* ELLIOTSON, DR. JOHN, was born in London towards the close of the 18th century, and entered first at the university of Edinburgh, and subsequently at that of Cambridge. His early medical education was pursued iu St. Thomas's and Guy's hospitals. In 1817 he was appointed assistant physician of the latter, and in 1822 he became physician, after some controversy with the governors, of St. Thomas's.
Here he introduced the practice of giving clinical lectures, a practice at first opposed by the governors, but now become generaL He also gave lectures, which were numerously attended. Still his position was rendered unpleasant by,the opposition which his more advanced views received, and in 1834 he resigned his appointment, when the hospital of University College was established, having been appointed professor of medical science in the college in 1831. This situation ho held till 1833, when he resigned in consequence of the opposition raised to his system of mesmeric treatment of cases in that hospital. In 1849 a mesmerio hospital was established, of which he is the physician.
It is not our purpose here to enter into details of the many and violent disputes in which Dr. Elliotson has been engaged in conse quence of his having adopted what was styled heterodox views and practice in medicine. His peculiarly active and energetic mind seems to have been ever open to the reception of novelties, but it must he admitted that in many cases, his adoption of them, however exposed to ridicule in the first instance, has not been without sufficient grounds. His advocacy of the use of prussic acid as a preventive of vomiting, and thus preparing the stomach for medicines it would otherwise reject; of the use of larger doses of quinine than had been previously administered ; of iron in cases of chorea, and creosote in cases of vomiting and nausea ; and of the use of auscultation ; which were all opposed, and are now established. Of the most doubtful of his
doctrines, that of the use of mesmerism in disease, we can only say that at least it must, have been adopted conscientiously, as he sacrificed much to his belief, which he still practises according to, and ener getically maintains its truth io, the pages of the 'Zoist.' His lectures were published in the ' Lancet; and in the 'Medical Gazette; and he has been a large contributor to the 'Medico-Chirurgical Transac tions: In 1817 he published a translation of Blumenbach'e 'Physiology,' with annotations; these in subsequent editions became so numerous, and the modifications of the text so important, that at length the work appeared as Human Physiology, &c., with which is incorporated much of the elementary part of the Institutiones Physiologica of J. F. Blumenbach.' In 1830 he issued his Lumleyan Lectures, on the recent improvements in the art of distinguishing the various Diseases of the Heart,' which he had delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in the previous year. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, a Fellow of the Royal Society, the founder and president of the Phrenological Society, and has been president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society.