Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Reynolds, Henry Revell
REYNOLDS, HENRY REVELL, M.D. (1745–1811), physician, son of John Reynolds, was born at Laxton, Nottinghamshire, on 26 Sept. 1745, one month after the death of his father, and was brought up by his maternal great-uncle, Henry Revell of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. He was sent to Beverley grammar school, and went thence on 17 March 1763 to Lincoln College, Oxford. He migrated to Trinity College, Cambridge, and, after further study at Edinburgh, graduated M.B. at Cambridge in 1768 and M.D. in 1773. He first practised at Guildford, Surrey, and there married Miss Wilson in April 1770. Dr. Huck Saunders advised him to settle in London, and in the summer of 1772 he took a house in Lamb's Conduit Street. On 30 Sept. 1773 he was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians, and was elected a fellow on 30 Sept. 1774. He was one of the censors of the college in 1774, 1778, 1782, 1784, 1787, and 1792; was its registrar from 1781 to 1783, Gulstonian lecturer in 1775, and Harveian orator in 1776. He did not print his oration. He was elected physician to the Middlesex Hospital on 13 July 1773, and resigned in 1777, when he was elected physician to St. Thomas's Hospital, and so continued till 1783, when his extensive private practice caused him to resign. In 1788 he was asked to attend George III, and in 1797 was appointed physician-extraordinary, and in 1806 physician-in-ordinary. He was challenged by a turbulent licentiate, Dr. Richard Kentish, in November 1787, but the friends of Reynolds properly applied to a magistrate, and the court of king's bench intervened to restrain the violence of Kentish. The fatigues of attending upon the king at Windsor, added to an exhausting examination on the king's illness, during which he had to stand for two hours before the House of Lords, broke down his strength; but it was with great difficulty that Dr. John Latham [q. v.] and Dr. Henry Ainslie [q. v.] persuaded him in May to keep his room. He died at his house in Bedford Square on 22 Oct. 1811, and was buried at St. James's cemetery, Hampstead Road. He was much attached to the College of Physicians, and in his own large practice was known for his great care and lucidity, and for his skill in prescribing. His grandson, Sir John Russell Reynolds [q. v.], is noticed separately.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 899; Gent. Mag. 1811, ii. 490.]