able to appeal in person to his patrons at his benefit on the 20th. The benefit was, however, a great success. The Prince of Wales sent ten guineas, and there was a crowded house, for which, on the 22nd, in the same paper, Ryan returned thanks. His upper jaw was principally injured. He reappeared on 25 April as the original Bellair in Popple's ‘Double Deceit, or a Cure for Jealousy.’ On 7 Feb. 1760, as Eumenes in the ‘Siege of Damascus,’ he was seen for what seems to have been the last time. On 1 March he advertised that he had been for some time much indisposed, and had postponed his benefit until 14 April, in the hope of being able to pay his personal attendance on his friends. For that benefit ‘Comus’ and the ‘Cheats of Scapin’ were played. It does not appear that he took part in either piece, and on 15 Aug. 1760, at his house in Crown Court, Westminster, or, according to another account, in Bath, he died.
After his first success as Marcus in Addison's ‘Cato,’ Ryan enjoyed for nearly thirty years a claim rarely disputed to the lovers in tragedy and the fine gentlemen in comedy. Above the middle height, easy rather than graceful in action and deportment, and awkward in the management of his head, he appeared at times extravagantly ridiculous in characters such as Phocyas or Sir George Airy, yet for a long time he was highly esteemed. His parts were very numerous. His most important original part was Falconbridge in Cibber's ‘Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John,’ 15 Feb. 1745. His best performances were as Edgar in ‘Lear,’ Ford, Dumont, Iago, Mosca in ‘Volpone,’ Cassius, Frankly in the ‘Suspicious Husband,’ Moneses, and Jaffier. In the fourth act of ‘Macbeth’ he was excellent as Macduff. His mad scene in ‘Orestes’ won high commendation, and in his last act as Lord Townly he triumphed, though he had to encounter the formidable rivalry of Barry. He was too old when he played Alonzo in the ‘Revenge,’ but showed power in the scenes of jealousy and distraction, and his Captain Plume, one of his latest assumptions, displayed much spirit. Without ever getting quite into the first rank, he approached very near it, and was one of the most genuinely useful actors of the day.
Ryan, whose voice had a drawling, croaking accent, due to the injury to his jaw, by which his features, naturally handsome, were also damaged, was one of the actors whom Garrick, in his early and saucy mimicries, derided on the stage. In subsequent years Garrick went to see Ryan for the purpose of laughing at his ungraceful and ill-dressed figure in ‘Richard III,’ but found unexpected excellence in his performance, by which he modified and improved his own impersonation. Quin's friendship with Ryan was constant, and was creditable to both actors [see Quin, James].
[Genest's Account of the English Stage; Dibdin's English Stage; Davies's Life of Garrick and Dramatic Miscellanies; Tate Wilkinson's Memoirs and Wandering Patentee; Theatrical Examiner, 1757; Doran's Stage Annals, ed. Lowe; Life of Garrick, 1894; Thespian Dictionary; Georgian Era; Clark Russell's Representative Actors; Dramatic Censor.]
RYAN, MICHAEL (1800–1841), physician and author, was born in 1800. He was a member of both the College of Surgeons and the college of Physicians in London, where he practised, and was physician to the Metropolitan Free Hospital. In 1830 he was a candidate for the professorship of toxicology in the Medico-Botanical Society. On 11 May of the same year he communicated to that society a paper on ‘The Use of the Secale Cornutum or Ergot of Rye in Midwifery.’
Besides editing from 1832 to 1838 the original ‘London Medical and Surgical Journal’ (J. F. Clarke, Autobiographical Recollections, 1874, pp. 279–80), he published in 1831 part of a course of lectures on medical jurisprudence, delivered at the medical theatre, Hatton Garden, under the title ‘Lectures on Population, Marriage, and Divorce as Questions of State Medicine, comprising an Account of the Causes and Treatment of Impotence and Sterility.’
In the same year appeared the completed ‘Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, being an Analysis of a Course of Lectures on Forensic Medicine, &c.’ A second and enlarged edition was issued in 1836, an edition with notes by R. E. Griffith, M.D., having been published in Philadelphia in 1832. In 1831 also appeared the third edition, in 12mo, of Ryan's ‘Manual of Midwifery … comprising a new Nomenclature of Obstetric Medicine, with a concise Account of the Symptoms and Treatment of the most important Diseases of Women and Children. Illustrated by plates.’ An enlarged octavo edition was issued in 1841, rewritten, and containing ‘a complete atlas including 120 figures.’ The ‘Atlas of Obstetricity’ had been issued separately in 1840. An American edition of the ‘Manual’ appeared at Burlington, Vermont, in 1835. Ryan's later publications included ‘The Philosophy of Marriage in its Social, Moral, and Physical Relations; with an Account of the Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs and the Physiology of Generation in the Vegetable and Animal Kingdom,’ 1837, 8vo; this formed
