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Resource Name:
Resource Type:
External Resource
Metadata
Asset Name:
E001912 - French, John George (1804 - 1887)
Title:
French, John George (1804 - 1887)
Author:
Royal College of Surgeons of England
Identifier:
RCS: E001912
Publisher:
London : Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date:
2012-01-25
Description:
Obituary for French, John George (1804 - 1887), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Language:
English
Source:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Full Name:
French, John George
Date of Birth:
13 October 1804
Place of Birth:
Bow, Middlesex, UK
Date of Death:
4 December 1887
Place of Death:
London, UK
Occupation:
Titles/Qualifications:
MRCS June 8th 1827

FRCS June 2nd 1853

LSA 1826
Details:
Born at Bow, Middlesex, on October 13th, 1804, the son of the Rev William French, Rector of Vange, Essex. He received his early education at Christ's Hospital and was then apprenticed to Mr Morrell, a well-known medical practitioner at Worthing. Later he was entered as a student at Guy's Hospital, where his teacher in surgery was Sir Astley Cooper. In 1827 he was for a brief period engaged in practice in Henrietta Street, Brunswick Square, and in 1827 was appointed Surgeon to the Workhouse Infirmary of St James's, Westminster. He held this post for forty-two years. For a great part of the time his duties not only embraced the charge of the workhouse and its infirmary, the latter including some sixty or eighty beds, but he had also, on the order of the relieving officer, to attend and provide drugs for the sick poor dwelling in various parts of the parish. The entire medical charge of the paupers was in his hands. French, at once able and energetic, thus gained a very wide experience, and added greatly thereto during the cholera epidemics which swept London from 1831 onwards. From 1830-1842 he lived in Marshall Street, Golden Square, and in the latter year removed to 41 Great Marlborough Street, where he continued to reside until he resigned his post in 1872. The year 1831 marked the first outbreak of cholera in England. In October of that year the disease arrived in Sunderland from Hamburg. When the epidemic spread to London, cholera hospitals were formed in many parishes, and French was appointed medical officer of the hospital in St James's. He threw himself into the duty with ardour, and employed the opportunities for the clinical study of the disease to such good purpose that a book published by him on the subject in 1835 attracted much attention from the philosophical style in which he had treated it. In the autumn of 1848 the disease reappeared and persisted during 1849. Again appearing in 1853, the disease was signalized by an outbreak in the Soho district in the summer of 1854, which from its sudden and terrible mortality exceeded all experience of epidemic fatality in the metropolis since the time of the Great Plague. During this visitation French became acquainted with John Snow (*Dict Nat Biog*), whose discovery of the conveyance of cholera by drinking-water, noted in 1849 in reference to epidemics in South London, was confirmed by Snow's investigations in the Soho outbreak, which he traced with unerring sagacity to a pump in Broad Street. French, who at first, like everyone else, was very sceptical as to the soundness of the proposition, became completely convinced by the demonstration afforded in this epidemic, and a most ardent promulgator of Snow's views. French was viewed as an authority on cholera, a subject which greatly attracted him to the last; but he was also an able and popular family practitioner and a good surgeon. He had many opportunities for operating in his public appointment, and was among the first to excise the hip-joint, in accordance with the teaching of his friend Sir William Fergusson (qv) and of Mr Jones, of Jersey. In 1862 he proposed at the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society to treat carbuncle by a subcutaneous incision of its base, a plan from which, though little recognized by his colleagues, he obtained very good results. French grew very deaf in advanced old age, but retained a certain air of the old regime. To the day before he died he was in full possession of his mental and most of his physical faculties. He was bright and genial, a great reader of philosophical as well as medical literature, a lover of music and art, a keen sportsman. His tall, well-set figure, endowed as it was during the greatest part of his career with a quite exceptional activity, was a familiar object for many years in the hunting field, where he was amongst the most fearless of riders' and a great lover of horses. He overflowed with animal spirits and possessed much humour; consequently his circle of friends was large, till, as he grew to a great age, death began inevitably to isolate him. He died suddenly on December 4th, 1887, at his residence, 10 Cunningham Place, NW, and was buried at Paddington Cemetery, Willesden Lane. He never married. Publications: *A Letter addressed to the Central Board of Health, written with the view of establishing rational principles for the Treatment of Cholera: and showing the danger of the mode of practice at present generally followed*, 8vo, London, 1882. *The Nature of Cholera Investigated*, 8vo, London, 1885; 2nd ed, "With a Supplemental Chapter on Treatment, addressed to Junior Practitioners", 8vo, London, 1854. *On Contagion in reference to Typhus Fever and Asiatic Cholera*, 8vo, London, 1848. (Reprint.) "On the Subcutaneous Treatment of Boils and Carbuncles." - *Proc Roy Med-Chir Soc*, 1862, iv, 129.
Rights:
Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England
Collection:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format:
Obituary
Format:
Asset
Asset Path:
Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001900-E001999
Media Type:
Unknown