Robert James (medic)

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Portrait of Robert James with his three volumes of A medicinal dictionary, including physic, surgery, anatomy, chimistry and botany (1743–1745) in the foreground

Robert James (born August 23, 1703 in Kinvaston ( Staffordshire ), † March 23, 1776 in London ) was an English doctor.

Live and act

Robert James was born near Kinvaston to a British major Edward James and his wife Frances Clarke, a sister of Sir Robert Clarke (1683-1746). He received his early education at Lichfield Grammar School , where he met fellow student Samuel Johnson .

He then attended St. John's College, Oxford , where he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts on July 5, 1726 . As a result, he was admitted to the Royal College of Physicians in London as an extra-licentiate (i.e. without having passed the exam ) (see also licentiate ) on January 12, 1727/1728 , which he then obtained in May of the same year with a doctor of medicine left. The document was issued by a royal mandate of Cambridge .

He practiced in Sheffield , Lichfield and Birmingham before settling permanently in London . On June 25, 1765 he was finally accepted as a licentiate at the Royal College of Physicians .

James' most notable publication was his three-volume dictionary, A medicinal dictionary, including physic, surgery, anatomy, chimistry and botany (1743–1745), for which his friend Samuel Johnson kind of wrote the project plan, as well as some of the articles in the dictionary, especially at the beginning of the alphabet, wrote, among other things, about the terms Actuarius and Aretaeus of Cappadocia .

This work was translated into French by Denis Diderot , François-Vincent Toussaint and Marc-Antoine Eidous between 1746 and 1748 and proofread, corrected and edited by the French doctor Julien Busson .

For his part, Robert James was also active as a translator, so he translated works by the Italian doctor and botanist Prosper Alpinus , the doctor Simon Pauli the Younger and the work of Bernardino Ramazzini, one of the first occupational medicine texts, from Latin into English.

His fever powder , which he patented in 1747, was one of the most successful medicines of the 18th century. He dealt with the feverish diseases and with what is now known as the viral infectious disease of rabies . A treatise on "dog rabies" and its treatment with mercury was made available to the public in 1736 in the Philosophical Transactions .

Fonts (selection)

author

  • A Medicinal Dictionary, Including Physic, Surgery, Anatomy, Chymistry, and Botany, in All Their Branches Relative to Medicine; Together with a History of Drugs, an Account of Their Various Preparations, Combinations, and Uses; and an Introductory Preface, Tracing the Progress of Physic and Explaining the Theories Which Have Principally Prevail'd in All Ages of the World . 1743-45. Volume I (1743) A - Calculus (digital copy) ; Volume II (1745) Caldar - Meum (digitized version ) ; Volume III (1745) N - Zythos (digitized version )
    • Dictionnaire universel de médecine ... traduit de l'anglais par Mrs Diderot, Eidous et Toussaint . Briasson, David l'aîné, Durand, Paris, Volume I (1746) A - Angiglossi (digitized) ; Volume II (1746) Angina-Carcinoma (digital copy) ; Volume III (1747) Cardamantice - Fyada (digitized version ) ; Volume IV (1747) Gabal - Oculista (digitized version ) ; Volume V (1748) Oculus - Sudamina (digitized version ) ; Volume VI (1748) Sudor - Zythos (digitized version )
  • A Treatise on the Gout and Rheumatism . 1745.
  • A Dissertation on Fevers and Inflammatory Distempers . 1748.
  • A Treatise on Canine Madness . 1760.
  • A Vindication of the Fever Powder, with a Short Treatise on the Disorders of Children . 1778.

Translations

literature

  • AT Hazen: Samuel Johnson and Dr. Robert James . In Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine , Vol. 4 (1936), June, pp. 455-465, ISSN  0007-5140
  • Lulu Stine: Dr. Robert James, 1705-1776 . In: Bulletin of the Medical Library Association , Vol. 29 (1941), Issue 4 (June 1941), pp. 187-198, PMC 233462 (free full text)
  • James Doolittle: Robert James, Diderot, and the Encyclopédie . In: Modern Language Notes , Vol. 71 (1956), pp. 431-434, ISSN  0149-6611
  • Lawrence C. McHenry, Jr .: Dr. Samuel Johnson's Medical Biographies . In: Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences , Vol. 14 (1959), Issue 7, pp. 298-310, ISSN  0022-5045
  • OM Brack, Jr. and Thomas Kaminski: Johnson, James, and the "Medicinal Dictionary" . In: Modern Philology , Vol. 81 (1984), No. 4, pp. 378-400, ISSN  0026-8232
  • John Wiltshire: Samuel Johnson in the medical world. The doctor and the patient . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991, ISBN 0-521-38326-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Today King Edward VI School (Lichfield)
  2. ↑ Walter Jackson Bate: Samuel Johnson. A biography . Counterpoint Publ., Berkeley, Calif. 2009, ISBN 978-1-58243-524-4 , p. 219 (unchanged reprint of the New York 1975 edition).
  3. ↑ See also: Selected Writings by OM Brack, Jr. and Thomas Kaminski: Johnson, James, and the "Medicinal Dictionary" . In: Modern Philology , Vol. 81 (1984), No. 4, pp. 378-400, ISSN  0026-8232 , JSTOR 437053

Web links

personal data
SURNAME James, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English doctor
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1703
PLACE OF BIRTH Kinvaston ( Staffordshire )
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1776
Place of death London