 After his death his spiritual diary was published, and the botanist William Henry Harvey named the genus Acanthaceae "Ruttya" after him.He was born of Quaker parents, on 25 December 1698, and after medical education at the University of Leyden, where he graduated M.D.in 1723 and read a thesis 'De Diarrhœa', settled in Dublin as a physician in 1724.