Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Russell, Richard
RUSSELL, RICHARD, M.D. (d. 1771), physician, graduated M.D. at Rheims on 7 Jan. 1738. He was in practice at Ware, and on 23 July 1742 was admitted an extra licentiate of the College of Physicians of London. He published in 1750 at Oxford a dissertation ‘De Tabe Glandulari,’ in which he recommends the use of sea-water for the cure of enlarged lymphatic glands. This was afterwards published in English by W. Owen in London, and in 1769 reached a sixth edition. He was elected F.R.S. on 13 Feb. 1752, and in 1755 published ‘Œconomia Naturæ in Morbis acutis et chronicis Glandularum,’ dedicated to Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke of Newcastle [q. v.], in which he discusses the condition, diseases, and treatment of glands throughout the body, regarding them as of one system or tissue, whether secretory or lymphatic. In the volume is printed a letter from him to Richard Frewin, M.D., on the use of salt water externally in the cure of tuberculous glands. It is dated from Lewes, January 1752. He went to live in Reading, and there died on 5 July 1771 (Gent. Mag. 1771, p. 335).
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 149; Works; Thomson's Hist. of the Royal Soc. 1812.]