townsmen. Dr. Barry contributed many papers on vaccination, fever, and similar subjects to the London ‘Medical and Physical Journal,’ 1800–1 (vols. iii., iv., and vi.); to Dr. Harty's ‘History of the Contagious Fever Epidemics in Ireland in 1817, 1818, and 1819,’ Dublin, 1820; to Barker and Cheyne's ‘Fever in Ireland,’ Dublin, 1821; and to the ‘Transactions of the Irish College of Physicians,’ vol. ii. He also published several pamphlets, and wrote many annual reports of the Cork Fever Hospital. In his essays he forcibly described the physical dangers of drunkenness, and the necessity of coercing habitual drunkards by law. He also strongly advocated the development of female education.
Dr. Barry's second son, John O'Brien Milner Barry, (1815–1881), who studied medicine at Paris from 1883 to 1836, and graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1837, practised for some years at Laugharne, at Totnes, and finally, from 1852 till his death in 1881, at Tunbridge Wells. He published, among other medical papers, essays on ‘Cystine’ and ‘Leucocythemia’ in the ‘Medical Archives,’ 1858–60, and on ‘Diphtheritis’ in the ‘British Medical Journal,’ 1858. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians shortly before his death.
[Information supplied by the Rev. E. Milner Barry of Scothorne Vicarage, Lincoln.]
BARRY or BARREY, LODOWICK (17th cent.), dramatist, strangely miscalled by Anthony à Wood, and in the manuscript of Coxeter, Lord Barry, is known as the author of one comedy, ‘Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks,’ 4to, 1611 and 1636, which has been included in the second and subsequent editions of Dodsley's ‘Old Plays.’ Wood says it was acted by the Children of the King's Revels before 1611. The only performance of which any record exists took place at Drury Lane between 1719 and 1723, probably near the latter date. A manuscript cast which came into the possession of Genest assigns the principal characters to Wilks, Cibber, jun., Pinkethman, Mills, Mrs. Booth, and Mrs. Seal. ‘Ram Alley’ is a respectable comedy of its class, written in blank verse, lapsing at times into rhyme, and, though coarse in language, contains a fairly amusing and edifying plot. The credit of this piece was long assigned to Massinger. Barry, concerning whose origin nothing is known, except that he was of gentle birth and Irish extraction, is supposed to have died soon after the production of his play. The sole evidence in favour of this is that a promise made in his preface that if ‘Ram Alley’ met with public approval, he would ‘never cease his brain to toil’ until he had produced
Conceits so new, so harmless free,
That Puritans themselves may see,
is not known to have been kept. Langbaine says that an incident in the play subsequently used in Killigrew's ‘Parson's Wedding’ ‘is borrowed,’ as he supposes, ‘from the same author from whom Kirkman took the story,’ which is to be found in the ‘English Rogue,’ part iv. chap. 19. The editor of the latest edition of Dodsley misconstrues this statement into a positive charge of plagiarism from the ‘English Rogue,’ and assigns it to the ‘Biographia Dramatica,’ in which no more is said than that the same circumstance occurs in the plays of Barry and Killigrew and in the ‘English Rogue,’ and gratuitously characterises it as ‘a gross error.’
[Wood's Athen. Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 655; Langbaine's Dramatic Poets; Baker, Reed, and Jones's Biographia Dramatica; Compleat List of all the English Dramatic Poets, appended to Whincop; Genest's Account of the English Stage; Ward's English Dramatic Literature.]
BARRY, MARTIN, M.D. (1802–1855), physician, was born at Fratton, Hants. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, Paris, Erlangen, Heidelberg, Berlin, and London; was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, and took his M.D. degree in 1833. He was a pupil of Tiedemann at Heidelberg, and devoted his attention to the study of embryology. He contributed in 1838–9 two papers on embryology to the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ and was awarded the royal medal in 1839. In the following year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1843 he made the important discovery of the presence of spermatozoa within the ovum, which fact he communicated to the society. This observation was challenged by Bischoff, but after a lapse of nine years was corroborated by Nelson, Newport, and Meissner, and eventually admitted by Bischoff. In that year he delivered a course of physiological lectures at St. Thomas's Hospital, and in the following year was appointed house surgeon to the Royal Maternity Hospital at Edinburgh, where he distinguished himself in the practice of midwifery, and gained the respect and love of the poor among whom he practised. He again visited the continent in 1849, and went to Prague, Giessen, and Breslau, where he worked with Purkinje, who translated a paper by Barry on ‘Fibre,’ which was published in Müller's ‘Archiv’ in 1850. In 1853 he returned to England, residing at Beccles in Suffolk, and working at his microscopical studies up to a short time before
