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 urged that the conductors should not follow the mast down into the hold, but pass over the sides outside the shrouds, the vessel being more or less enclosed in a network of conductors. In the course of this discussion Sturgeon stoutly maintained that the so-called lateral effects of lightning flashes in neighbouring bodies were due not, as Harris maintained, to imperfect neutralisation in the discharge, but to the actual generation of induction-currents, a view now fully accepted. Sturgeon's later papers appeared for the most part in the ‘Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society’ (1842, 1846, and 1848).

In addition to the quarto volume of ‘Researches,’ which contained all that the writer deemed of the greatest permanent value among his investigations, Sturgeon published separately ‘Experimental Researches in Electro-magnetism, Galvanism, &c.,’ London, 1830, 8vo; ‘Lectures on Electricity delivered in the Royal Victoria Gallery, Manchester,’ London, 1842, 8vo; and ‘Twelve Elementary Lectures on Galvanism,’ London, 1843, 8vo. He also edited, in 1843, a reissue of the ‘Magnetical Advertisements’ of William Barlow or Barlowe [q. v.]

[William Sturgeon, a Biographical Note by S[ilvanus] P. T[hompson], privately printed, 1891; Gent. Mag. 1851, i. 102; Vibart's Addiscombe, 1894, pp. 77–80; Manchester Examiner, 14 Dec. 1850; Manchester Chronicle, 9 April and 16 and 23 Oct. 1841; Manchester Guardian; Memoir of Lit. and Phil. Soc. Manchester, vol. xiv.; Angus Smith's Centenary of Science in Manchester, 1850; Electrician, 13 Sept. 1895, by W. W. Haldane Gee, B.Sc.; Athenæum, December 1850; Allibone's Dict. of English Literature.] 

STURGES, OCTAVIUS, M.D. (1833–1895), physician, eighth son of John Sturges of Connaught Square, London, was born in London in 1833. He obtained a commission in the East India Company's service, studied at Addiscombe, went to India in 1852, and in 1853 became a lieutenant in the Bombay artillery. He left India in 1857, and began to study medicine, for which he had always had a predilection, at St. George's Hospital. In October 1858 he entered at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1861, M.B. in 1863, and M.D. in 1867. He was captain of the first university company of volunteers at Cambridge. He became a member of the College of Physicians of London in 1863, and was elected a fellow in 1870. He was medical registrar at St. George's Hospital 1863–5, became assistant-physician at the Westminster Hospital in 1868, and physician in 1875. He lectured there successively on forensic medicine, materia medica, and medicine. He was elected assistant-physician to the Hospital for Sick Children in 1873, and physician in 1884. At the time of his death he was senior physician there and at the Westminster Hospital. He delivered the Lumleian lectures at the College of Physicians on diseases of the heart in childhood, and was senior censor in the same year. He died unmarried on 3 Nov. 1895 from injuries due to his being knocked down by a hansom cab while crossing a street eight days before.

Sturges described his experiences at Addiscombe and in India in a novel written in collaboration with a niece, entitled ‘In the Company's Service,’ and published in 1883. He also published ‘An Introduction to the Study of Clinical Medicine’ in 1873, ‘The Natural History and Relations of Pneumonia’ in 1876, and ‘Chorea and Whooping Cough’ in 1877. His book on pneumonia contains many original observations, and is of permanent value; while his treatise on chorea, in which that disease is regarded as a disease of function, shows close observation of the mental and moral as well as the physical condition of the young, and lucidly expounds a consistent theory of the nature and causation of the disease. He was a physician of wide observation and excellent sense, and his abilities were profoundly respected in his university and in the College of Physicians.

[Memoir by Dr. W. H. Dickinson in St. George's Hospital Gazette, vol. iii.; Works; personal knowledge.] 

STURGION, JOHN (fl. 1661), pamphleteer, was at one time a private in Cromwell's lifeguards. On 27 Aug. 1655 he was arrested as the author of a pamphlet against the Protector, called ‘A Short Discovery of his Highness the Lord Protector's Intentions touching the Anabaptists in the Army’ (Thurloe Papers, iii. 738). He was discharged from the lifeguards and for a time imprisoned. In 1656 Major-general Goffe complained that Sturgion's preaching attracted large crowds at Reading (ib. iv. 752). About July 1656 Sturgion and other anabaptists sent an address to Charles II complaining of their sufferings under ‘that loathsome hypocrite,’ the Protector, and announcing their return to their allegiance to the king, begging him also to establish liberty of conscience and abolish tithes (, Rebellion, xv. 105; Cal. Clarendon Papers, iii. 145). He was suspected of a share in Sindercombe's plot against Cromwell, became one of Sexby's chief agents, and was arrested on 25 May