Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/170

 mellow and venerable age, dying at Castle Howel on 3 July 1827. He was buried on 7 July in the churchyard of Llanwenog, Cardiganshire, where a monument with an inscription in Welsh is erected to his memory. He married (15 Dec. 1775) Anne Evans of Voelallt, by whom he had five sons and four daughters. His widow survived him some years. Three of his sons entered the ministry; his second son, Timothy, the translator into Welsh of a portion of the commentary of Thomas Coke, D.C.L. [q. v.], died at Evesham, Worcestershire, on 28 Nov. 1860, aged 80.

He published: 1. ‘Bywyd Duw yn Enaid Dyn,’ &c., Carmarthen, 1779, 12mo; 2nd edition, Carmarthen, 1799,12mo (a version of Henry Scougall's ‘Life of God in the Soul of Man,’ first published 1677). 2. Article in ‘Analytical Review,’ vol. vii. (1791) p. 295 sq., on the Welsh poems of Davydd ap Gwilym. 3. ‘Telyn Dewi [Harp of David]; sef Gwaith Prydyddawl,’ &c., London, 1824, 12mo (portrait; this collection of his poetical pieces in Welsh, Latin, and English was edited by his eldest son, the Rev. David Davis of Neath, and printed at Swansea; prefixed is a poem by Daniel Ddu of Cardigan; the list of subscribers at the end contains nearly a thousand names, including those of a hundred and eleven pupils of the author, among them being Lewis Loyd, father of the first Baron Overstone). The second edition is Lampeter, 1876, 12mo, with prefixed memoir in Welsh, on the basis of the one published by the Rev. Thomas Griffiths in 1828. Davis published also a Welsh translation of a sermon by Dr. Abraham Rees [q. v.]

[Monthly Repos. 1827, pp. 692 sq., 848; Rees's Hist. Prot. Nonconformity in Wales, 1861, p. 473 sq.; Christian Reformer, 1861, p. 209 sq. (memoir of Timothy Davis); Memoir in 1876 edition of Telyn Dewi; Jeremy's Presbyterian Fund, 1885, pp. 49, 51, 67; extracts from unpublished papers furnished by Rev. R. Jenkin Jones, Aberdare.] 

DAVIS, DAVID DANIEL, M.D. (1777–1841), physician, was born in 1777 at Carnarvon. He entered at the university of Glasgow in 1797, and graduated M.D. there in 1801. He settled in practice at Sheffield, where he was physician to the infirmary from 1803 to 1813. He removed to London in 1813, was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians 25 June 1813, and practised midwifery. Following the custom of the period, he delivered lectures on midwifery at his own house, 4 Fitzroy Street, London, and soon had a large class. He attended the Duchess of Kent at the birth of Queen Victoria, and attained large practice. He was obstetric physician to University College Hospital from 1834 to 1841. His first publication was a translation of Pinel's ‘Treatise on Insanity’ (Sheffield, 1806), with an introduction by himself, compiled from standard authors. His most important book appeared in 1836, ‘The Principles and Practice of Obstetric Medicine, in a series of systematic Dissertations on Midwifery and on the Diseases of Women and Children,’ 2 vols. 4to. It is a comprehensive treatise containing no discovery, but entitling its author to a high place among writers on midwifery of the second rank (Matthews Duncan). In 1840 Davis published ‘Acute Hydrocephalus, or Water in the Head, an Inflammatory Disease, and curable equally and by the same means with other Diseases of Inflammation.’ Acute hydrocephalus, now generally known as tubercular meningitis, is a disease invariably fatal, and Davis's view that it is curable is due to an imperfect acquaintance with its morbid anatomy, which prevented its distinction from other forms of inflammation of the membranes of the brain and of cerebral disturbance. His proposed methods of cure are large doses of mercury, emetics, and bleeding, but amidst many pages of quotation he only describes four cases seen by himself, and of these he tells enough to show that true acute hydrocephalus was absent in all. He had a son, John Hall Davis, who studied medicine and acted as a clinical assistant to his father. After a short illness Davis died at 17 Russell Place, Bedford Square, London, on 16 Dec. 1841. His portrait was painted in 1825 by John Jackson, R.A.

[Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, iv. 117; information from Dr. Matthews Duncan, F.R.S.] 

DAVIS, EDWARD (fl. 1683–1702), buccaneer and pirate, was one of the party with Cook who in 1683 seized on the ship of Tristian, a French buccaneer, at Petit Goave, went thence to Virginia, and sailing from there took forcible possession of a Danish ship at Sierra Leone, and went into the Pacific [see ]. When Cook died off Cape Blanco in July 1684 Davis, who was then the quartermaster, was elected as his successor, and joining company with other pirates—Eaton, Swan, Harris, Townley, Knight, and some others—he ranged along the coast of Peru and Central America, capturing ships, sacking towns, plundering, ransoming, and burning. On 3 Nov. they landed at Paita. They learned that a detachment of soldiers had been sent in only the day before to oppose them; but