Richard Morton (1637–1698) was an English physician who was the first to state that tubercles were always present in the tuberculosis disease of the lungs. In Morton's time, this wasting disease was termed consumption, or by its Greek name of phthisis. Recognition of the many possible symptoms of this infection belonging to a single disease was not until the 1820s and it was J.L. Schönlein in 1839 who introduced the term "tuberculosis".

Life

He was born in Worcestershire, England and, having trained at Oxford's Magdalen Hall, elected to enter the Church, becoming Vicar of Kinver in

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

. With his refusal to acquiesce to the

Act of Uniformity 1662 The Act of Uniformity 1662 (14 Car 2 c 4) is an Act of the Parliament of England. (It was formerly cited as 13 & 14 Ch.2 c. 4, by reference to the regnal year when it was passed on 19 May 1662.) It prescribed the form of public prayers, adm ...

following the Restoration of Charles II, he was forced to resign. His whereabouts for the following eight years are unclear, although he probably travelled to Holland. Reappearing in 1670, he was awarded doctorate of medicine by Oxford University.

Works

His landmark paper ''Phthisiologia, seu exercitationes de phthisi, tribus libris comprehensæ. Totumque opus variis historiis illustratum'' was published in Latin in 1689, with an English translation appearing in 1694. A second English edition was published in 1720. Its significance is partly due to the disease receiving little study by other doctors of the time despite it being a major cause of death; accounting for over 18% all deaths in the City of London in 1700. The paper is also significant in that it also contains the first recognised medical descriptions of the wasting condition now known as Anorexia Nervosa. Medicine of that time was deferential to the ideas of Galen and so Morton understandably mistook tubercles for being caused by glandular degenerations; ''

mycobacterium tuberculosis ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (M. tb) is a species of pathogenic bacteria in the family Mycobacteriaceae and the causative agent of tuberculosis. First discovered in 1882 by Robert Koch, ''M. tuberculosis'' has an unusual, waxy coating on its c ...

'' not being identified until 1882 by

Robert Koch Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( , ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera (though the Vibrio ...

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Morton, Richard British pulmonologists English microbiologists 17th-century English medical doctors Ejected English ministers of 1662 People from Kinver Medical doctors from Worcestershire 1637 births 1698 deaths Alumni of Magdalen Hall, Oxford