Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bostock, John (1740-1774)
BOSTOCK, JOHN, the elder (1740–1774), was born in England, but educated at the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. in 1769. His inaugural dissertation is his only published work. It is dedicated to Cullen, under whom he had studied, and for whom he expresses very warm admiration. This dissertation is on gout, and extends to forty-three octavo pages, of which four and a half are occupied by a quotation from Sydenham's famous treatise on the disease. Under the heading of diagnosis a lucid summary of the distinctions between gout and rheumatism is given, which is, however, much less complete than Heberden's well-known passage on the subject. The thesis contains nothing original, and the author in the last paragraph gracefully acknowledges that all his matter is drawn from Cullen. Bostock became an extra licentiate of the College of Physicians of London in 1770, and began practice immediately after at Liverpool. He was elected physician to the Royal Infirmary, married, and had a son, Dr. John Bostock [q. v.]. and but died when only thirty-four years old, 10 March 1774. Some of Bostock's books are preserved in the library of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society in London, and among them a copy of his 'Tentamen Medicum inaugurale de Arthritide,' Edinburgh. 1769.
[Munk's Coll. of Physicians (1878), vol. ii.; Bostock's Works.]