under Claude Bernard. He graduated M.B. at the London University in 1845, when he is said to have been the first student from a provincial medical school who succeeded in obtaining a gold medal. He graduated M.D. in 1851. He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1848, and was elected a fellow in 1858. He filled the office of Gulstonian lecturer in 1860 and of Croonian lecturer in 1873. He subsequently became a councillor of the College of Physicians, and in 1875–6 he acted as censor.
He was appointed, on 21 May 1853, assistant physician to the Westminster Hospital, where he succeeded to the office of full physician 25 April 1857, and he was elected to the consulting staff on 27 May 1873. He lectured upon botany and materia medica in the medical school attached to the hospital. In 1863 he was appointed physician to the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic in Queen Square, in succession to Dr. Brown-Séquard, and it was in connection with this institution, and the diseases of the nervous system which it was founded to relieve, that Radcliffe's name was best known. He died very suddenly on 18 June 1889, and was buried in Highgate cemetery. He married in 1851, but left no issue.
Radcliffe, whose personal appearance was extremely striking, was a type of all that is best in a physician of the old school, modified by a modern scientific training. His mind was essentially metaphysical with a strong bias towards novel theories. He was one of the earliest investigators in this country of the electrical physiology of muscle and nerve, but he was too much occupied with abstract theories to do much by way of experiment. He was, as Sir Burdon-Sanderson points out, essentially a vitalist, but with this difference—that in his doctrine electricity took the place of the vital principle. Theological speculation also interested him, and he read with almost equal zest the works of Plato, Aquinas, and Maurice.
An unfinished portrait, by Sir William Boxall, belongs to Mrs. Radcliffe.
Radcliffe's works are: 1. ‘Proteus, or the Law of Nature,’ 8vo, London, 1850. 2. ‘The Philosophy of Vital Motion,’ 8vo, 1851. 3. ‘Epilepsy and other Affections of the Nervous System marked by Tremor, Convulsion, or Spasm,’ 8vo, 1854; 2nd edit. 1858; 3rd edit. 1861. 4. ‘Lectures on Epilepsy, Pain, Paralysis, and certain other disorders of the Nervous System,’ 8vo, 1864. 5. ‘Articles in Reynolds's System of Medicine,’ 1868 and 1872. 6. ‘Dynamics of Nerve and Muscle,’ 8vo, 1871. 7. ‘Vital Motion as a Mode of Physical Motion,’ 8vo, 1876. 8. ‘The Connection between Vital and Physical Motion: a Conversation,’ privately printed, 1881. 9. ‘Behind the Tides,’ privately printed.
Radcliffe was joint editor with Dr. W. H. Ranking from 1845 to 1873 of Ranking's ‘Abstract of the Medical Sciences.’
[Personal knowledge; obituary notices; Westminster Hospital Reports, by G. Cowell, 1889, v. 1; Proceedings of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, 1890, by Sir E. H. Sieveking, M.D.; additional information kindly given to the writer by Mrs. Radcliffe.]
RADCLIFFE or RADCLYFFE, CHARLES EDWARD (1774–1827), lieutenant-colonel, born in 1774, received his first commission as adjutant of the first dragoons (royals) on 11 Oct. 1797, but he had previously served under the Duke of York in the campaign of 1794. He was made cornet on 12 April 1799, lieutenant on 4 May 1800, and captain on 1 Dec. 1804. He embarked for the Peninsula with the royals in September 1809, and in the following June he was appointed brigade-major to General Slade's brigade, which consisted at that time of the royals and the 14th dragoons. He continued in this position throughout the war, up to the battle of Toulouse in 1814, being present at Busaco, Fuentes d'Onoro, Vittoria, and various minor actions. In the action at Maquilla on 11 June 1812, in which Slade's brigade (royals and 3rd dragoon guards) was worsted by Lallemand, and driven in confusion for six miles with a loss of 150 men, Slade reported that he was particularly indebted to Radcliffe for his assistance in rallying the men. As a result of his experience in the war, Radcliffe submitted a strong recommendation that British troopers should be taught to use the point instead of the edge of their sabres, and published a small work on the subject; it is not in the British Museum.
Radcliffe was employed as assistant adjutant-general of cavalry during the march of the cavalry across France after the war. He received a brevet majority on 4 June 1814, and on 25 Sept. was made brigade-major to the inspector general of cavalry. In the following year he went to Belgium with his regiment, which formed part of the famous Union brigade. His squadron constituted the rearguard of the brigade in the retreat from Quatre Bras on 17 June, and he was thanked for his conduct by Sir William Ponsonby. He was specially praised also by Ponsonby's successor, Colonel Clifton, for his part in the great cavalry charge at Waterloo
