William Briggs, M.D. (died 1704), was famous for his “skill in difficult cases of the eye.”
Edward Tyson, M.D. (died 1708), wrote on anatomy; he was the Carus of Garth’s Dispensary, and the discoverer of “Tyson’s Glands.”
William Pitcairn, M.D. (1711-1791), was an accomplished botanist. He lived in the Upper Street, Islington, where he had a botanical garden five acres in extent, stocked with the scarcest and most valuable plants. He introduced into St. Bartholomew’s Hospital a much freer use of opium in the treatment of disease, and especially of fevers, than had hitherto been customary, and that with the greatest benefit to the patients.
Peter Shaw, M.D. (1694-1763), greatly facilitated the study of chemistry in England by his translations of the chemical works of Stahl and Boerhaave, as well as by his own works. He edited the works of Bacon and Boyle, and published a number of books on medicine and chemistry.
William Hunter, M.D. (1718-1783), was an earnest and devoted anatomist and obstetrician. He was a pupil of Cullen, and was so successful a practitioner that he expended £100,000 upon his house and anatomical collection, etc. The Hunterian Museum of the University of Glasgow was formed from this collection. The famous John Hunter was his younger brother.
Thomas Dimsdale, M.D. (1711-1800), a celebrated promoter of inoculation for small-pox, acquired a great reputation and immense wealth by the process. Catherine II. of Russia paid him enormous sums for successful inoculations, and gave him a barony.
William Heberden, M.D. (1710-1801), lectured on Materia Medica at Cambridge. Dr. Munk[1020] gives an interesting extract from one of Heberden’s lectures on Mithridatum and Theriaca, the famous classic medicines; he proves that the only poisons known to the ancients were hemlock, monk’s-hood, and those of venomous beasts, and that they had no antidotes for these. He says that the first accounts of powerful poisons concealed in seals or rings, poisonous vapours in gloves and letters, etc., are idle inventions of ignorant and superstitious persons.
Buffon (1707-1788) was the celebrated French naturalist to whom “we owe our first clear and practical connection of the distribution of animals with the geography of the globe.”
George Armstrong in 1769 opened the first children’s hospital in Europe; he was the physician who first devoted special attention to the diseases of children. Armstrong was a London man, and died 1781.
Joh. E. Gredring (1718-1775) was a German physician who was the first to investigate “the seat, cause, and diagnosis of insanity.”[1021]