William Cheselden 157

WILLIAM CHESELDEN 157 WILLIAM CEESELDEN. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/bjs/article/3/10/157/6230566 by guest on 27 September 2021 1688-1752. WILLIAMCIIESELDEN was born on October 19, 1688, at Somerby, in Leicester- shire, close to the great British encampment of Borrow Hill. The son of George Cheselden by his wife Deborah, daughter of Major William Hubbert, he came of a family, of wealthy graziers. He appears .to have received-a good classical education,’ and after a short apprenticeship to Mr. Wilkes, a surgeon at Leicester, was received as a house pupil by William Cowper (1666-1709), the anatomist, and at the age of fifteen was bound apprentice on December 7,1703, to James Ferne, surgeon and lithotomist to St. Thomas’s Hospital. On December 5, 1710, he was admitted to the freedom and Livery of the Barber- Surgeons’ Company, and on January 29 following he was granted ‘ the great diploma,’ a higher qualification which showed that he intended to practise pure surgery. He immediately hegan to teach anatomy by a course of thirty- five lectures, which were repeated four times a year, and in 1711 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. The popularity of the lectures wag so great that they interfered with the routine courses delivered at the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall, and the following minute in regard to them is still extant. It runs :- “At a Court of Assistants of the Company of Barbers and Siirgeons held on March 25, 1714 ; our Master acquainting the Court that Mr. William Cheselden, a member of this Company, did frequently procure the dead bodies of malefactors from the place of execution and dissect the same at his own house, as well during the Company’s Public Lecture, as at other times, without the leave of the Governors and contrary to the Company’s bylaw in that behalf; by which it became more difficult for the beadles to bring away the Company’s bodies and likewise drew many members of this Company and others from the public dissections and lectures at the Hall. The said Mr. Cheseiden was thereupon called in; but having submitted himself to the pleasure of the Court, with a promise never to dissect at the same time as the Company had their lecture at the Hall, nor without leave of the Governors for the time being, the said Mr. Cheselden was excused for what had passed, with a reproof for the same pronounced by the Master at the desire of the Court.” The lectures were accordingly continued, first at Cheselden’s own house, and afterwards for twenty years at St. Thomas’s Hospital. They inaugurated the system of voliiritary private teaching-as opposed to the older formal and compulsory lectures-which proved so useful to the progress of surgery in the hands of William and John Hunter, culminating in the private schools of the nineteenth century. Cheselden applied for the post of surgeon on two occasions before he was elected at St. Thomas’s Hospital. He was appointed Assistant Surgeon VOL 111.--h’O. 10. 12 158 THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SURGERY in 1718, succeeded William Dickenson as a principal surgeon in 1719, and retired from the hospital March 29, 1738. From 1723 to 1727 Cheselden was occupied in perfecting the operation of lateral lithotomy, which hc brought to such perfection by his extraordinary skill that the operation was hardly modified until it was replaced by litholapaxy at the end of the last century. On one occasion, at least, he removed a stone in fifty-four seconds, and there Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/bjs/article/3/10/157/6230566 by guest on 27 September 2021 is a pleasing story told of his kindliness and dexterity : having tied up a child for lithotomy, he promised sugar-plums if there was no movement, and, the operation over, the little fellow immediately claimed a fulfilment of thc promise. In 1727, Cheselden was appointed surgeon to Queen Caroline, and ten years later he was chosen surgeon to the Chelsea Hospital. He was one of thc earliest surgeons to take an interest in diseases of the eye, a department of practice which had hitherto been wholly abandoned to quacks, and he described a method of treating certain forms of blindness by the formation of an artificial pupil, and of congenital blindness by couching the lens. He was living in Queen’s Square, Westminster, in 1735-6, when Alexander Pope was his patient and lay ill at his house. The poet conceived a lasting affection for him, and mentions him in his Epistle to Lord Bolingbroke :- Late as it is, I put myself to school, And feel some comfort not to be a fool. Weak though I am of limb and short of sight, Par from a lynx and not a giant quite ; 1’11 do what Mead and Cheselden advise To help these limbs and to preserve these eyes. Not to go back is