Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/385

 cavity, ever since known as the antrum of Highmore, was drained by the extraction of the left canine tooth. He became a magistrate for Dorsetshire, and attained considerable practice as a physician. He never took fees from the clergy. He also published in 1651 ‘A History of Generation, examining the Opinions of Sir Kenelm Digby, with a Discourse of the Cure of Wounds by Sympathy,’ a work containing some careful observations on the development of the chick. In 1660 he published at Oxford ‘Exercitationes duæ … De Passione Hysterica et de Affectione Hypochondriaca;’ 3rd ed., Jena, 1677; and a few years later some remarks on Scarborough spa, and an account of springs at Farindon and East Chenock. He died at Sherburne on 21 March 1685, and was buried on the south side of the chancel of the church of Candel-Purse. He had made his will on 4 March 1684, and by it endowed an exhibition to Oxford from Sherburne school, and left his tables of the muscles to the physic school at Oxford. There is a small portrait of him on the title-page of his anatomy (1651), and one drawn in 1676 in Hutchins's ‘Dorset.’ 

HIGHMORE, THOMAS (d. 1720), serjeant-painter, was son of Abraham Highmore, and cousin of Nathaniel Highmore, M.D. [q. v.] He was created serjeant-painter to William III. Sir James Thornhill [q. v.], who was lineally related to him, was apprenticed to Highmore, and eventually succeeded him in his office as serjeant-painter. Highmore died towards the close of 1720. He was brother to Edward Highmore, the father of Joseph Highmore [q. v.] 

HIGHTON, HENRY (1816–1874), scientific writer, born at Leicester in 1816, was eldest son of Henry Highton of that town. He spent five years at Rugby School, under Dr. Arnold, and matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford, 13 March 1834. After leaving school, he continued on intimate terms with Dr. Arnold. A letter (5 April 1837) from Arnold to him on the religious duty of cultivating the intellect is printed in Stanley's ‘Life of Arnold.’ Highton proceeded B.A. in 1837 (M.A. in 1840), obtaining a first-class in classics, and was Michel fellow of his college in 1840–1. He was assistant-master at Rugby School from 1841 to 1859, and principal of Cheltenham College from the latter date till 1862. On 23 Dec. 1874 he died at The Cedars, Putney, where he had resided for several years.

In 1842 Highton offered some advice as to the recovery of the Israelitish ‘nationality lost for 1800 years’ in a printed letter addressed to Sir Moses Montefiore. In 1849 he published some sermons; in 1851 a ‘Catechism of the Second Advent;’ and in 1862 a revised translation of the New Testament. In 1863 appeared his ‘Letter to the Lord Bishop of London on the Repeal of the Act of Uniformity and the True Principles of Church Reform,’ criticising the Athanasian Creed—a ‘sore of long standing’—the burial service, ‘fabulous holidays,’ &c. Highton's last theological work was ‘Dean Stanley and Saint Socrates, the Ethics of the Philosopher and the Philosophy of the Divine,’ 1873. It was an attack on Stanley when chosen select preacher to the university of Oxford for his ‘consistent opposition to evangelical truth.’ In 1873 Highton published a translation of some of Victor Hugo's poems.

Meanwhile Highton had paid some attention to practical physics, especially to the application of electricity to telegraphy. On 1 May 1872 he read before the Society of Arts a paper on ‘Telegraphy without Insulation,’ as a cheap means of international communication, in which he refers to a systematic series of experiments with different lengths of wire dropped in the Thames, and with a gold-leaf instrument which had ‘twenty-six years previously been adapted [by him] for telegraphic purposes.’ The paper was accompanied by several experiments illustrating the entire field of electrical physics. The society conferred on Highton their silver medal for the paper. He afterwards read another on galvanic batteries; and various letters of his are printed in the society's journal on Atlantic telegraphy, the science of energy, &c. He also invented and patented an artificial stone which came into considerable use for paving and building purposes. 

HIGSON, JOHN (1825–1871), local antiquary and topographer, of Lees, near Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, was born in 1825 at Whitely Farm, Gorton, Lancashire. He resided for many years at Droylsden, where he was employed as cashier of the Springhead Cotton-spinning Company, was a zealous supporter of the Droylsden Mechanics' Institute, and an active church worker for years at Leesfield. He died at Lees, 13 Dec. 1871, leaving a widow and seven children. 