OBITUARY NOTICES OF FELLOWS DECEASED 



Between 30th Nov. 1865 and 30th Not. 1867. 



Dr. Benjamin Guy Babington was bora in 1794. He was the son of 

 Dr. William Babington, who, in his time, held a foremost place as a popu- 

 lar and successful London physician. Educated at the Charter House, he 

 subsequently went through the usual course of study at Haileybury College 

 then required of young men destined for the Indian Civil Service ; he 

 went out to the Madras Presidency as a member of that service in 1812. 

 After remaining seven years in India, he was compelled by ill health to re- 

 turn home, and then determined to leave the Indian Service and adopt his 

 father's profession. With this view he entered at Pembroke College, Cam- 

 bridge, and took the degree of M.B. in 1825, and that of M.D. in 1830, 

 In the meantime he commenced practice in London, and in 1831 was 

 elected a Fellow of the College of Physicians. For the prosecution of his 

 medical studies in London he had chosen Guy's Hospital, where his father 

 was physician, and he was himself appointed assistant physician to that 

 Institution in 1837, and promoted to be one of the physicians in 1840. 



Dr. Babington was much esteemed as a clinical teacher, and was the 

 author of papers on different professional subjects, published in the Guy's 

 Hospital Reports, and elsewhere ; but he also engaged in researches of 

 more general scientific interest, and among them his observations on the 

 blood, published in the ' Medico- Chirurgical Transactions ' of 1830, de- 

 serve especial mention, inasmuch as he there showed that the liquid part 

 of the circulating blood, or "liquor sanguinis " (a name proposed by him 

 to distinguish it from the serum, and very generally adopted since), really 

 contains or yields the coagulable matter, or fibrin, which solidifies in the pro- 

 cess of coagulation. This, no doubt, was merely a confirmation by simple 

 but well-devised experiments of the doctrine held by Hewson and his con- 

 temporaries, and accepted by most British physiologists ; but the confirma- 

 tion was needful and well timed on account of the erroneous views then 

 prevailing on the continent on the authority of Prevost and Dumas. At 

 a later time, namely in 1859, Dr. Babington communicated to the Royal 

 Society a series of observations on the effect of various salts dissolved in 

 water in retarding or otherwise altering the rate of spontaneous evaporation, 

 and an abstract stating the nature and results of the experiments was pub- 

 lished in the ' Proceedings' for 1859. 



In the estabhshment of the Sydenham Society, since succeeded by the 

 new Society of the same name, Dr. Babington took an active share. Up 

 to the time of its dissolution he acted as Treasurer, and contributed to its 

 publications an elegant translation of 'Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle 

 Ages,' besides aiding in the revision of other works published by the So- 

 ciety. The Epidemiological Society, founded in 1850, owes its origin 

 mainly to his exertions. He was its first President, and continued in that 



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