William Wilde

William Wilde

William Robert Wills Wilde (born March 1815 in Castlerea , Ireland , † April 19, 1876 in Galway ) was an Irish surgeon, ophthalmologist, otologist and father of Oscar Wilde .

Life

Wilde's father was a country doctor in County Roscommon and treated the poor mostly free of charge. Born in the year of the Battle of Waterloo , William Wilde studied at Trinity College Dublin's Medical School . There he was an assistant to Abraham Colles . In his last year of training in surgery and obstetrics, he fell ill with typhoid . Robert James Graves recommended a heavy diet and a strong ale every hour . Wilde survived. On March 16, 1837, he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland .

Educational travel

A wealthy patient invited him to travel to the Mediterranean and Madeira . In Egypt, savages noticed the many people with trachoma . He climbed the Khafre pyramid and, with a local guide, came across a grave that had been looted in ancient times . He wanted to take a dwarf and several ibises in embalming to Dublin; whether he succeeded is not clear. Back in Ireland, he published a travelogue. In Dublin University Magazine he campaigned to bring Cleopatra's needles to London. The suggestion was followed in 1878.

After participating in excavations at Meath , he opened a medical practice on Dublin's Great Brunswick Street . Impressed by his wit and charm, Maria Edgeworth invited Wilde to visit prestigious clinics. The first station was the Moorfields Eye Hospital , the second the General Hospital Vienna . There, Carl von Rokitansky taught him pathology. He was allowed to watch eye operations by Anton von Rosas and Friedrich Jäger von Jaxtthal . The next trip went via Dresden and Heidelberg to Berlin, where he met Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach .

Doctor in Dublin

He dedicated himself to ophthalmology and opened - at the age of 29 - in February 1844 the Ophthalmic Hospital an dispensary for diseases of the Eye and the Ear . Above all, not well-off patients were treated. Wilde often did without a bill. Four years later he bought the building for his medical school. The new St. Marks Hospital had an operating theater with auditoriums, a lecture room and hospital rooms for 20 inpatients. The reputation of the house attracted colleagues from all over the world. The Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital was created in 1897 through merger with another clinic . Wilde was appointed editor of the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science .

Barbara Belford (1935-2010), his son's biographer, wrote:

“Wilde became a prominent figure in Dublin's medical and intellectual circles. What he lacked, however, was an income that corresponded to this position. "

- Barbara Belford

Friend of women

Wilde was a friend of the theater - and of pretty actresses. Despite his mandibular retrognathy , he had "phenomenal success" with women. The son, born in 1838, was followed by daughters of another woman in 1847 and 1849. On November 14, 1851, he married the wealthy 30-year-old Jane Francesca Elgee . Appointed to the Irish Census Commission shortly after the wedding, Wilde toured all of Ireland's 32 counties . He looked the people in the mouth and published - in addition to the statistics - a book on legends and superstitions in Ireland. In 1852 the son William Charles ("Willie") was born. He was followed in 1854 by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde - Oscar Wilde . Three years later, Isola Francesca Emiliy expanded the family. During these same years William Wilde wrote standard works on surgery of the eye and the ear. The ear book has also been translated into German . In 1853 he was appointed Royal Ophthalmologist in Ireland. The German ear doctor Anton Friedrich von Tröltsch was one of his students in Dublin in 1855 . Wilde operated on George Bernard Shaw's father . Despite all the children, honors and public appearances, his private practice flourished. He had help from his illegitimate son Henry Wilson , who had studied in Dublin, Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin.

bad luck

Memorial plaque in Dublin

Knight Bachelor since 1864 , Wilde got caught in a scandal. A patient who was well acquainted with the Wildes accused Sir William of sexual abuse . The court sentenced the Wilde couple to symbolic damages. In 1867 the daughter Isola died. Wilde's illegitimate daughters Emily and Mary - passed off as the children of his spiritual brother Ralph Wilde  - attended a dance ball in Monaghan in the fall of 1871 . Emily's dress caught fire by a fireplace. Mary wanted to help her. Both sisters perished. William Wilde retired to his Moyture House in Galway. At gout and asthma suffering, he died there at age 61. During the wake , a veiled woman, probably Emily and Mary's mother, came to his deathbed several times. Wilde was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery . A plaque commemorates him on his home at 1 Merrion Square in Dublin .

Works and reprints

• Narrative of a voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe and along the shores of the Mediterranean, including a visit to Algiers, Egypt, Palestine, Tire, Rhodes, Telmessus, Cyprus, and Greece. With observations on the present state and prospects of Egypt and Palestine, and visited on the climate, natural history and antiquities of the countries . Dublin 1844.
• The closing years of Dean Swift's life, with remarks on Stella, and on some of his writings hitherto unnoticed . Dublin 1849.
• Medico-legal observations upon infantile leucorrhœa, arising out of the alleged cases of felonious assaults on young children, recently tried in Dublin . London 1854.
• A descriptive catalog of the antiquities ... in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy . Dublin 1857-1862.
• An essay on the malformations and congenital diseases of the organs of sight . London 1862.
• The beauties of the Boyne and its tributary, the Blackwater . Dublin 1949.
• Lough Corrib, its shores and islands . New York 1971.
• Irish popular superstitions . Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa NJ 1973.

literature

• Thomas George Wilson: Victorian doctor - being the life of Sir William Wilde , with 61 illustrations by the author and a half-tone frontispiece. Methuen, London 1942, 1974. ISBN 0715810375 .
• Terence de Vere White: The parents of Oscar Wilde - Sir William and Lady Wilde . 1967. Hodder & Stoughton, London 1967.
• Eric Lambert: Mad with much heart - a life of the parents of Oscar Wilde . London 1967.
• P. Froggatt: Sir William Wilde, 1815-1876 - a centenary appreciation. Wilde's place in medicine . Royal Irish Academy 1977.
• Irene Montjoye: Oscar Wilde's father about Metternich's Austria: William Wilde, an Irish ophthalmologist about Biedermeier and Vormärz in Vienna (= Studies on the History of Southeast Europe, Volume 5). Lang, Frankfurt am Main - New York 1989.
• Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin: The Wilde legacy . Four Courts Press, Dublin Portland OR 2003.
• Ronald D. Barley : William Wilde - an eminent surgeon from the Dublin School . Chirurgische Allgemeine, 16th vol. (2015), 2nd issue, pp. 106-109.

Web links

Commons : William Wilde  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sir William Robert Wills Wilde. In: www.libraryireland.com. Retrieved September 24, 2016 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} R. Barley (2015)
3. ^ W. Wilde: The Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe, and Along the Shores of the Mediterranean , 1840.
4. ↑ Great Brunswick Street is now Pearse Street .
5. ↑ see Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital
6. ↑ Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science (SpringerLink)
7. Jump up ↑ Ancient legends, mystic charms and superstitutions of Ireland, with sketches of the Irish past . O'Gorman 1971.
8. ↑ Practical Notes on Ear Medicine and the Nature and Treatment of Diseases of the Ear . Goettingen 1855.
9. ↑ Christian von Deuster: From the beginnings of ear, nose and throat medicine in Würzburg. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 871–890; here: p. 878.