William Heberden

William Heberden FRS (13 August 1710 – 17 May 1801) was an English physician.

Life

He was born in London, where he received the early part of his education at St Saviour's Grammar School.^[1] At the end of 1724 he was sent to St John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship, around 1730,^[1][2] became Master of Arts in 1732, and took the degree of MD in 1739.^[2] He remained at Cambridge nearly ten years longer practicing medicine, and gave an annual course of lectures on materia medica. In 1746 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London; and two years later he settled in London, where he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1749, and enjoyed an extensive medical practice for more than thirty years.^[3][1]

At the age of seventy-two he partially retired, spending his summers at a house he had taken at Windsor, but he continued to practice in London during the winter for some years longer. In 1778 he was made an honorary member of the Paris Royal Society of Medicine.^[3][1]

In 1766, he recommended to the College of Physicians the first design of the Medical Transactions, in which he proposed to collect together such observations as might have occurred to any of their body, and were likely to illustrate the history or cure of diseases. The plan was soon adopted, and three volumes (were) successively laid before the public.^[4]

His tomb in Windsor Parish Church is by John Bacon.^[5]

Works

William Heberden, who was also a classical scholar, published several papers in the

are named after William Heberden senior, who included a chapter on arthritis in his Commentaries on The History and Cure of Diseases.

Wives and children

He married twice. First to Elizabeth Martin in 1752, with whom he had one son Thomas (1754–1843), later Canon of Exeter, but she died in 1754. He remarried to Mary Wollaston, daughter of Francis Wollaston (1694–1774), and had a further eight children, of whom only two survived their father, one being William Heberden the Younger (1767–1845), who followed his father into medicine, and the other Mary (1763–1832) who married the Rev George Leonard Jenyns.

References

Wikisource has original works by or about:
William Heberden

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} Heberden, William (1806). "William Haberden (biography)". in Commentaries on The History and Cure of Diseases (3rd ed.). London: T. Payne. pp. iii–vi. Retrieved 30 November 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)
2. ^ ^{a b} "Heberden, William (HBRN724W)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
3. ^ ^{a b c}  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Heberden, William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 167.
4. ^ William Haberden (biography) (1806), pp.iv-v
5. ^ Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851 by Rupert Gunnis
6. ^ Heberden, William (1807). Commentarii de morborum historia et curatione. London: T. Payne. pp. iii–vi. Retrieved 30 November 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)
7. ^ Heberden, William (1818). Commentaries on The History and Cure of Diseases (From the last English ed.). London: T. Payne. Retrieved 30 November 2009. Full text at Internet Archive (archive.org)

External links

Media related to William Heberden at Wikimedia Commons