Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Yelloly, John
YELLOLY, JOHN (1774–1843), physician, was born at Alnwick, Northumberland, on 30 April 1774, and was the youngest and sole survivor of seven children. His father died when his youngest child was an infant, and Yelloly owed his home education to his mother, who was of the family of Davison of Whittingham, He was sent to the grammar school of Alnwick, and thence to the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. in 1799. He settled in London in 1800, and in 1807 became hysician to the London Hospital, an office which he retained till 1818. In 1805, with Alexander John Gaspard Marcet [q. v,], he was the originators of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, and he and Charles Aikin were the first secretaries of the society. The formation of the library, now the best collection of medical books in London, was chiefly due to his exertions. He went to live at Carrow Abbey, near Norwich, in 1818, and became physician in 1820 to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. He retired from practice, being wealthy, in 1832, and then resided at Woodton Hall, near Norwich. He was thrown on to his head from a phaeton in April 1840, and became in consequence paralysed on the right side. On 28 Jan. 1842 this was followed by an apoplectic attack and paralysis of the left side, of which he died at Cavendish Hall, Norfolk, on 31 Jan. 1842. In 1806 he married the daughter of Samuel Tyssen of Narborough Hall, Norfolk, by whom he left issue. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1829 ‘Remarks on the Tendency to Calculous Diseases,’ one of the numerous works which owe their origin to the fine museum of stones extracted from the bladder and preserved in the Norwich Hospital. He published a further work on the same subject in 1830, and a pamphlet ‘On Arrangements connected with the Medical Relief of the Sick Poor’ in 1837. He read before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society seven papers, of which the most valuable are two on a paralysis due to tumour of the brain (Transactions, i. 183), and on loss of feeling without accompanying loss of power of movement (ib. iii. 90).
[Works; Memoir by Dr. Robert Williams, 1842.]