George Moore (physician)

Dr. George Moore MD (1803–1880) was a physician and British Israelite.^[1]

Career

After attending Abernethy's lectures and surgical practice at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, he studied anatomy in Paris in company with Erasmus Wilson, and attended Dupuytren's practice. In 1829, he became M.R.C.S. England, in 1830 L.S.A., in 1841 M.D. St. Andrews, in 1843 ext. L.R.C.P., and in 1859 M.R.C.P. ^[2]

He settled first at Camberwell, near London, where he practised successfully for eight years. In March 1835, he obtained the Fothergillian gold medal for his essay on 'Puerperal Fever,' which was favourably reviewed in the British and Foreign Medical Review (ii. 481). In 1838, his health broke down, and he removed to Hastings, where he remained for ten years. During part of this time he was physician to the Hastings Dispensary, with his friend Dr. James Mackness as a colleague. ^[2]

He published several successful books on medicine, but after reading John Wilson's Our Israelitish Origin (1840) became an early proponent of British Israelism and turned to writing on history and religion.

British Israelism

In 1861 Moore published The Lost Tribes and the Saxons of the East and of the West with new Views of Buddhism, and Translations of Rock-Records in India which was one of the earlier works on British Israelism, alongside John Wilson's and Charles Piazzi Smyth's works. Moore in his work was the first to propose that Gautama Buddha was an Israelite, an idiosyncratic view not held by many other British Israelites at the time. Later he worked on attempting to deciphere the Newton Stone.

Newton Stone

In Ancient Pillar Stones of Scotland, their Significance and Bearing on Ethnology (1865) Moore proposed that the "unknown script" on the Newton Stone was written in Hebrew-Bactrian by an ancient "Hebrew Buddhist missionary to Scotland".^[3]

Moore's decipherment was not popular with other scholars at the time who considered the unknown script to be Latin or Old Irish, although some had proposed Phoenician.

Works

Medicine

The power of the soul over the body, considered in relation to health and morals (1847)
Health, disease and remedy : familiarly & practically considered, in a few of their relations to the blood (1850)
The use of the body in relation to the mind (1852) Man and His Motives (1852)

British Israelism

The Lost Tribes and the Saxons of the East and of the West with new Views of Buddhism, and Translations of Rock-Records in India (1861)

Newton Stone

Ancient Pillar Stones of Scotland, their Significance and Bearing on Ethnology (1865)

References

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Greenhill, William Alexander (1894). "Moore, George (1803-1880)". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography 38. London: Smith, Elder & Co.