bellishment of the Houses of Parliament;’ in 1858 ‘The Royal Academy and the National Gallery. What is the state of these Institutions?’ In 1866 appeared a posthumous volume of essays by this artist, entitled ‘Thoughts on Great Painters.’ A preface to this book states that the author died on 28 Sept. 1862.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists.]
DAVIS, JOHN BUNNELL, M.D. (1780–1824), physician, son of a surgeon at Thetford, was born in 1780 at Clare, Suffolk. He was educated for his father's profession at Guy's and St. Thomas's hospitals, and became a member of the corporation of surgeons. Soon after receiving his diploma he went as medical attendant to a family travelling in France during the peace of Amiens, and had the misfortune to be treacherously detained by Bonaparte. He made the best of his circumstances, studied at Montpellier, and there graduated M.D. in 1803. At Verdun, to which he was soon after confined, he published ‘Observations on Precipitate Burial and the Diagnosis of Death.’ He sent the work to Corvisart, Bonaparte's first physician, with a petition for release. Corvisart, acting with a true professional fellow feeling, obtained Davis's release, and he returned to England in May 1806. He went to study at Edinburgh, and graduated M.D. there 24 June 1808, reading a dissertation on phthisis. He was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians, London, in 1810, and had shortly before (Walcheren Fever, p. 2) been appointed temporary physician to the forces, and was sent to attend, in a hospital at Ipswich, the troops invalided home from Walcheren. Of this service he published an account: ‘A Scientific and Popular View of the Fever at Walcheren and its consequences as they appeared in the British troops returned from the late expedition, with an account of the Morbid Anatomy of the Body and the Efficacy of Drastic Purges and Mercury in the treatment of this Disease,’ London, 1810. The prefatory remarks and the account of the symptoms are neither concise nor lucid, and the best part of the book is the collection of post-mortem records at the end. They show that what was called Walcheren fever included cases of several kinds, of dysentery, of enteric fever, and of enteric fever complicated with malarial fever. Davis settled in practice in London, where in 1816 he had a share in founding on St. Andrew's Hill in the City the Universal Dispensary for Sick Indigent Children, the first of the kind in London. He attended this institution as physician, and published an account of it in 1821. His other works are: ‘The Ancient and Modern History of Nice,’ London, 1807; ‘More subjects than one concerning France and the French People,’ London, 1807; ‘The Origin and Description of Bognor,’ London, 1807; ‘Cursory Inquiry into the Principal Causes of Mortality among Children,’ London, 1817. He died on 28 Sept. 1824.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, iii. 95.]
DAVIS, JOHN FORD, M.D. (1773–1864), physician, was born at Bath in 1773, and, after education at the school of the Rev. Edward Spencer, studied medicine, first in London and afterwards in Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. on 24 June 1797 (Dissertation). He became a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London on 30 Sept. 1808, and soon after began practice at Bath. He was elected physician to the General Hospital there in 1817, and held the office for seventeen years. He died at Bath on 1 Jan. 1864. His published works are his graduation thesis, ‘Tentamen Chemico-Medicum inaugurale de Contagio,’ Edinburgh, 1797, and ‘An Inquiry into the Symptoms and Treatment of Carditis or the Inflammation of the Heart,’ Bath, 1808. The thesis is based upon Diemerbroeck's well-known treatise on the plague, on Smyth's ‘Jail Distemper,’ and on several of the chemical works of that time. It contains no original observation on fever, and, excepting two or three chemical conjectures, is a mere compilation. A copy in the library of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London has an inscription to Dr. Bostock in the fine pointed handwriting of the author. The book on carditis shows a good deal of reading, but contains only three cases, the last of which alone was observed by Davis himself. The book is, however, interesting as showing what, and how very little, was known of diseases of the heart ten years before the publication of the first edition of Laennec's treatise on auscultation. The anatomical appearances of pericarditis are exactly described, and, though the passages on diagnosis are of course imperfect, it is clear that a great advance in knowledge had been made since Mead, in 1748, had written all that he knew of heart disease upon a single page.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. iii. 68.]
DAVIS, JOSEPH BARNARD (1801–1881), craniologist, was born in 1801. In the summer of 1820, while still a student, he went as a surgeon in a whaling ship to the Arctic seas. Obtaining the Apothecaries'
