Matthew Dobson (physician)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Matthew Dobson (1732–1784) was an English physician and experimental

physiologist. He is now remembered for his work on diabetes.[1][2]

Life and career

His parents were Joshua Dobson, a nonconformist minister at Lydgate,

Edinburgh University, where he graduated MD in 1756. From the end of the decade he worked as a doctor in Liverpool.[1][3]

Dobson worked with

Royal Academy's foundation in 1768. After a slow start, a first exhibition was held in 1774.[4] (The 1810 foundation of the Liverpool Academy of Arts was in the nature of a fresh beginning.)[5] In 1770 he was appointed physician to Liverpool Infirmary, as successor to John Kennion.[1] He had a house in Harrington Street. When William Enfield wrote his History of Leverpool [sic] (1772), Dobson contributed to it.[6]

About 1776 Dobson gave up his Liverpool practice, which was taken over by Joseph Brandreth.[7] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1778,[8] and became head of the Liverpool Medical Library in 1779.[9] In 1780, suffering from poor health, he retired to Bath, Somerset.[1] He joined the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, established in 1781.[3]

Dobson was physician, and eventually confidant to Hester Thrale.[10] He played a key role in her second marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, persuading her daughter Queeney to accept Piozzi, whose banishment from the household he said was life-threatening for her mother.[11]

Dobson died in Bath on 25 July 1784, incidentally on the day of Hester Thrale's second marriage,[12] and was buried at Walcot.[1] A memorial was put up in Toxteth Park chapel.[6]

Study group

Dobson was part of a medical study group for his local area that met on a quarterly basis. John Aikin of Chester and Warrington took part, with John Bostock, Thomas Percival and John Haygarth.[13] Dobson provided information on influenza in Liverpool for the researches of Haygarth, a classmate from Edinburgh.[14][15]

This group was closely associated with Joseph Priestley, Richard Price and radical politics.[16] It also cooperated as part of Priestley's attempt to develop "pneumatic therapy": the medical use of newly isolated gases.[17]

Medical work

In his student days, Dobson worked with

diabetic diet.[1]

In 1775 Dobson experimented with a heated room as treatment, a line of research already explored by

Philosophical Transactions.[24]

In 1779 Dobson reported success in using "fixed air" (

Norwich Hospital.[28] In fact he made a wider survey of hospitals and their admissions in the 1779 edition, Norwich having the highest proportion of admitted patients for bladder stone. The figures were reprinted by Leonhard Ludwig Finke during the 1790s.[29]

Family

The Octagon Chapel, Liverpool, pen-and-ink sketch

In 1759 Dobson married Susannah Dobson (née Dawson), a translator from French. They had three children, at least two of whom were baptised at the Octagon Chapel, Liverpool. Dobson was an associate of Thomas Bentley in the construction of the chapel; and Nicholas Clayton, a classmate from Glasgow, was the first minister.[1]

Notes

  1. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55275. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ISBN 978-1-118-53076-4
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-65952-9
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  4. ^ Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (1853). Proceedings and Papers. Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. pp. 71–2. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  5. ^ artbiogs.co.uk, Liverpool Academy of Arts.
  6. ^ a b James Allanson Picton, Memorials of Liverpool: historical and topographical, including a history of the Dock Estate vol. 2 (1875), pp. 132–133; archive.org.
  7. ^ Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1886). "Brandreth, Joseph" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 6. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  8. ^ Royal Society database, Dobson; Matthew (- 1784).
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-90-04-17250-0
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  10. ISBN 978-0-7546-5599-2
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  11. ISBN 978-1-84529-449-6
    .
  12. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22309. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  13. ISBN 978-1-139-50309-9
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  14. JSTOR 4051039
    .
  15. ISBN 978-0-521-38235-9
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  16. S2CID 153339656.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2024 (link
    )
  17. ISBN 978-0-226-30206-5
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  18. ^ Roberts, Jacob (2015). "Sickening sweet". Distillations. 1 (4): 12–15. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  19. ISBN 978-0-387-56208-7
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  20. JSTOR 20301128
    .
  21. ISBN 978-1-118-53076-4
    . Retrieved 20 June 2013.
  22. S2CID 31867510
    .
  23. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21272. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  24. JSTOR 106216
    .
  25. ISBN 978-0-521-34773-0
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  26. ^ Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1889). "Falconer, William (1744-1824)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 18. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  27. ISBN 978-0-87169-257-3
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  28. ISBN 978-0-7735-7247-8
    . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  29. ^ A. Batty Shaw, The Norwich School of Lithotomy (PDF) at pp. 236–237.
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