‘Disciples of Aesclepius’: Glimpses into lives of the ‘Gentlemen of the Faculty’ of medicine in Brighton, England 1800–1809

Abstract

Here we present newspaper accounts from the Sussex Advertiser to consider hitherto largely unknown Brighton doctors active between 1800 and 1809. This body of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries comprised Brighton's ‘Gentlemen of the [medical] Faculty’, whom the newspaper also dubbed the ‘Disciples of Aesclepius’. Members are considered under three broad categories. First, are Brighton-based clinicians (Mr Barratt, Mr Bond, Charles Bankhead, Thomas Guy, John Hall, John Newton, Benjamin Scutt and Sir Matthew Tierney). Second are London clinicians, probably in attendance to the Prince of Wales (John Hunter and Thomas Keate), More widely, two dentists (Dr Durlacher and Mr Bew) and two Royal Navy surgeons (Robert Chambers and Thomas Thong) also recorded at Brighton are considered. Other aspects of medical life are described: recruiting an apprentice, anatomy training at Joshua Brooke's London museum, midwifery, a description of a surgeon's bag and the last reference to the Royal Sussex Jennerian Society (which disappears from the newspaper record in 1807). Clinical cases described include: resuscitation from near-drowning, post-mortem examinations, death from the ‘gravel and stone’ and accounts of suicide. The primary sources presented in this paper offer rare glimpses into medical life in Brighton at the very start of the nineteenth century.