BAILLIE, MATTHEW
TitleBAILLIE, MATTHEW
ReferenceMS-BAILM
Date
1790 - 1799, 1854
Creator Matthew (1761-1823) Baillie
Admin history: Matthew Baillie (1761 - 1823) was born on 27 October 1761, at Shots, Lanarkshire. On the advice of William Hunter, his uncle, he chose medicine as his profession. He moved to London to live with William Hunter in 1779, at the age of eighteen. He attended the public lectures given by Hunter, helping in their preparation, carrying out demonstrations, and superintending the dissections undertaken by the students. Hunter supplemented the lectures by privately instructing Baillie.
In 1783 William Hunter died and Baillie took on his anatomical lectures and proved a successful teacher. He became particularly interested in every kind of diseased structure.
He graduated MB in 1786, and in 1787 he was elected physician to St George's Hospital. In 1789 he obtained his MD, from Oxford, and became Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians the following year. He became a Censor of the College in 1791 and 1796. The advancement of Baillie's career was due in some part to Baillie's connections with the Hunters and through his marriage to Sophia Denman, daughter of Dr Thomas Denman, physician, in 1791.
In 1793 Baillie published the work for which he is famous, 'The Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body' (1793). It was the first book on the subject in English, and the first to make the morbid anatomy a subject itself. There were additional notes describing symptoms that appeared in 1797, whilst a series of engravings to illustrate the book was published in 1799.
Baillie delivered the Goulstonian Lectures in 1794, the Croonian Lectures in 1796, 1797, and 1798, and the Harveian Oration in 1798, all at the Royal College of Physicians. He also wrote papers for the 'Transactions of the College'.
Baillie was honoured during his life by election as honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, in 1809. In the same year he was named an Elect of the Royal College of Physicians, London. He also became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Baillie was a member of a great many medical societies and charities, including the Medical and Chirurgical Society of which he was a founder member in 1805, and President in 1808-9.
He died of phthisis on 23 September 1823, at the age of 62, and was buried in Duntisbourne, Gloucestershire. He is commemorated by a bust and inscription in Westminster Abbey. Baillie bequeathed his books, and drawings to the Royal College of Physicians, with the sum of £300, having already donated his collection of anatomical specimens some years earlier. His wife subsequently presented his gold-headed cane to the College, formerly the property of the eminent Dr John Radcliffe, King William III's physician. Munk's Roll Vol.II p.402.
Sources:
'Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1701-1800', William Munk (London, 1878) [Munk's Roll, vol. II, pp.402-12]
'Dictionary of National Biography, vol. II', Leslie Stephen (ed.) (London, 1887) [DNB, vol. II, pp.419-20]
''Enlightened and Honorable' Matthew Baillie, MD, 1761-1823', Brian Hill, 'The Practitioner', vol. 220, March 1978, pp.490-93
'The Life and Works of Matthew Baillie, 1761-1823', Franco Crainz (Rome, 1995)
Production date 1790 - 1854
Scope and ContentCollection includes bound volume of Baillie's case notes for St George's Hospital, 1790; printed copy of Baillie's 'The Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body' (1793), 2 volumes, signed, with additions and alterations to the text by Baillie, 1793-c.1797; William Clift's original drawings to accompany Baillie's text, 'The Morbid Anatomy...', pencil and watercolour drawings, 24 leaves, n.d. c.1790s; 10 sets of 65 copper plates of 'A Series of Engravings Tending to Illustrate the Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body', n.d. c.1799; transcript of Matthew Baillie's autobiographic memoranda, copied from the original by his son, William Hunter Baillie, 1854, with a letter from William Hunter Baillie commenting on the text of the memoranda; and 70 black and white photographs of Clift's drawings, n.d., C20th. Also, general correspondence.
Extent25 items
LanguageEnglish
Archival historyPhotographs of Clift's drawings were donated by the Royal College of Surgeons and the University of Melbourne, July - October 1954 (MS104); Provenance of most of the collection is unknown
Persons keyword William Hunter (1797-1894) Baillie, Sophia (nee Denman) Baillie, Joanna Baillie
SubjectMorbid Anatomy
Levelfonds
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