Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/194

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

cian to the Jervis Street Hospital. He also gave lectures on materia medica from 1841 to 1846, and on medicine from 1846 to 1857, in the Dublin school of Peter Street. He published in 1844 ‘Medicines, their Uses and Mode of Administration,’ which gives an account of all the drugs mentioned in the London, Scottish, and Irish pharmacopœias, and of some others. Their sources, medicinal actions, doses, and most useful compounds are clearly stated; and the compilation, though containing no original matter, was useful to medical practitioners, and went through many editions. He enjoyed the friendship of Robert James Graves [q. v.], the famous lecturer on medicine, and in 1848 edited the second edition of his ‘Clinical Lectures on the Practice of Medicine.’ In the same year he published ‘The Diagnosis and Treatment of Eruptive Diseases of the Scalp,’ which was printed at the Dublin University Press. He describes as inflammatory diseases herpes, eczema, impetigo, and pityriasis, and as non-inflammatory porrigo, and gives a lucid statement of their characteristics in tabular form; but he was ignorant of the parasitic nature of herpes capitis, as he calls ringworm, and seems not to have noticed the frequent relation between eczema of the occiput and animal parasites. From 1849 to 1861 he edited the ‘Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science,’ and published many medical papers of his own in it. In 1852 he published ‘A Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Skin,’ and, like most men who attain notoriety as dermatologists, issued in 1855 a coloured ‘Atlas of Skin Diseases.’ His treatise is a compilation from standard authors, with a very small addition from his own experience. The subject is well arranged, and so set forth as to be useful to practitioners. It was much read, and led to his treating many patients with cutaneous affections. His house in Dublin was 17 Merrion Square East. He married in 1839 Kate Gumbleton, but had no children, and died on 24 July 1863.

[Cameron's Hist. of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, 1886; Webb's Dictionary of Biography.]

N. M.

NELSON, Sir ALEXANDER ABERCROMBY (1816–1893), lieutenant-general, born at Walmer, Kent, in 1816, and educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, was, on 6 March 1835, appointed ensign 40th foot (now 1st batt. South Lancashire), in which regiment his two brothers, and subsequently his son, also served. He became lieutenant on 15 March 1839, and was in sole charge of the commissariat of the Bombay column during the operations under Sir William Nott [q. v.] at Kandahar and in Afghanistan in 1841–2 (medal). He accompanied the Bombay column, under Colonel Stack, which proceeded from Ferozepore to join Sir Charles James Napier [q. v.] in Sind, was present at the battle of Haidarabad, 24 March 1843 (medal), and was thanked by the governor-general of India and the Bombay government for the manner in which the duties of the commissariat were performed. He was aide-de-camp to Sir Thomas Valiant at the battle of Maharajpore, 29 Dec. 1843, and had a horse shot under him (mentioned in despatches and bronze star). On 31 July 1846 he obtained an unattached company. He was appointed adjutant of the Walmer depot battalion, 7 April 1854, but immediately afterwards was made deputy assistant adjutant-general, and subsequently brigade-major, at Portsmouth, which post he held during the period of the Crimean war and the Indian mutiny. He became major unattached 6 June 1856, lieutenant-colonel 9 Dec. 1864, and colonel 9 Dec. 1869. In 1865, when deputy adjutant-general in Jamaica, he was appointed brigadier-general to command the troops at St. Thomas-in-the-East at the time of the insurrection, for his services in suppressing which he received the thanks of government, and was unanimously voted a sum of two hundred guineas for a testimonial by the Jamaica House of Assembly. He was lieutenant-governor of Guernsey from 1870 to 1883, and was a J.P. for Middlesex. Nelson became a major-general in 1880, and a retired lieutenant-general in 1883. He was made C.B. in 1875 and K.C.B. in 1891. He married in 1846 Emma Georgiana, daughter of Robert Hibbert, of Hale Barns, Altrincham, Cheshire. She died in 1892. Nelson died at his residence near Reading on 28 Sept. 1893.

[Army Lists and London Gazette; Debrett's Knightage; Times, 30 Sept. 1893.]

H. M. C.


NELSON, FRANCES HERBERT, Viscountess Nelson (1761–1831), baptised May 1761, was the daughter of William Woolward (d. 18 Feb. 1779), senior judge of the island of Nevis in the West Indies, and, by her mother, niece of John Richardson Herbert, president of the council of Nevis. On 28 June 1779 (Notes and Queries, 8th ser. v. 222) she married Josiah Nisbet, M.D., who shortly afterwards became deranged, and died within eighteen months, leaving her, with an infant son, dependent on her uncle. While living with him she became acquainted with Nelson, then the young captain of the Boreas, and was married to him at Nevis on