Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Saunders, William (1743-1817)
SAUNDERS, WILLIAM, M.D. (1743–1817), physician, son of James Saunders, M.D., was born in Banff in 1743. He was educated at the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. on 28 Oct. 1765, reading a thesis ‘De Antimonio,’ which he dedicated to his patron James, earl of Findlater and Seafield. He began practice in London, and was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 26 June 1769. He gave lectures on chemistry and pharmacy, which were largely attended, and of which he published a detailed syllabus in 1766; and on medicine, the scope of which is set forth in his ‘Compendium Medicinæ practicum,’ published in 1767 in English. In the same year and in 1768 he supported the views of Sir George Baker [q. v.] in ‘A Letter to Dr. Baker on the Endemial Colic of Devonshire,’ and ‘An Answer to Geach and Alcock on the Endemial Colic of Devonshire.’ On 6 May 1770 he was elected physician to Guy's Hospital, and soon after his election he began to lecture there on the theory and practice of medicine, delivering three courses of four months each during the year (Syllabus of Medical Lectures at Guy's Hospital, 1782). He was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians on 5 June 1790, and was a censor in 1791, 1798, 1805, and 1813. In 1792 he delivered the Gulstonian lectures, which he afterwards published as ‘A Treatise on the Structure, Economy, and Diseases of the Liver.’ He was probably the first English physician to observe that in some forms of cirrhosis, then called scirrhosity, the liver became enlarged and afterwards contracted (p. 281). A third edition appeared in 1803, and a fourth in 1809. He delivered the Harveian oration in 1796, in which he praises the recent discovery of the cause of Devonshire colic by Sir George Baker. On 9 May 1793 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and attained a large practice as a physician. In 1807 he was appointed physician to the prince regent. Besides the books above mentioned, he published separate volumes on mercury (1768), antimony (1773), mephitic acid (1777), red Peruvian bark (1782), and mineral waters (1800). On 22 May 1805 he was chairman of a meeting which led to the formation of the existing Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, and he was its first president. He resigned the office of physician to Guy's Hospital in 1802, and retired from practice in 1814. He died on 29 May 1817 at Enfield, is buried there, and has a monument, erected by his children, in the parish church. His portrait was presented to the College of Physicians by his son J. J. Saunders, and is preserved there (cf. Bromley, Cat. Engr. Portraits).
[Works; Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 399; Wilks and Bettany's Biographical History of Guy's Hospital, 1892.]