Richard Mead

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Richard Mead (11 August 1673 – 16 February 1754) was an English physician. His work, A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Method to be used to prevent it (1720), was of profound historical importance in the understanding of transmissable diseases.

Life

The eleventh child of Matthew Mead (1630-1699), Independent divine, Richard was born at Stepney, London. He studied at Utrecht for three years under JG Graevius; having decided to follow the medical profession, he then went to Leiden and attended the lectures of Paul Hermann and Archibald Pitcairne. In 1695 he graduated in philosophy and physic at Padua, and in 1696 he returned to London, entering at once on a successful practice.

His Mechanical Account of Poisons appeared in 1702, and in 1703 he was admitted to the Royal Society, to whose Transactions he contributed in that year a paper on the parasitic nature of scabies. In the same year he was elected physician to St. Thomas' Hospital, and appointed to read anatomical lectures at the Surgeon's Hall. On the death of John Radcliffe in 1714 Mead became the recognized head of his profession; he attended Queen Anne on her deathbed, and in 1727 was appointed physician to George II, having previously served him in that capacity when he was prince of Wales.

While in the service of the king, Mead got involved in the creation of a new charity, the Foundling Hospital, both as a founding governor and as an advisor on all things medical. The Foundling Hospital was a home for abandoned children rather than a medical hospital, but it is said that through Dr. Mead's involvement, the Foundling was equipped with both a sick room and a pharmacy. He is even supposed to have influenced the architect, Theodore Jacobsen, into incorporating a large court yard to promote the children exercising. A full size portrait of Dr. Mead, donated by the artist Allan Ramsay in 1747, ensures that his contribution will not be forgotten. The painting currently hangs at the Foundling Museum.

Mead's country estate was at Old Windsor in Berkshire, but he died at his house in Bloomsbury in 1754. It later formed the basis of Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Works

Besides the Mechanical Account of Poisons (2nd ed, 1708), Mead published:

a treatise De imperio solis ci lunae in corpora humana et morbis inde oriundis (On the Influence of the Sun and Moon upon Human Bodies and the Diseases Arising Therefrom) (1704)
A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Method to be used to prevent it (1720)
De variolis et morbillis dissertatio (1747)
Medica sacra, sive de morbis insignioribus qui in bibliis memorantur commentarius (1748)
On the Scurvy (1749)
Monitci ci praecepia niedica (1751)

A Life of Mead by Dr Matthew Maty appeared in 1755.

References

Craig Hanson. "Dr. Richard Mead and Watteau's Comediens Italiens." Burlington Magazine 145 (April 2003): 265-272;
Richard Hardway Meade. In the Sunshine of Life: A Biography of Dr. Richard Mead, 1673-1754. Philadelphia: Dorrance & Co., 1974;
Arnold Zuckerman. "Dr. Richard Mead (1674-1753): A Biographical Study." Ph.D. diss. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1965.
R.H. Nichols and F A. Wray, The History of the Foundling Hospital (London: Oxford University Press, 1935).

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