Richard Mead

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Richard Mead 1673-1754

Richard Mead (born August 11, 1673 in Stepney , † February 16, 1754 in London ) was an English doctor.

Live and act

Richard Mead was born the seventh of fifteen children of the Presbyterian pastor Matthew Mead (c. 1630–1699) in Stepney near London. In 1683 the family had to leave London and went into exile in Holland. Richard Mead completed his basic studies ("humanités") in Utrecht with Johann Georg Graevius for three years and then studied medicine in Leyden , where he attended lectures by the Iatromechanic Archibald Pitcairne and the botanist Paul Hermann . In Padua he received his doctorate in medicine and philosophy in 1695, then stayed in Naples and Rome .

In 1696 he returned to England and settled as a doctor, first in his hometown of Stepney, then in London. In 1704 the Royal Society accepted him as a member, in 1707 he became its vice-president. Admitted to the College of London Physicians in 1716, he became a physician at St Thomas' Hospital in London the following year and a physician to the King in 1727 .

In 1722 colleague John Freind was MP from Launceston, Cornwall, in the House of Commons . After he fell out with the minister, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on the pretext that he had favored the exiled Stuarts . After Freind was incarcerated for six months, the minister fell ill and asked Mead for help, which Mead only promised after the minister had arranged for Freind to be released.

In scientific terms , Mead initially paid homage to iatromechanical theories and later, as an eclectic, consistently represented vitalism , iatrochemistry and iatromechanics. In the clinic, he oriented himself towards Georg Ernst Stahl and Thomas Sydenham .

Mead's work Medica sacra was placed on the index of forbidden books by the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1754 - four years after its publication .

Works (selection)

  • A mechanical account of poisons in several essays. Ralph Smith, London 1702 edition 1708 (digitized version)
  • De imperio solis ac lunae in corpora humana, et morbis inde oriundis. London 1704 (digitized version)
  • A short discourse concerning pestilential contagion, and the methods to be used to prevent it. Sam. Buckley & Ralph Smith, London 1720 (digitized version) This work was written on the occasion of the plague epidemic in Marseille. In the context of the then newly flared up controversy between contagionists and anti- contagionists , Mead declared himself a supporter of the contagionists.
  • A discourse on the plague. A. Millar & J. Brindley, London 9th edition 1744 (digitized)
  • Medica sacra: sive, de morbis insignioribus, qui in bibliis memorantur, commentarius. Petrus Mortier, Amsterdam 1749 (digitized version)
  • Monita et praecepta medica. John Brindley, London 1751 (digitized)
    • Gerhard Andreas Müller (translator). Richardi Mead's Medical Memoirs and Teachings. Johann Gottlieb Garbe, Frankfurt am Main 1759 (digitized version)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mead, Richard. In: Jesús Martínez de Bujanda , Marcella Richter: Index des livres interdits: Index librorum prohibitorum 1600–1966. Médiaspaul, Montréal 2002, ISBN 2-89420-522-8 , p. 602 (French, digitized ).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Mead, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English doctor
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1673
PLACE OF BIRTH Stepney
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1754
Place of death London