Edwin Lankester

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edwin Lankester

Edwin Lankester (born April 23, 1814 in Melton , Suffolk , † October 30, 1874 in Margate ) was a British doctor , naturalist and health care reformer . His son is the zoologist Ray Lankester .

Live and act

Edwin Lankester was a son of the builder William Lankester (1791-1818) and his wife Susan, nee Taylor. When Lankester was four years old, his father died. Up to the age of twelve he received a rudimentary school education. In 1826 his mother became the landlady of the Royal Oak Inn in Woodbridge . There Lankesters began an apprenticeship with the doctor Samuel Gissing, which lasted until 1832. In 1833 he became assistant to Thomas Spurgeon in Saffron Walden , who was very concerned with the education of Lankester. With the financial support of some joy, he studied medicine at University College London from 1834 . There he studied botany with John Lindley and comparative anatomy with Robert Edmond Grant . In 1837 he passed the exams at the Royal College of Surgeons and received a license from the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries . Through Lindley's mediation, Lankester received a position as personal physician and teacher with Charles Wood's family of Campsall Hall, Doncaster . There he wrote his book published in 1842 about the mineral springs of Askern . In 1839 Lankester stayed in Heidelberg for six months . There he learned the German language and graduated as Medicinae Baccalaureus. On his return he settled in London, lecturing and writing for the Daily News , mainly articles in support of Thomas Wakley's medical reforms , and the Athenaeum . He met Charles Dickens , Douglas William Jerrold and the botanist Arthur Henfrey (1820-1859) know and was one of the founding members of the Red Lion Club founded by Edward Forbes in 1839 . From 1839 to 1864 Lankester was secretary of Section D, responsible for botany and zoology, of the British Association for the Advancement of Science . In 1840 he became a member of the Linnean Society of London . From 1842 until at least 1856, Lankester was a lecturer in St George’s Medical School . In 1844 he became secretary of the newly formed Ray Society . For this he published The Memorials of John Ray (1845). On December 18, 1845, Lankester was finally accepted as a member of the Royal Society .

On July 3, 1845, he married Phebe Pope (1825-1900), the eldest daughter of Samuel Pope from Highbury . Lankester had eleven children with her. Their oldest son is the zoologist Ray Lankester .

In 1850 Lankester was appointed professor of natural sciences at the newly founded New College London . He held this position until 1872.

He has contributed to numerous encyclopedias , including the Penny Cyclopaedia and the English Cyclopaedia, and popular science treatises such as The Natural History of Plants Yielding Food published in 1845 . Lankester translated Matthias Jacob Schleiden's Basic Features of Scientific Botany (1849) and Friedrich Küchenmeister's The Parasites Occurring in and on the Body of Living Humans (1855) into English. From 1852 to 1871 he was co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science . In 1859 and 1860 he served as President of the Microscopical Society of London and in 1865 as President of the Quekett Microscopical Club . In 1859 Lankester published the first edition of his book Half Hours with the Microscope , which quickly became popular. In the same year he was appointed Botany Examiner for the UK Government’s Science and Art Department for New Teacher Training. The previous year, Lankester had succeeded Lyon Playfair as superintendent of the food collection at the South Kensington Museum . He held this position until 1862. He was a juror at the world exhibitions of 1851 and 1862 .

During the London cholera outbreak of 1854 Lankester made it possible for the doctor John Snow to conduct an epidemiological study. He also examined water samples himself with the microscope. From 1856 he was Medical Officer of Health of St James's . As a member of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association , he played a significant role in its transformation into the British Medical Association and in the preparation of the Medical Act of 1858 . On July 9, 1862, Lankester was named coroner for central Middlesex . He published his annual reports in the Journal of Social Science , which he founded in 1865 and edited until his death .

Lankester died of diabetes and was buried in Hampstead .

Dedication names

In his honor, John Lindley named the Lankesteria plant genus from the acanthus family in 1845 .

Fonts (selection)

Books

  • An account of Askern and its mineral springs; together with a sketch of the natural history, and a brief topography, of the immediate neighborhood . J. Churchill, London 1842 ( online )
  • The Natural History of Plants Yielding Food . 1845
  • The aquavivarium, fresh and marine; being an account of the principles and objects involved in the domestic culture of water plants and animals . Robert Hardwicke, London 1856 ( online ).
  • A guide to the food collection in the South Kensington Museum . 1st edition, [George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode], London 1859.
  • Half-hours with the microscope; being a popular guide to the use of the microscope as a means of amusement and instruction . 1st edition, Robert Hardwicke, London [1859] ( online ).
  • The uses of animals in relation to the industry of man. Being a course of lectures delivered at the South Kensington museum . R. Hardwicke, London [1862].
  • Cholera: what is it? and how to prevent it . G. Routledge & Sons, 1866 ( online ).
  • Good food. What it is, and how to get it . G. Routledge, London / New York 1867.
  • A school manual of health. Being an introduction to the elementary principles of physiology . Groombridge & Sons, London 1868.
  • Vegetable physiology. In a series of easy lessons . Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, London [1868].
  • On food. Being lectures delivered at the South Kensington museum . R. Hardwicke, London 1873 ( online ).

As editor

  • Memorials of John Ray, consisting of his life . Ray Society, London 1846 (online) .
  • The correspondence of John Ray, consisting of selections from the philosophical letters published by Dr. Derham and original letters of John Ray in the collection of the British Museum . Ray Society, London 1848 ( online ).
  • William McGillivray: The Natural History of Dee Side and Braemar . London 1855 ( online ).
  • Haydn's dictionary of popular medicine and hygiene; comprising all possible self-aids in accidents and disease: being a companion for the traveler, emigrant, and clergyman, as well as for the heads of all families and institutions . 1st edition, Moxon, London 1874.

As translator

  • Matthias Jacob Schleiden: Principles of scientific botany, or, Botany as an inductive science . Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, London 1849 ( online ).
  • Friedrich Küchenmeister: On animal and vegetable parasites of the human body, a manual of their natural history, diagnosis, and treatment . Sydenham Society, London 1857 ( online ).

proof

literature

  • Mary P. English: Lankester, Edwin (1814-1874). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Volume 32: Knox-Lear. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861382-2 , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), Last updated: 2004, accessed October 1, 2012.
  • Mary P. English: Victorian values: the life and times of Dr Edwin Lankester, MD, FRS . Biopress, 1990. ISBN 0-948737-14-X
  • Joseph Frank Payne: The Late Dr. Lankester . In: Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science . 2nd episode, Volume 15, 1875, pp. 59-62 ( online ).
  • [Anonymous]: Obituary. Edwin Lankester, MD, MRCP, FRS In: The Lancet . Volume 104, Number 2671, November 7, 1874, pp. 676-677 ( doi: 10.1016 / S0140-6736 (02) 46266-6 ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Rosemary Ashton: Victorian Bloomsbury. Yale University Press, New Haven 2012, p. 57; Lionel Rose: The Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Britain, 1800-1939. Routledge, London / Boston 1986, p. 62.
  2. ↑ Edwards's botanical register . Volume 31, 1845, p. 86 ( online ).

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Lankester, Edwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physician, naturalist and health care reformer
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Melton , Suffolk
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1874
Place of death Margate