Humanitarian hero who promoted science and higher education

Margaret M. Crump has just published a book about a man who was one of Bristol's leading doctors and scientists in his day, and who she says does not deserve to be forgotten. So here she tells us a little about his work and his Bristol medical career in an account that'll leave you feeling very grateful for modern medicine and the NHS.

- Margaret M. Crump

HAVE you ever noticed the plaque above Bristol's iconic Red Lodge door commemorating James Cowles Prichard, ethnologist, (1786-1848)? This early Victorian scientist and quietly humanitarian hero could fill four or five plaques with a list of his achievements. In his lifetime, his reputation was international, but by the turn of the twentieth century his name had all but faded from the annals of science. His place in the history of science and in the history of Bristol is now being restored.

Aside from commitment to being a physician, Prichard had multiple missions in life. He grew up in Bristol in socially and politically troubled times, and was deeply impressed by the Evangelical Revival’s imperative to do good deeds on earth.

This soon grew into a passion for improving the world in any way he could. As for his medical practice, he felt it his duty to improve the health of Bristolians, rich and poor. There was no money in treating them, but it did have career advantages.

A local government board ran St. Peter's Hospital, the city’s ancient poor house where the indigent, orphaned and the insane were indiscriminately packed like sardines, sharing diseases. Prichard volunteered as physician there for 20 years.

Bristol was rich in rather ostentatious, politicallyand religiously-biased medical and welfare charities. For example, the Bristol Infirmary was run and staffed mostly by Anglican Tories although they kindly accepted Dissenters’ (non-C of E Protestants) and Whigs’ donations.

In 1832, these frustrated Whigs and Dissenters set up the General Hospital in Guinea Street. For an annual subscription, Bristol's ‘betters’ could recommend a few ‘deserving’ poor sick supplicants for treatment at one of the city’s medical charities. Subscribers’ servants and factory workers qualified as deserving, so a subscription was money well spent.