William Austin (medic)

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William Austin (born December 28, 1754 in Wotton-under-Edge , Gloucestershire , † January 21, 1793 ) was a British medic and surgeon , who worked as a kind of polymath with many other topics, including mathematics .

Life

Austin came from a family of tailors and clothes dealers, learned classical languages ​​at the grammar school in his hometown and studied from 1773 at Oxford University (Wadham College), where he first studied Hebrew, then botany and medicine. In 1776 he received his bachelor's degree and became an assistant to the orientalist Joseph White (1745-1814), where he also studied Arabic. In 1779 he was in London for clinical training at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he learned from the surgeon Percival Pott . He then went back to Oxford, received his Magister Artium (MA) in 1780, his Bachelor of Medicine (MB) in 1782 and his doctorate in Medicine (MD) in 1783.

In 1781 he published a commentary on the first six books of Euclid's Elements , which also gave him a reputation as a mathematician. During the absence of the Savilian Professor of Geometry John Smith (1721–1797), he lectured in mathematics. Smith was actually a medical doctor too, teaching mostly anatomy and chemistry. Austin was a full-time physician at this time in Oxford and was also a doctor at the Radcliffe Maternity Hospital. In 1786 he became professor of chemistry at Oxford, but in the same year he moved to London to work as a doctor at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and held the first regular chemistry lectures at this teaching hospital. In addition, he built a prosperous practice in London.

In 1787 he became a Fellow of the College of Physicians and in 1790 gave their Goulstonian Lectures on stone cutting on internal organs (which he generally advised against because of the dangerousness of the operation), which was published as a book in 1791.

He realized that the deposits in the arteries in arteriosclerosis contained calcium, but the joint deposits in gout did not.

He is said to have published short mathematical treatises and wrote sermons (not in print).

He was married twice and had four children from his second marriage.

Fonts (selection)

  • An Examination of the First Six Books of Euclid's Elements 1781
  • Heavy inflammable air, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1788, 1789
  • A Treatise on the Origin and Component Parts of the Stone in the Urinary Bladder . W. Bulmer and Co., London 1791 (Goulstonian Lectures) ( Archives )

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Earle was a fellow surgeon who published a lithotomy defense in response to Austin's somber description of its prospect.
personal data
SURNAME Austin, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British medic and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1754
PLACE OF BIRTH Wotton-under-edge
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1793