Sir William Blizard FRS

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

PRCS FSA (1 March 1743 – 27 August 1835) was an English surgeon.

Life

He was born in

Barn Elms Barn Elms is an open space in Barnes in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, located on the northerly loop of the River Thames between Barnes and Fulham. The WWT London Wetland Centre (105 acres of what were once reservoirs) li ...

, Surrey, the fourth child of auctioneer William Blizard. After an apprenticeship to a surgeon and apothecary in Mortlake he went to study at the

London Hospital The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and Tower Hamlets and sp ...

where he was a pupil of Sir Percivall Pott and John Hunter. In 1780 he was appointed surgeon, and in 1785 founded with Dr McLaurin the medical school there, largely at his own expense. He also held public medical consultations at Batson's Coffee House in Cornhill. He was surgeon to the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. He was elected a fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 1787. He worked for twenty years as a lecturer on surgery and anatomy at the

Royal College of Surgeons The Royal College of Surgeons is an ancient college (a form of corporation) established in England to regulate the activity of surgeons. Derivative organisations survive in many present and former members of the Commonwealth. These organisations ...

and was their president twice (1814 and 1822) and Hunterian Orator three times (1813, 1823, and 1828). He also delivered the Croonian lecture there in 1809. He was against child labour in the cotton industry mills. He was the founder and first president of the

Hunterian Society The Hunterian Society, founded in 1819 in honour of the Scottish surgeon John Hunter (1728–1793), is a society of physicians and dentists based in London. Established by Dr William Cooke, a general practitioner, and Thomas Armiger, a surgeo ...

1819–1822. He was knighted in 1803. For the last 13 years of his life, he resided at Brixton Hill. After his death at the age of 92, he was buried in a vault beneath St Matthew's Church, Brixton. His remains were subsequently moved to Norwood Cemetery. The surgeon Thomas Blizard

(1772–1838) was his nephew and

Thomas Blizard Curling Thomas Blizard Curling (18114 March 1888) was a British surgeon. He was born in Tavistock Place, London in 1811, the son of civil servant Daniel and Elizabeth (née Blizard) Curling and educated at Manor House, Chiswick. Without a degree but t ...

was his great nephew. The

Blizard Building The Blizard Building is a building in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It houses the Blizard Institute, formerly known as the Blizard Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, part of Barts and The London School of Medicine and ...

at Whitechapel is named after him.

References

;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Blizard, William 1743 births 1835 deaths People from Surrey English surgeons Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons Fellows of the Royal Society Burials at West Norwood Cemetery