V 



John Bishop was bom on the 15tli September, 1797, and died on the 

 29th September, 1873. He was the fourth son of Samuel Bishop, Esq., 

 of Pimperne, in the county of Dorset, and received his education at the 

 G-rammar School of Mr. Longman at Childe Okeford in the same county, 

 where he remained several years. He was originally intended for the 

 legal profession ; but negotiations for this object having been broken off 

 through some misunderstanding between the contracting parties, he pur- 

 sued for some time the idle but agreeable life of a country gentleman, and 

 his favourite field sports, hunting and shooting. "When about five and 

 twenty years of age, he was induced by his cousin, Mr. John Tucker, a 

 surgeon of Bridport, to enter the medical profession ; after a short pre- 

 liminary study and practice at Bridport, he came to London, where he 

 entered at St. George's Hospital under Sir Everard Home. During his 

 student days he attended the lectures of Sir Charles Bell, then in his zenith, 

 of Mr. Guthrie, Dr. George Pearson, and the Chemical Courses at the 

 Eoyal Institution. In 1824 he obtained the diploma of the Eoyal College 

 of Surgeons, and in 1851 was elected a Member of the Council of the 

 College, where he retained a seat for nearly twelve years. In 1844, having 

 previously published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions on the 

 Physiology of the Human Voice, he was elected a Fellow of the Eoyal 

 Society, and a Corresponding Member of the Medical Societies of Berlin 

 and Madrid. About this time he also obtained from the Eoyal Academy 

 of Sciences, Paris, two prizes for memoirs on the Human and Comparative 

 Anatomy and Physiology of Voice. He contributed to Todd's ' Cyclopaedia ' 

 the articles " Larynx," " Motion," and " Voice," and was the author of 

 works on Distortions of the Human Body, on Impediments of 

 Speech, and on Hearing and Speaking Instruments. These works, 

 together with several minor contributions to medical literature, gained for 

 Mr. Bishop the well-deserved reputation of a careful and skilful observer, 

 and are remarkable for the evident pains taken by the author to examine 

 and do justice to whatever had been written by others upon the subject 

 he had under consideration, and, where practicable, to prove by mathe- 

 matical demonstration every theory he himself advanced. 



During his career Mr. Bishop held the offices of Senior Surgeon to the 

 Islington Dispensary, Surgeon to the Northern Dispensary, to the St. 

 Pancras Dispensary, and to the Drapers' Benevolent Institution. In 1852 

 he was elected President of the Medical Society of London, and held the 

 offices of Trustee, Councillor, Orator, and Lettsomian Lecturer to the 

 Society. He was also for many years, and at the time of his death, one 

 of the managers of the Eussell Institution. He was a man of considerable 

 energy of character ; and although undemonstrative in his manner, entered 

 zealously into any business he undertook, and exercised great personal 

 influence upon his colleagues. His judgments, deliberately formed and 

 carefully expressed, carried considerable weight with them, and influenced 



vol. xxi. c 



