John Ferriar
Encyclopedia
John Ferriar was a Scottish physician
and a poet
, most noted for his leadership of the Manchester Infirmary, and his studies of the causes of diseases such as typhoid. M.D. Edinburgh, 1781; his essay on Massinger reprinted in Gifford's edition (1805); physician of the Manchester Infirmary, 1789-1815; introduced many sanitary reforms when on the Manchester board of health; published works including Medical Histories and Reflections 1792-5-8, and Illustrations of Sterne 1798. His obituary, published in 1815, read:
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
and a poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, most noted for his leadership of the Manchester Infirmary, and his studies of the causes of diseases such as typhoid. M.D. Edinburgh, 1781; his essay on Massinger reprinted in Gifford's edition (1805); physician of the Manchester Infirmary, 1789-1815; introduced many sanitary reforms when on the Manchester board of health; published works including Medical Histories and Reflections 1792-5-8, and Illustrations of Sterne 1798. His obituary, published in 1815, read:
- Died, on the 4th of February, aged 52, JOHN FERRIAR, M. D. Senior Physician of the Manchester Infirmary. The eminent rank which he held in his profession, not only in that town and its immediate neighbourhood, but through a widely extended district of the surrounding country, was founded on long and general experience of the efficacy of his counsels. He was endowed by nature with an acute and vigorous understanding, which he had matured by a life of diligent study, and of careful and well-digested observation, into a judgment unusually correct and prompt in its decisions. The purposes of his sagacious mind were pursued, also, with a steadiness of determination which generally secured their accomplishment; and unexpected difficulties, in the treatment of diseases, he encountered with firmness, and with great fertility of invention. As a professional author he had obtained a high station, and the world is indebted to him for a large fund of valuable knowledge, conveyed in a style, which, for perspicuity, aud for manly strength and simplicity, deserves to be proposed as a model to medical writers. His character as a polite scholar will be preserved, in the literary annals of his country, by writings, in which he has displayed correct taste, extensive and various readings and original views of the subjects of his investigations. In the relations of private life he will long be remembered as a man of inflexible honour and integrity; a faithful arid steady friend; find a tender and most indulgent parent.