Thomas Keate
Thomas Keate (1745–1821) was an English surgeon.[1] He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1794.[2]
Early life
[edit]He was the son of William Keate of Wells, Somerset, and Oxford graduate, and younger brother of the Rev. William Keate (1739–1795), father of John Keate of Eton and Robert Keate.[1][3][4][5][6] A number of sources identify his father as an apothecary in Wells, who became its Mayor.
Keate became a pupil at St George's Hospital, London, and later was assistant to John Gunning, surgeon to the hospital.[7] He was appointed regimental surgeon to the 1st Foot Guards in 1778.[1]
Medical career
[edit]Keate was surgeon to George, Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV, from 1783 to 1800; he joined the Prince's household set up on his majority, and was a favourite introduced to others of the royal family.[8][9] The low point in the Prince's health came, in his judgement, in 1787, when he was "exceedingly ill".[10] Keate was surgeon to Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz from 1791 to 1803.[8] His 1793 nomination certificate for the Royal Society begins with his royal service.[11]
In 1790 Robert Adair died: he had been surgeon to Chelsea Hospital. Keate was appointed, with a salary. The post at the time was described as close to a sinecure.[12][13] On a vacancy arising in the surgeoncy at St George's Hospital, in succession to Charles Hawkins, there was a sharp contest in 1792 between Keate and Everard Home, whom John Hunter favoured: Keate was elected.[7]
Keate was an examiner at the College of Surgeons from 1800, and master in 1802, 1809, 1818.[7] Representing the College, he witnessed an 1803 electric demonstration with a corpse by Giovanni Aldini in London, accompanied by Joseph Constantine Carpue.[14] As a surgeon, he was the first to tie the subclavian artery for aneurysm.[7]
Army surgeon
[edit]Hunter died in 1793, to be succeeded as Surgeon-General to the Army by Gunning, and as Inspector of Regimental Infirmaries by Keate.[7][15] Keate inspected the Savoy Hospital in October of that year, finding six beds in a noisy situation because of prisoners.[16] After Gunning's death in 1798, Keate reunited the posts, becoming also Surgeon-General.[1]
With Lucas Pepys, Keate was blamed for a lack of medical resources and attention in the Walcheren Campaign of 1809.[17] Keate had attended some of the boatloads of wounded soldiers brought up the River Thames.[18] As part of incremental changes in the direction of reform, the existing Army Medical Board of Keate, Pepys and Francis Knight (Inspector-General of Army Hospitals from 1801)[19] was replaced in 1810 by one headed by John Weir, with Theodore Gordon and Charles Ker.[20]
Later life
[edit]Unpunctual and slovenly in his hospital duties, in 1813 Keate resigned his appointment at St George's.[7]
Keate opposed the claims made by the surgeon Sir William Adams to have an effective cure for a type of ophthalmia. Adams in 1817 set up a specialised treatment facility within Chelsea Hospital for what is now recognised as a form of trachoma, afflicting soldiers who had served in the Egyptian campaign.[21] With Benjamin Moseley of the Hospital and William North, Keate in 1818 produced outcomes research casting doubt on Adams's treatment.[22] Adams that year moved on started treating gratis for ophthalmia in a new Ophthalmia Hospital built by John Nash on Albany Street, with backing from the Prince Regent. He continued there to 1822.[21][23]
Keate died at Chelsea Hospital on 5 July 1821, aged 76.[7]
Works
[edit]On surgery, Keate wrote Cases of Hydrocele and Hernia, London, 1788. In controversy he produced Observations on the Fifth Report of the Commissioners of Medical Enquiry, London, 1808; the report had censured points in Keate's administration.[7]
Family
[edit]Keate married in 1784 Emma Browne, daughter of Lyde Browne.[24]
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b c d Bevan, Michael. "Keate, Thomas (1745–1821)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15222. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ "Thomas Keate ( 1745 - 1821 )". epsilon.ac.uk.
- ^ "Keate, William (KT759W)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
- ^ Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
- ^ Ackroyd, Marcus; Brockliss, Laurence; Moss, Michael; Retford, Kate; Stevenson, John (4 January 2007). Advancing with the Army: Medicine, the Professions and Social Mobility in the British Isles 1790-1850. OUP Oxford. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-19-151483-8.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Lee, Sidney, ed. (1892). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 30. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- ^ a b Burney, Fanny (1972). The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay). Vol. 2. Clarendon Press. p. 143.
- ^ Register, Monthly Literary (1821). The Monthly Magazine. p. 181.
- ^ Macalpine, Ida (1969). George III and the mad-business. London: Allen Lane. p. 231. ISBN 0712652795.
- ^ Lawrence, Susan C. (27 June 2002). Charitable Knowledge: Hospital Pupils and Practitioners in Eighteenth-Century London. Cambridge University Press. p. 281 note 70. ISBN 978-0-521-52518-3.
- ^ The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. Arch. Constable & Comp. 1845. p. 301.
- ^ Maclean, Charles (1810). An Analytical View of the Medical Department of the British Army. J.J. Stockdale. p. 88.
- ^ Morus, Iwan Rhys (2009). "Radicals, Romantics and Electrical Showmen: Placing galvanism at the end of the English Enlightenment". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 63 (3): 269. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2009.0023. ISSN 0035-9149. JSTOR 40647278. S2CID 146244993.
- ^ Chaplin, Arnold (1918). "Excerpts From The Fitzpatrick Lectures. Delivered Before The Royal College Of Physicians Of London, November, 1918". The British Medical Journal. 2 (3025): 675–679. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.3025.675. ISSN 0007-1447. JSTOR 20336476. PMC 2342389. PMID 20769298.
- ^ Stevenson, Lloyd G. (1964). "John Hunter, Surgeon-General 1790-1793". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 19 (3): 257 note 60. doi:10.1093/jhmas/xix.3.239. ISSN 0022-5045. JSTOR 24621430. PMID 14193225.
- ^ Howard, Martin R. (1999). "Walcheren 1809: A Medical Catastrophe". BMJ: British Medical Journal. 319 (7225): 1644–1645. doi:10.1136/bmj.319.7225.1642. ISSN 0959-8138. JSTOR 25186694. PMC 1127097. PMID 10600979.
- ^ Darley, Gillian (1 January 1999). John Soane: An Accidental Romantic. Yale University Press. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-300-08695-9.
- ^ The Annual Register, Or, A View of the History, Politics, and Literature for the Year ... J. Dodsley. 1802. p. 63.
- ^ Crowe, Kate Elizabeth (1973). "The Walcheren Expedition and the New Army Medical Board: A Reconsideration". The English Historical Review. 88 (349): 770–785. doi:10.1093/ehr/LXXXVIII.CCCXLIX.770. ISSN 0013-8266. JSTOR 562934. PMID 11614439.
- ^ a b Tiffany, J. M. "Adams [later Rawson], Sir William (1783–1827)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/23200. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ Kelly, Catherine (6 October 2015). War and the Militarization of British Army Medicine, 1793–1830. Routledge. p. 149. ISBN 978-1-317-32245-0.
- ^ Summerson, John (1980). The Life and Work of John Nash, Architect. Allen & Unwin. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-04-720021-2.
- ^ Burney, Sarah Harriet (1997). The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. University of Georgia Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-8203-1746-5.
External links
[edit]Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1892). "Keate, Thomas". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 30. London: Smith, Elder & Co.