedicated to the his older brother "Joseph Henry de Siqueyra, M.D., physician to the Portuguese in the East Indies and chief physicist to the Viceroy of Goa".

In 1745, he moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, where he practiced medicine. Between 1745 and 1781 he compiled a manuscript entitled "Diseases in Virginia." He was a physician who attended about 85 households during a smallpox epidemic of 1747/8.

In 1769, Colonel George Washington, as he was known then, frequently called in Dr. Sequeyra to treat his stepdaughter "Patsy," daughter of Martha Park Custis. Patsy suffered from increasingly debilitating epileptic seizures which eventually led to her death.

In 1773, the first insane asylum in the 13 colonies, the Hospital for the Maintenance of Idiots, Lunatics, and Persons of Insane or Disordered Minds (later Eastern State Hospital), was built in Williamsburg, Virginia, and it remains in operation to this day. Dr. John de Sequeyra was the first visiting physician attached to the facility. In 1774, he became one of the directors of the hospital. So accomplished in caring for the residents, was Dr. Sequeyra, that when he retired in 1795 it took two doctors to back-fill his position.

Tomatoes
John Hill once wrote – "Those who are us'd to eat with the Portuguese Jews know the value of it"; he was speaking of the tomato. John Custis IV, a Williamsburg resident, sent a letter to Peter Collinson, in 1741, inquiring about this thing called a "tomato". Tomatoes made their way to Colonial America by way of the West Indies Slave Trade – it was a staple food of the slaves who learned to discern the poisonous varieties from the edible varieties.

Thomas Jefferson himself informs us that introduction of the tomato as an edible fruit is due to the work of Dr. John de Sequeyra.