William Clowes (surgeon)
William Clowes | |
---|---|
Born | c. 1543/1544 |
Died | 1604 | (aged 59–60 or 60–61)
Occupation | Surgeon |
Parent(s) | Thomas Clowes and Emma Beauchamp |
William Clowes the Elder (c. 1543/1544 – 1604) was an early English surgeon. He published case reports in which he advocated the application of powders and ointments. He also published one of the first reports in English on how to reduce a femur.
Life
William Clowes was the son of Thomas and grandson of Nicholas Clowes, both of
After the
In May 1585, he resigned his surgeoncy at St. Bartholomew's, having been commanded to go to the Low Countries with
After this war Clowes returned to London, and on 18 July 1588 was admitted an assistant on the court of the Barber-Surgeons' Company, and immediately after served in the fleet which defeated the Spanish Armada. He kept his military surgical chest by him, with the bear and ragged staff of his old commander on the lid, but was never called to serve in war again, and after being appointed surgeon to the queen, and spending several years in successful practice in London, retired to a country house at Plaistow in Essex. He died in 1604, before the beginning of August. He succeeded in handing on some court influence to his son William Clowes the younger, who was made surgeon to Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales a few years after his father's death.[1]
Works
The books of Clowes were the leading surgical writings of the Elizabethan age. They are all in English, sometimes a little prolix, but never obscure. He had read a great deal, and says that he had made Calmathius 'as it were a day-starre, or christallin cleare looking-glasse.' Tagalthius, Guido, Vigo, and Quercetanus are his other chief text-books, and he had read seventeen English authors on medicine. But he trusted to his own observation, and a spirit of inquiry pervades his pages which makes them altogether different from the compilations from authorities which are to be found in the surgical works of his contemporaries Baker and Banester. In 1579 he published his first book, De Morbo Gallico. It is mainly a compilation, and his best observations are to be found here and there in his later works.[1]
His Prooved Practise for all young Chirurgians (London, 1591) and Treatise on the Struma (London, 1602) are full of pictures of daily life in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was called to a northern clothier whose leg was broken by robbers two miles outside London; to another man whose injury was received by the breaking down of a gallery at a bear-baiting; another patient was a serving-man whose leg had been pierced by an arrow as he walked near the butts; a fifth was one of
He did not conceal that he had secret remedies — 'my unguent,’ 'my balm,’ 'of my collection' — but he never made bargains for cures, and never touted for patients as some surgeons did at that time. He gives amusing accounts of his encounters with quacks, and prides himself on always acting as became 'a true artist.' He figures a barber's basin among his instruments of surgery, and says he was a good embalmer of dead bodies, and knew well from practice how to roll cerecloths[1]
Besides ready colloquial English, he shows a wide acquaintance with proverbs, and a fair knowledge of French and of Latin. His books were all printed in London in black letter and quarto, and are:
- De Morbo Gallico, 1579. Treatise of the French or Spanish Pocks, by John Almenar, 1591, was a new edition.
- A Prooved Practise for all young Chirurgians concerning Burnings with Gunpowder, and Woundes made with Gunshot, Sword, Halbard, Pike, Launce, or such other,’ 1591. A Profitable and Necessary Book of Observations, 1596, was a new edition.
- A Right Frutefull and Approved Treatise for the Artificiall Cure of the Struma or Evill, cured by the Kinges and Queenes of England, 1602.
In 1637 reprints of his De Morbo Gallico and Profitable Book of Observations were published. Letters by him are printed in Banester's Antidotarie (1589), and in Peter Lowe's Surgery (1597). [1]
Notes
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Moore, Norman (1887). "Clowes, William (1540?-1604)". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 132–134.
External links
- Murray, I. G. (2004). "Clowes, William (1543/4–1604)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/5716. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- "Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery" (PDF).[dead link]
- "A Genealogical Table in Fourteen Sheets". The Fourteen Sheets. 1924. Retrieved 22 June 2011.