BLACKADER, ROBERT. [See Blacader.]
BLACKALL, JOHN, M.D. (1771–1860), physician, sixth son of the Rev. Theophilus Blackall, a prebendary of Exeter cathedral, by his wife Elizabeth Ley, and grandson of Bishop Offspring Blackall [q. v.], was born in St. Paul's Street, Exeter, 24 Dec. 1771. He was educated at the Exeter grammar school, whence he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, as a member of which he graduated B.A. 1793, M.A. 1796, M.B. 1797, and M.D. 2 March 1801. Immediately after taking his first degree he applied himself to the study of medicine at St.Bartholomew's Hospital, and it was in its wards, while working as the clinical clerk of Dr. John Latham, that he made the observations on albuminuria which were afterwards stated and enlarged in his treatise on dropsies. In 1797 he settled in his native city, and on 1 June in that year was chosen physician to the Devon the Exeter Hospital. At this period, however, the medical practice of Exeter was engrossed by Dr. Hugh Downman, Dr. Bartholomew Parr, and Dr. George Daniell, and in 1801 Dr. Blackall resigned his appointment at Exeter, and settled at Totness, where he became the physician of the district. His reputation increased, and in 1807 he returned to Exeter, where he was a second time elected physician to the Devon and Exeter Hospital, and in 1812 was appointed physician to St. Thomas's Lunatic Asylum. In 1813 he published his well-known and admirable ‘Observations on the Nature and Cure of Dropsies,’ London, 8vo, of which there are four editions, and which entitles its author to a position among medical discoverers. Dropsy is the morbid effusion of the serum of the blood into the cavities of the body and into the meshes of its tissues. It had been observed from the beginning of medicine, but up to the time of Lower (1669) nothing was known of its morbid anatomy. He made the first step, which was the demonstration that dropsy of a limb always follows direct obstruction of its veins. Blackall's discovery came next, and was that dropsy is often associated with the presence of albumen in the urine. His treatise states clearly the relation between albuminuria and dropsy, and shows that he suspected that the kidneys were diseased in these cases. The further discovery of Bright (1836) of the constant relation between renal disease and albuminuria is based upon the observations first made by Blackall. Blackall also published (1813) some observations on angina pectoris, a disease then much discussed, owing to Heberden's writings upon it. Blackall was admitted candidate of the College of Physicians, 22 Dec. 1814, and a fellow, 22 Dec. 1815. His progress from this period was rapid and uninterrupted, and for a long series of years he had a great practice in the west of England. He was famed for his skill in diagnosis, and it was based upon a thorough method of clinical examination. He used no complicated remedies, was patient in waiting for results, and was justly confident in the conclusions to which he had attained with so much care.
Dr. Blackall retained his strength and faculties to an advanced age, and he did not relinquish private practice till he was eighty. He died at Southernhay, Exeter, 10 Jan. 1860, and was followed to the grave in the burial-ground of Holy Trinity Church by a large body of relations and friends and the whole of the medical profession resident within the city.
[British Medical Journal (Memoir by Thomas Shapter, M.D.), 1860, pp. 75–6; Munk's Roll of College of Physicians (1878), iii. 138–41.]
BLACKALL or BLACKHALL, OFFSPRING (1654–1716), bishop of Exeter, did not come into public notice until he was a middle-aged man, and of his early years little is known. He was born in London, and in due time became a member of St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge, where, it may be presumed, he lived a strictly religious life, for he is mentioned as one of the intimate college friends of the saintly James Bonnell [q. v.], who chose none but the godly for his companions. In 1690 he became rector of South Okenden or Ockendon in Essex, and in 1694 rector of St. Mary Aldermary in London; with this latter preferment he also held successively two lectureships in the city. He was next made chaplain to King William III, although he was so strongly suspected of inclining to the exiled dynasty that he was charged in a pamphlet of 1705 with having continued a nonjuror for two years after the revolution. A sermon preached before the House of Commons on 30 Jan. 1699 first brought him into notice as a controversialist. The sermon is really a very moderate one, in comparison with many which were wont to be preached on such occasions, but in it the preacher made a passing reference—it only takes up about a twentieth part of the sermon—to John Toland, against whom everybody was then preaching. In 1698 Toland in his ‘Life of Milton’ disputed the royal authorship of the ‘Icon Basilike,’ and took occasion, more suo, to insinuate that, as people were mistaken on this point, so they might be about the authenticity of many of the early writings
