Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/376

 ments by the internal administration of iodine, and this essay is written in support of Coindet's views. While advocating the use of iodine it describes more minutely than any previous English book the ill effects of large doses. Gairdner's practice grew slowly, and he did not attain success till after long struggles. In 1849 he published ‘On Gout, its History, its Causes, and its Cure,’ a work which had four editions, of which the last appeared in 1860. It is a lucid exposition of the main clinical features of the disease, without pathological information, while as to treatment it advocates bleeding, moderate purgation, and the administration of colchicum. The older he grew, the author says, the more did his confidence in drugs abate. He married, 12 Jan. 1822, a Genevese lady who died before him. He continued his practice almost to the end of his life, and died at Avignon, after spending a winter in the south of France, on 28 April 1857. He left one daughter. He was a small man with a florid complexion, and his hair became white at an early age. He was a new whig in politics, and had an independent, inflexible spirit, which, if it sometimes increased the difficulties of his life, also enabled him to conquer them.



GAISFORD, THOMAS (1779–1855), dean of Christ Church, Oxford, classical scholar, born 22 Dec. 1779 at Iford in Wiltshire, was the eldest son of John Gaisford, esq. He was educated at Hyde Abbey School, Winchester, under the Rev. Charles Richards, was entered as a commoner of Christ Church, Oxford, in October 1797, and elected student in December 1800 by the dean, Dr. Cyril Jackson. He took the degrees of B.A. in 1801, and M.A. in 1804. After acting for some time as tutor of his college and as public examiner in 1809–11, he was appointed on 29 Feb. 1812 to the regius professorship of Greek by the crown, when his predecessor, Dr. W. Jackson, was made bishop of Oxford. In 1815 he was presented by his college to the living of Westwell in Oxfordshire, which he held till 1847. His other preferments were, a prebend of Llandaff in 1823, of St. Paul's in 1823, and of Worcester in 1825. In 1829 he was offered the bishopric of Oxford on the death of Bishop Lloyd, but refused it. The same year he was collated to a stall at Durham by Bishop Van Mildert, which in 1831 he exchanged for the deanery of Christ Church, Oxford, with Dr. Samuel Smith, having the full consent of the two patrons, the Bishop of Durham and the crown. Here he spent the rest of his life. He took the degrees of B.D. and D.D. by diploma in April 1831.

During the twenty-four years in which he presided over Christ Church, his attention was by no means only given to the superintendence of that great foundation, but he took a leading part in all university affairs. As Greek professor he was an official curator of the Bodleian Library, and always had its interest at heart; as delegate of the press for nearly fifty years he never wearied in his care. It is said that, when he was first appointed a delegate, the press did not pay its expenses, was in debt, and an annual loss to the university. Through his management a great change was effected; it was due to him that foreign scholars, like Bekker and Dindorf, were employed as editors. Nor was it only in his own department of classical literature that the press became eminent for its publications; it was owing to his recommendation that the series of works on English history, chiefly of the period of the great rebellion, were issued; and certainly the Oxford Press has been at no time more fruitful in the production of valuable works than in the years during which Gaisford exercised so marked an influence.

But it is as a scholar, and especially as a Greek scholar, second to scarcely any one of his time, that Gaisford will be remembered. In editing many of the chief Greek classical authors and several of the Greek ecclesiastical writers, his best years, indeed his whole life, were spent. When what he actually produced is compared with the work of others, whether English or foreign scholars, it seems almost marvellous that one man, even in the course of a long life and with ample leisure, could have done so much.

His first work was an edition of Cicero's ‘Tusculan Disputations,’ in 1805, from Davies's edition, with additional notes of Bentley [see, 1679–1732]. He superintended the reprint of Ernesti's edition of the ‘De Oratore’ in 1809, and probably of Davies's editions of the ‘De Natura Deorum’ in 1807, and the ‘De Finibus’ in 1809. In March 1806 he reviewed Walpole's ‘Comicorum Fragmenta’ in the ‘Monthly Review,’ his only contribution to periodical literature. He then turned his attention to the Greek drama, on which Porson had worked successfully at Cambridge, and to which Elmsley was devoting himself at Oxford, and edited several plays of Euripides. In 1810 appeared his edition of ‘Hephæstion de Metris,’ a work which at once made his name known as one of the foremost scholars of his day throughout Europe; even Reisig in his foolish attack on English scholarship spoke of this as ‘bonum