Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rees, George (1776-1846)
REES, GEORGE, M.D. (1776–1846), medical writer, was born in 1776 in Pembrokeshire, where his father was a clergyman. He received his medical education at the united hospitals of St. Thomas's and Guy's, also attending some lectures at St. Bartholomew's, where he became a member of the Students' Medical and Physical Society. He was house surgeon at the Lock Hospital, and having graduated M.D. at Glasgow on 28 May 1801, began practice at No. 2 Soho Square, where he gave a course of twelve lectures, published in 1802 as ‘A Treatise on the Primary Symptoms of Lues Venerea.’ In 1805 he published ‘Observations on Diseases of the Uterus,’ dedicated to Dr. Thynne, sometime lecturer on the subject at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. On 11 April 1808 he was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London, and in 1810 published ‘Practical Observations on Disorders of the Stomach,’ which contains a clearly described case of cirrhosis of the liver due to alcohol, interesting as showing that such cases had begun to be distinguished in the group of diseases known a few years earlier as scirrhus of the liver (Heberden, Commentarii, p. 212). In 1813 he published ‘A Treatise on Hæmoptysis,’ in which he advised treatment by emetics; but neither this nor his other works contain original observations of much value. He next resided in Finsbury Square, and established a private lunatic asylum at Hackney, and afterwards became for a time medical superintendent of the Cornwall lunatic asylum at Bodmin. He came back to London, resided in Euston Square, and there died on 7 Dec. 1846.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. iii. 62; Gent. Mag. 1847, i. 212; Works.]