William Austin (physician) facts for kids

William Austin (born 1754, died 1793) was a very skilled doctor and mathematician. He wrote an important book called "A treatise on the stone" based on his Goulstonian Lecture.

Early Life and Learning

William Austin was born in Wotton-under-Edge, England, on December 28, 1754. He was the youngest of eight children. After going to a local grammar school, he started studying at Wadham College, Oxford in 1773.

At Oxford, William began learning Hebrew and quickly became very good at it, earning a scholarship. He then studied botany, which also helped him get another scholarship. His interest in plants led him to choose medicine as his career.

After getting his first degree in 1776, he worked as an assistant teacher for Dr. White, a professor of Arabic. William even gave some lectures on Arabic. In 1779, he moved to London to study medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. A famous surgeon named Percival Pott was very impressed with William, saying he would become a top doctor. William then went back to Oxford and earned more advanced degrees in medicine by 1783.

A Busy Career

In 1781, William Austin published a book about geometry called An Examination of the First Six Books of Euclid's Elements. Around the same time, he started working as a doctor in Oxford. He also taught mathematics when the usual professor was away.

In 1785, he became a professor of chemistry and also worked as a doctor at the Radcliffe Infirmary. In 1786, he moved back to London to become a doctor at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He quickly became very popular and had many patients. He also continued his chemistry studies and was the first to teach regular chemistry classes at St. Bartholomew's.

In 1790, William gave the Goulstonian Lectures at the College of Physicians, where he had become a member in 1787. His lectures were about kidney stones, and he published them in 1791 as A Treatise on the Origin and Component Parts of the Stone in the Urinary Bladder.

At the time, chemistry was not as advanced as it is today. William's experiments led him to believe that kidney stones mostly came from mucus in the body, not from urine. This idea was later found to be incorrect. However, he did correctly observe that different hard lumps found in the body have different makeups. For example, he noted that hard material in older people's arteries was chalky, but the white substance on joints affected by gout was not.

Later Life

William Austin also wrote sermons, but these were never printed. He wrote a short math book, but it is not available today. He also presented two papers to the Royal Society in 1788 and 1789 about a type of gas called 'Heavy Inflammable Air'.

William had expressed concerns about the difficulty of surgery for kidney stones. His surgical colleague, James Earle, later wrote a book defending the operation, saying that William had changed his mind about how difficult it was before he died. Earle's book, Practical Observations on the Operation for the Stone (1796), includes a kind story about William.

Dr. Austin was married twice. He had four children with his second wife, Margaret Alanson, and two children from his first marriage. He passed away on January 21, 1793, from a sudden illness.

William Hayley was a close friend of William Austin. When William Austin died, William Cowper, who was Hayley's friend, wrote a poem to remember him.