Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/197

 became a member, he identified himself prominently with the Medico-Psychological Association of Great Britain and Ireland. A member of the council and of the educational and parliamentary committees, he gave as president in 1877 an important address on lunacy legislation, in which he described the evolution of the lunacy laws in this country down to the Acts of 1845, 1853, and 1862 which were then in force. In 1894, as president of the psychological section of the British Medical Association, he delivered an address on the prevention of insanity, in wlu'ch he made an important pronouncement on the development of neurotic affections attributable to the increased demands of modern life on the nervous system; he was of opinion that no man or woman should marry who has had an attack of insanity. From 1898 until his death he took an active part in the 'After Care Association' established to help poor patients who have been discharged from asylums for the insane. At the time of his death he was president of the Society for the Relief of the Widows and Orphans of Medical Men.

After his retirement from London he settled at Tunbridge Wells, where he died on 18 Aug. 1911 and was buried. In 1864 he married Louisa, only daughter of the Rev. George Holloway, by whom he had two sons and two daughters. Blandford was athletic in early life, and belonged for several years to the 2nd (South) Middlesex volunteers. He was also interested in art, literature, and music, showing skill in water-colour sketching and collecting from an early period Whistler's etchings, besides contributing a few unsigned articles to the 'Cornhill Magazine.'

Blandford's chief work was an admirably practical and comprehensive text-book, 'Insanity and its Treatment; Lectures on the Treatment, Medical and Legal, of Insane Patients' (Edinburgh 1871; 4th edit. 1892). The book was reissued in America, with a summary of the laws in force in the United States on the confinement of the insane, by Isaac Ray (Philadelphia 1871; 3rd edit, with the Types of Insanity, an illustrated guide in the physical diagnosis of mental disease, by Allan McLane Hamilton, New York 1886). A German translation by Dr. H. Kornfeld appeared at Berlin in 1878. Blandford also wrote valuable articles on 'Insanity' in the second (1894) and third (1902) editions of 'Quain's Dictionary of Medicine'; 'Prevention of Insanity' and 'Prognosis of Insanity' in 'Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine' (1892); and 'Insanity ' in the 'Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine' (1897). He was a frequent contributor to the 'Journal of Mental Science,' to the first twenty-four volumes of which he prepared an index. [Journal of Mental Science, 1911, lvii. 753; Lancet, 19.11, ii. 733; Brit. Med. Journal, 1911, ii. 524; private information.]

 BLANEY, THOMAS (1823–1903), physician and philanthropist, of Bombay, was born at Caherconlish, Pallas-green, co. Limerick, on 24 May 1823. Of humble origin, he went out to Bombay with his parents when only three. Ten years later (1836) he was apprenticed to the subordinate medical department of the East India Company. He served 'up-country' for eight years, but returning to Bombay in 1847 entered the Grant medical college as a government student in 1851, and attended classes there for four years. After reaching the post of apothecary at the European general hospital on Rs. 100 per mensem, he was invalided from the service in 1860. He rapidly founded a large private practice among all classes and aces in the city. In 1867 he published a pamphlet on 'Fevers as connected with the Sanitation of Bombay'; during the prevalence of famine in southern Indian in 1878 he identified relapsing fever. When plague betrayed its presence in 1896, he was foremost in detecting its true nature, and realised the gravity of the situation, which was much under-estimated by the health department of the municipality. Known as 'the jury-wallah doctor,' because he served as coroner from 1876 to 1893, he was held in great local repute professionally, and grateful native patients often remembered him in their wills. All his large earnings, save the small amount needed for Ms simple style of life, were given to the poor and to causes which won his sympathy. He made it a rule to take no professional fee from a widow. For many months he provided in his own home free tuition and a midday meal for. children of ' poor whites.' More than seventy children were thus cared for, and ultimately, under the name of the Blaney school, the institution was taken over and maintained for a time by a representative committee.

In civic affairs Blaney first came into notice by the vigour with which he condemned in the local press, under the pseudonym of 'Q in the Corner,' the wild speculation of the period (1861-5). In 1868 he was appointed to the bench of justices, which  VOL. I.XVII. SUP. II.