Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Haviland, John
HAVILAND, JOHN (1785–1851), professor of medicine at Cambridge, son of a Bridgewater surgeon, descended from a Guernsey family, was born at Bridgewater on 2 Feb. 1785. He was educated at Winchester College, and in 1803 matriculated at St. John's, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. as twelfth wrangler in 1807, subsequently becoming a fellow of his college. He proceeded M.A. in 1810, M.L. 1812, and M.D. 1817. He afterwards studied medicine at Edinburgh for two sessions, and for three years at St. Bartholomew's, London. He became an inceptor of the Royal College of Physicians in 1814 and a fellow in 1818, and delivered the Harveian oration in 1837. Having settled at Cambridge, Haviland was elected professor of anatomy in 1814 on the death of Sir Busick Harwood [q. v.], and on Sir Isaac Pennington's death in 1817 was appointed regius professor of physic and physician to Addenbrooke's Hospital, resigning the anatomical chair. He gave up his post as hospital physician in 1839, but retained the regius professorship till his death on 8 Jan. 1851. He had a large practice in Cambridge till 1838, when he retired; and he exercised a good influence in keeping the medical school at Cambridge alive when it was threatened with extinction. He was the first professor who gave regular courses on pathology and the practice of medicine; he established a formal curriculum and satisfactory examinations in place of merely nominal proceedings. His character was high, and his judgment good. He wrote nothing but a synopsis of lectures on anatomy, and ‘Some Observations concerning the Fever which prevailed in Cambridge during the Spring of 1815’ (Medical Transactions, 1815). He married in 1819 Louisa, youngest daughter of the Rev. G. Pollen, and left five sons.
[Gent. Mag. 1851, new ser. xxxv. 205; Munk's Coll. of Phys. iii. 183, 184.]