Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cantwell, Andrew
CANTWELL, ANDREW (d. 1764), medical writer, was born in Tipperary, and studied medicine in Montpellier, where he graduated in 1729. Having failed in his endeavours in 1732 to secure the succession to the chair of medicine which had been left vacant by Astruc's migration to Paris, he also settled in Paris in 1733. After going through a further lengthened course of study there, he graduated M.D. of Paris in 1742. In 1750 he was appointed at Paris professor of surgery in the Latin language, in 1760 he became professor of the same subject in French, and in 1762 professor of pharmacy. He was one of the bitterest and most persistent opponents of inoculation against small-pox, and made a lengthened stay in England to study the practice and its results. He wrote a ‘Dissertation on Inoculation,’ Paris, 1755, an ‘Account of Small-pox,’ Paris, 1758, and numerous Latin dissertations on medicine, besides publishing other medical treatises, and several translations of English books, lists of which are given in Eloy (see below) and ‘Nouvelle Biographie Générale,’ Paris, viii. 1855. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and contributions of his are to be found in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ vols. xl. xli. xlii. He died at Paris 11 July 1764.
[Eloy's Dict. Historique de la Médecine, Mons, 1778, i. 529; Dict. Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales, xii. 1871.]