Jesse Foot

Jesse Foot by John Opie

Jesse Foot (1744–1826) was an English surgeon and biographer.

Life

Foot was born at Charlton, Wiltshire in 1744. He received a medical education in London, becoming a member of the Surgeons' Company, and about 1766 went to the West Indies, where he practised for three years in the island of Nevis, returning in 1769. After this he went to St. Petersburg, where he became a practitioner of the College of St. Petersburg, as he afterwards described himself.

Returning to England, Foot was appointed house-surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, and on the conclusion of his term of office began practice in London, in Salisbury Street, Strand, later moving to Dean Street, Soho. He died at Ilfracombe on 27 October 1826.

Works

Foot wrote a slanted Life of John Hunter. He was also the biographer of Andrew Robinson Stoney (Bowes) and his wife, Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore, who were his patients; and of Arthur Murphy, a friend. He was an anti-abolitionist, in favour of the West Indian planters, and wrote a Defence of them. He attacked William Wilberforce and the abolition activists.

Foot wrote:

See also for minor contributions Index to the London Medical and Physical Journal, vols. i–xl., 1820.

Family

Jesse Foot (1780–1850), surgeon, was the nephew of the preceding. He practised for many years as a surgeon at Clarendon, Jamaica, returned home about 1819, and lived with his uncle in Dean Street, Soho, for two years, marrying Miss Foot (presumably his cousin) on 4 September 1819. He succeeded to his uncle's practice, and in 1826 brought out a new edition of his work on the urethra, which is described as the eighth edition. He became surgeon to the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. He published Ophthalmic Memoranda, 1838, and wrote papers in The Lancet and the London Medical and Surgical Journal, enumerated in Amédée Dechambre, Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales. In 1834 he published The Medical Pocket-book for 1835. Foot died at Ilfracombe, aged 70, on 5 January 1850.

References

    Attribution

     This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Foot, Jesse". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.