62 



OBITUARY. 



SIR BENJAMIN WARD RICHARDSON. 



Born October 31, 1828. Died November 21, 1896. 



IN Sir Benjamin Richardson science has lost a busy worker in many 

 fields. Essentially a physician, he was at the same time an 

 active experimentalist in pharmacology, and a prominent worker in 

 the field of hygiene. To these labours he added those of a prolific 

 writer on many topics, and of an ardent temperance reformer. In 

 each of these fields he accomplished much valuable and enduring 

 work, and if in none of them he reached the foremost rank, this is 

 almost a necessary corollary to the many-sidedness of his character. 



He was destined from boyhood for the medical profession, so that 

 his aptitude for physical and natural science was early encouraged. 

 At seventeen he was apprenticed to a country surgeon named Hudson, 

 whose tastes lay in the direction of electrical science, and he proceeded 

 thence to Anderson's College, Glasgow. In 1847 he returned, for the 

 benefit of his health, to England, and became assistant first to 

 Mr. Brown, of Saffron Walden, and later to Dr. Robert Willis, of 

 Barnes, who was at that time editor of the Medical Gazette. Here he 

 first turned his hand to literary work and became a frequent con- 

 tributor to the Gazette and other periodicals. 



He qualified at Glasgow in 1850, and in 1854 ^0°^ the degrees of 

 M.A. and M.D. at St. Andrew's. In 1854 ^^^o he won the Fothergill 

 Medal of the Medical Society for a thesis on " Diseases of the Foetus 

 in Utero." He was now appointed lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, 

 and, in 1857, lecturer on Physiology to the School of Medicine in 

 Grosvenor Place, holding the latter post until 1865, when the School 

 was incorporated with St. George's Hospital. During this period, 

 he became intimate with Douglas Jerrold, Thackeray, George 

 Cruickshank, and other literary celebrities of the time. He became a 

 Member of the Royal College of Physicians, London, and in 1865 was 

 elected a Fellow of that body : two years later he became a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society. 



Space fails us to record all the investigations which Richardson 

 undertook during his busy career, but among the more important 

 were his researches into the subject of anaesthetics and the question 

 of alcohol. He experimented largely on a variety of bodies to test 

 their anaesthetic power, and to him is due the introduction of 

 methylene bichloride as an anaesthetic, and the local application of 

 ether spray for producing insensibility in minor operations. His 



