BRIGHT, RICHARD (1789-1858) , English physician, was born on Sept. 28, 1789, at Bristol. After an expedition to Iceland and a short period of study at Guy's hospital, London, Bright took his M.D. at Edinburgh in 1812. From 1814-15 he visited continental hospitals, and receiving his L.R.C.P. in 1816, became assistant physician to the London fever hospital. In 182o he was made assistant physician at Guy's and four years later full phy sician. The results of his researches first appeared in Reports of Medical Cases Selected with a View of Illustrating the Symptoms and Cure of Disease by a Reference to Morbid Anatomy (1827), a work which described dropsical cases and showed that they in volved a diseased condition of the kidney. "Bright's disease" soon became world-known, and its discoverer's reputation was ensured by subsequent papers on renal disease in the second volume of reports in 1831 (this also contained studies of the central nervous system and of diseases of the brain, meninges and cord) and in the important first volume of Guy's Hospital Reports of 1836. To these latter reports, from 1836 onwards, Bright contributed many papers on abdominal tumours, fever, diseased arteries of the brain, etc. He resigned his post at Guy's in 1843. He died in London on Dec. 16, 1858.
See Guy's Hospital Reports, Bright Centenary Number (1927) .