Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Donnet, James John Louis
DONNET, Sir JAMES JOHN LOUIS (1816–1905), inspector-general of hospitals and fleets, born at Gibraltar in 1816, was son of Henry Donnet, surgeon, R.N. After studying at the University of Paris, where he graduated B. ès L., and Anderson College, Glasgow, he became L.S.A. of London in 1838, L.R.C.S. of Edinburgh in 1840, and M.D. at St. Andrews in 1857. He entered the navy as assistant-surgeon in 1840. He was at once appointed to the Vesuvius and sent out to the Mediterranean, where, on the coast of Syria, he had his first experience of the realities of war, and where, after the capture of Acre, he was placed in charge of the wounded in a temporary hospital established on shore. Four years later he was medical officer and secretary of an embassy to the emperor of Morocco under (Sir) John Hay Drummond-Hay [q. v. Suppl. I], appointed in 1845 consul-general. Donnet was promoted to be surgeon, and in 1849 was in the Calypso in the West Indies during a violent outbreak of yellow fever. In 1850-1 he was surgeon of the Assistance in the Arctic with Captain (Sir) Erasmus Ommanney [q. v. Suppl. II], and helped to break the tedium of the long winter by editing 'an excellent periodical, entitled the "Aurora Borealis," to which the men as well as the officers contributed' (Markham, 113). In 1854 he was surgeon of the President, flag-ship in the Pacific, and in her was present at the disastrous attacks on Petropaulowski, on 29 Aug. and 7 Sept. (Clowes, vi. 429–32). In May 1867 he was promoted deputy inspector-general, and for the next two years was in medical charge of the hospital at Jamaica, years marked by an epidemic of yellow fewer. In 1870 he was appointed honorary surgeon to the queen, and in 1873-4 was placed in charge of the medical wards of Haslar, crowded with cases of smallpox, enteric fever, and dysentery after the Ashanti war. On 14 April 1875 he was promoted inspector-general. He was after this employed on various committees and commissions, including one in 1876 to select a site for a college for naval cadets and one in 1877 to inquire into the causes of the outbreak of scurvy in Sir George Nares' Arctic expedition (1875–6). He was awarded a good-service pension in 1878, and was nominated K.C.B. at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. During his last years he resided at Bognor, where he died on 11 Jan. 1905. He married in 1852 Eliza, daughter of James Meyer, who died in 1903 without issue. He published 'Notes on Yellow Fever.'
[Royal Navy Lists; Who's Who; The Times, 12 Jan. 1905; Markham, Life of Sir Leopold McClintock, 1909; Clowes, Royal Navy, vol. vi. 1901.]