somewhat to advance, And men must walk at least before they dance. In answer to an inquiry from Swift as to who Cheselden was, Pope says in a letter dated March 25, 1736 : “ It shows that the truest merit does not travel so far any way as on the wings of poetry. He is the most noted and deserving man in the whole profession of Chirurgery, and has saved the lives of thousands by his manner of cutting for stone.” And again, a month before his death, writing to Mr. Allen, Pope says, “ There is no end of my kind trcatment from the faculty. They are in general the most amiable com- panions and the best friends as well as the most learned men I know.” Cheselden deserved his popularity, for he was not only a first-rate surgeon, but he was good at many things outside his profession. Jonathan Kichardbon, the painter, complimented him in verse and painted his portrait. He was intimate with Mead and with Sir Hans Sloane, and he attended the death-bed of Sir Isaac Newton. No mean artist, he published a magnificent Osteographia, or Andoiny oj the Bones. He is said to have drawn the plans for Old Putney Bridge and the Surgeons’ Hall in the Old Bailey, so that hc was something of an architect. He was also a keen patron of athletic sports, more especially of boxing. He was made surgeon to Queen Caroline in 17’28, but he had lost favour at Court in 1731, and was not consulted when the Queen died of a strangulated unibilieal hernia in 1733. At the foundation of St. George’s Hospital in 1733 Chcselden was appointed surgeon and lithotomist, a post he held until 1738, when his place was taken by his nominee, David Middleton. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/bjs/article/3/10/157/6230566 by guest on 27 September 2021 WILLIAM CHESELDEN Front thc Painting b# Jonalhatr Richarclaon in Uba nova1 Colfrpe of Gurptonr. London. WILLIAM CHESELDEN 159 At the Barber-Surgeons’ Company he filled the usual offices, and was Junior Warden in 1744. In conjunction with John Ranby he was instrii- mental in procuring the separation of the Surgeons from the Barbers, which had long been imminent. The Surgeons’ Company was formed in 1745, and in the following year Cheselden was chosen Master. In the latter part of 1751 he suffered from a paralytic seizure, but seemed to regain his former Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/bjs/article/3/10/157/6230566 by guest on 27 September 2021 health until April 10, 1752, when, being at. Bath, he partook too heartily of ale and hot buns. A physician who was summoned ordered an emetic, but his advice was not followed, and the great surgeon died the same day. He was interred on the north side of the burial ground of Chelsea Hospital, and his tomb, lately renovated by the pious care of Col. Ligertwood, R.A.M.C., can still be seen from the Royal Hospital Road. His will is brief and to the point : “ Bking in perfect health I write this with my own hand and declare it to be my last will and testament. I give to my daughter D. W. Cotes five hundred pounds and all the rest and residue of my estate of what kind soever to my wife and make her full and sole executrix, Administratrix and assign. Witness my hand and seal, William Cheselden (1s.). 24th March 1749/50.” He married Miss Deborah Knight, of London, who survived him iintil 1754. Their only daughter, Deborah Wilhelmina, married Dr. Charles Cotes, of Woodcote, Shropshire. She died. without issue. Cheselden bore for arms : Quarterly; 1 and 4. Argent: a chevron between three crosses moline gules (Cheselden). 2. Argent ; on a fesse indented sable, three bezants (Brough). 3. Or; an eagle displayed azure, beaked and feet gules (Mongomery). Cheselden did not write much, but what he wrote is well and clearly expressed, and shows him to have been a scientific surgeon. His published works are : 1. The Anatomy of the Humane Body, first published in 1713, the thirteenth edition appearing in 1792. The book is dedicated to Dr. Richard Mead. It is well illustrated with copper plates, and the first edition deals entirely with human anatomy. The later editions are rather applied anatomy, for the author treats of the value of anatomy in relation to the surgical cases of which he gives details, and he adds various facts about com- parative anatomy. He thus takes a broad view of the subject, for he says that ‘Lin describing of the parts I have pretty much neglected the Minuti= in Anatomy ; Nor have I been very particular about those things which cannot be understood without being seen, and being seen need little description ; bltt have endeavoured to be more explicit about those which are of greatest use in Philosophy, Physic and Surgery ; And I could wish the dividing and distinguishing of parts were usiially done with more regard to these valuable elid.;.-’ 2.

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