Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/70

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tice in London, working steadily at Guy's Hospital, where in 1825, after becoming a licentiate of the College of Physicians, he was appointed curator of the museum and pathologist. He improved the museum and gave pathological lectures. In 1828 he published ‘An Essay on Medical Education,’ in 1829 a ‘Catalogue of the Preparations in the Anatomical Museum of Guy's Hospital,’ and in 1832 ‘Hints relative to the Cholera in London.’ In the ‘Transactions’ of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society for 1832 he published a number of cases of contemporaneous enlargement of the spleen and lymphatic glands. In his examples he did not clearly distinguish several morbid conditions from one another. Dr. Samuel Wilks in 1865 pointed out (Guy's Hospital Reports, 1865) that four of them belonged to a species of disease which he had himself independently discovered (ib. 1862), and the precise definition of the condition is due to him; but with the generous desire of perpetuating the fame of his predecessor in office as teacher of pathology at Guy's Hospital, he gave this morbid state the name of ‘Hodgkin's Disease.’ It is an enlargement of the lymphatic glands distinguished from struma by the absence of tendency to suppurate in the glands and from leucocythæmia by the absence of changes in the blood. In 1836 Hodgkin's ‘Lectures on the Morbid Anatomy of the Serous and Mucous Membranes’ was published in two volumes, and it established his reputation as a member of the distinguished school of morbid anatomists connected with Guy's Hospital. Hodgkin was a member of the senate of the university of London from its foundation in 1837 till his death. He was a candidate but was never elected physician to Guy's Hospital, nor did he attain a large private practice. He was famed for his generosity to his patients, and was careless of fees. Sir James Clark [q. v.] and other friends in 1857 wished to present him with a valuable testimonial, but he insisted that the money subscribed should be paid over to a charity.

Hodgkin gradually fell out of practice, and gave his time to philanthropic agitation. He had been one of the founders of the Aborigines' Protection Society in 1838, and through it and other agencies worked hard for oppressed savages, persecuted Jews, and ill-housed poor. In 1850 he married a widow, Mrs. Sarah Frances Scaife, and their house in Bedford Square, London, was the scene of much simple hospitality to philanthropists, ethnologists, and geographers. He had no children. In 1866 he visited Palestine with Sir Moses Montefiore, and while there died at Jaffa, 5 April 1866, of an aggravated dysenteric attack. He was buried at Jaffa, and a monument was erected over his grave by Sir Moses Montefiore. He was throughout life a zealous member of the Society of Friends, and always wore their distinctive dress. He translated with Dr. Fisher from the French ‘Edwards on the Influence of Physical Agents on Life’ (London, 1832), and also published ‘The Means of Promoting and Preserving Health’ (London, 1840), of which a second edition appeared in 1841, an ‘Address on Medical Reform’ (1847), ‘A Biographical Sketch of Dr. James Cowles Prichard’ (1849), ‘A Biographical Sketch of Dr. W. Stroud’ (1858), and pamphlets in defence of the Negro Emancipation and the British African Colonization Societies (1833–1834).

[Works; Dr. S. Wilks's Account of some Unpublished Papers of the late Dr. Hodgkin; Guy's Hospital Reports, 3rd ser. v. xxiii; information from Dr. S. Wilks; information from family; Morning Star, 15 April 1866; Lancet, 21 April 1866; Medical Times and Gazette, 14 April 1866; Smith's Cat. of Friends' Books.]

N. M.

HODGKINSON, EATON (1789–1861), writer on the strength of materials, the son of a farmer, was born at Anderton in the parish of Great Budworth, Cheshire, on 26 Feb. 1789. He was left fatherless when six years old, but his mother carried on the farm, and was able to send him to Northwich grammar school, where he received the rudiments of a classical education, and afterwards to Mr. Shaw's private school in the same town, where his natural bias for mathematics was allowed full scope. His mother's difficulties compelled her to abandon an intention of educating him for the church, and he devoted himself to the farm. For that vocation he was unsuited, and he persuaded his mother to embark her little capital in a pawnbroking business at Salford, Manchester. Removing thither in 1811, when he was twenty-two years old, he soon took up the line of scientific inquiry which was suited to his genius, and became acquainted with John Dalton and other gifted men then living at Manchester. In March 1822 he read a paper ‘On the Transverse Strain and Strength of Materials’ before the Literary and Philosophical Society (printed in their Memoirs, vol. iv. 2nd ser.). In this contribution is recorded an element which became an important object in all his subsequent experiments, namely ‘set,’ or the difference between the original position of a strained body and the position it assumes when the strain is removed. He fixed the exact position of the ‘neutral line’ in the