First Title value, for Searching Meade, Richard Henry (1804 - 1899)

2024-04-29T22:12:38Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-08-01
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002700-E002799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374884374884
Occupation botanist Entomologist General surgeon
Details The son of the Rev Richard Meade, of Princes Risboro', Buckinghamshire; served his apprenticeship at the Bedford Infirmary and then went on to St Bartholomew's Hospital. On his 85th birthday he recalled his student days, his teachers, Sir William Lawrence, Earle, P M Latham, and his fellow-student, Sir James Paget, also his frequent successes with class examinations, "but never first when Paget was there". He started practice in London and was a Lecturer on Botany at Middlesex Hospital. All his life he was an ardent naturalist, and from this period became a recognized authority on entomology. In 1840 he succeeded to the practice of Dr William Sharp in Bradford. For sixteen years he was Surgeon to the Infirmary, and for thirty-five years Surgeon to the Lowmoor and Bowling Ironworks Companies. He was a skilful surgeon, gained a large consulting practice in the West Riding, and was mainly instrumental in starting the Bradford Medical Society, on several occasions acting as its President. In connection with entomology he was fond of recalling that at a meeting of the British Association at Leeds he read a paper on the nature and habits of certain spiders, which was the only paper ordered, on the motion of the President, Richard Owen, to be printed in extenso in the *Transactions*. He continued to contribute papers on entomology of great completeness, and such studies, with his books and specimens, and painting in water-colours, formed a congenial occupation and distraction in his declining years. It constituted the subject of bright conversation, together with reminiscences of some professional experience in pre-chloroform days. A good, sound practitioner and surgeon of the old school, of great experience and considerable acumen - such was his reputation when he retired from practice about four years before the close of his life. Whilst he retained his mental qualities, his general health failed rapidly for the last three months; he was cared for by two unmarried daughters. He died at Mount Royal, Bradford, on Dec 3rd, 1899.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002701
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Newport, George (1803 - 1854)

2024-04-29T22:12:38Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-08-29
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002800-E002899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374984374984
Occupation Entomologist General surgeon
Details The son of a wheelwright at Canterbury, where he was born on July 4th, 1803. He was first apprenticed to his father's trade, but becoming interested in insect life he was appointed curator of a museum of natural history established by Mr Masters, a nurseryman in the town, next apprenticed to William Henry Weekes, a surgeon of Sandwich, who was an enthusiast in chemistry and physics. He entered University College, then called the University of London, on Jan 16th, 1832. He was appointed House Surgeon to the Chichester Infirmary in April, 1835, by the influence of Sir John Forbes, MD, who was then the Physician and ever after remained his friend, and retained the post until January, 1837. He made frequent visits to Canterbury and its neighbourhood, more especially to Richborough, where he studied the habits of the humble-bee, the white cabbage butterfly, and the buff-tip moth. He proved too that in the generative system of the amphibia the impregnation of the ovum by the spermatozoon is not merely the result of contact but of penetration, and for this discovery he was awarded a Royal Medal in 1851 by the Royal Society, where he had been admitted a Fellow on March 26th, 1846. He also contributed valuable papers to the Transactions of the Linnean Society, of which he became a Fellow in 1857, and to the Entomological Society, of which he was President in 1844-1845. When he left Chichester, Newport settled in London at 30 Southwick Street to practise as a surgeon, but his scientific pursuits prevented success and he was given a Civil List pension of £100 a year in 1847. He seems never to have married, and he died at 55 Cambridge Street, Hyde Park, London, on April 7th, 1854, of a cold caught "in the marshy grounds of Shepherds Bush while procuring his annual supply of living animals for his physiological investigations." He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, where a granite monument was erected to his memory by the Fellows of the Royal and Linnean Societies. Newport, like his successor, W K Parker, subordinated his medical practice to his scientific interests. The genius of both lay in their unwearied patience, in their attention to detail, and in their faithful record of observed facts. He was a very skilful dissector and was able to draw equally well with his left and right hand. He concerned himself more particularly with the embryology and reproduction of the Insects and Amphibia, the economic value of his work being shown by the medal awarded to him by the Agricultural Society of Saffron Walden in 1838 for his essay on the turnip-fly. Publications:- Newport's paper on the "Impregnation of the Ovum in the Amphibia" is printed in the *Philosophical Trans*, 1851, cxli, 169. His catalogue of the Myriapoda in the British Museum appeared posthumously in 1856.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002801
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Entomologist

First Title value, for Searching Meade, Richard Henry (1804 - 1899)

First Title value, for Searching Newport, George (1803 - 1854)