Edward Nathaniel Bancroft

Edward Nathaniel Bancroft, M.D. (1772–1842) was an English physician, botanist, and zoologist, known for his writings on yellow fever.

Life

Bancroft was the son of

In 1795 he was appointed a physician to the armed forces. He served in the Windward Islands, in Portugal, in the Mediterranean, and with Abercromby's expedition to Egypt in 1801. On his return to England he proceeded to the degree of M.D. in 1804, and began to practise as a physician in London, retaining half-pay rank in the army.

He joined the

.

In 1811 he gave up practice in London, owing to ill-health, and resumed his full-pay rank as physician to the forces, proceeding to Jamaica. He remained there for the rest of his life (thirty-one years), his ultimate rank being that of deputy inspector-general of army hospitals. He died at Kingston on 18 September 1842, in his seventy-first year; a mural tablet to his memory was placed in the cathedral church of Kingston 'by the physicians and surgeons of Jamaica'.

Like many naval physicians of his time, Dr Bancroft was a

Works

Bancroft's earliest writings were two polemical pamphlets—"A Letter to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry, containing Animadversions on the Fifth Report", London, 1808, and "Exposure of Misrepresentations by Dr. McGrigor and Dr. Jackson to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry", London, 1808—on proposed changes in the army medical department in which he contended for the then existing artificial distinctions between physician to the forces and regimental surgeon, and for the precedence of the former. His opponents in the controversy were two army medical officers,

. McGrigor charged Bancroft with want of accuracy, want of candour, and partiality. Jackson accused him of being "presumptuous in his professional rank, which he conceives to be superior to actual knowledge."

Bancroft's best title to be remembered in medicine is his "Essay on the Disease called Yellow Fever, with Observations concerning Febrile Contagion, Typhus Fever, Dysentery, and the Plague, partly delivered as the

. Murchison stated that "the doctrine of Bancroft was generally adopted, without investigation of the facts upon which it was founded."

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Bancroft, Edward Nathaniel". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

External links

• Edward Nathaniel Bancroft's An essay on the disease called yellow fever: with observations concerning febrile contagion, typhus fever, dysentery, and the plague (Philadelphia, 1820).