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Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Saunders, Richard Huck-

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603667Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 50 — Saunders, Richard Huck-1897William Wilfrid Webb

SAUNDERS, RICHARD HUCK- (1720–1785), physician, whose parents were named Huck, was born in Westmoreland in 1720, and educated at the grammar school of Croughland in Cumberland. After a five years' apprenticeship with a surgeon at Penrith named Neal, he entered as a student at St. Thomas's Hospital, London, where he was a pupil of John Girle. In 1745 he entered the army, and was appointed surgeon to Lord Sempill's regiment, with which he served until the peace of 1748. He then settled at Penrith, and on 13 Oct. 1749 received the degree of M.D. from Marischal College, Aberdeen, after being ‘examined with a solution of a case of medicine and aphorism of Hippocrates.’ In 1750 he was appointed surgeon to the 33rd regiment; he joined it at Minorca, and remained there three years. From 1753 to 1755 he was quartered with his regiment at Edinburgh, availing himself of the opportunity to attend the medical classes at the university. He next went to America under the Earl of Loudoun, by whom he was promoted to the rank of physician to the army. In the latter capacity he served during the whole of the seven years' war, greatly to the benefit of the troops. After the successful expedition against Havannah, in 1762, he returned to England with health impaired; he consequently made a continental tour, journeying through France, Germany, and Italy. He finally settled in Spring Gardens, London, as a physician, and was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 1 April 1765. He was elected a fellow of the college, speciali gratia, on 18 Sept. 1784. He was appointed physician to Middlesex Hospital in September 1766, and physician to St. Thomas's Hospital on 14 Dec. 1768, when he resigned his office at the former institution. He held his post at St. Thomas's until 1777, when he was succeeded by Dr. H. R. Reynolds. He died in the West Indies on 24 July 1785, leaving a high reputation both with the public and the profession. In 1777 he married Jane, the niece and heiress of Admiral Sir Charles Saunders [q. v.], with whom he acquired a large fortune, and assumed the name and armorial bearings of Saunders in addition to his own. He had issue two daughters and coheirs—Anne, who married, in August 1796, Robert Dundas, second viscount Melville; and Jane, who became, in 1800, the wife of John Fane, tenth earl of Westmorland.

[Munk's Coll. of Phys.; Burke's Peerage; Records of St. Thomas's Hospital; Register of Graduates in Medicine, Marischal College, Aberdeen, kept by James Gordon, professor of medicine, 1734–1755; information supplied by Henry, fifth viscount Melville.]