Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/165

 Travers was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1813, and he was also elected without opposition a surgeon to St. Thomas's Hospital upon the death of Mr. Birch in March 1815. In the following year he resigned his surgeoncy under the East India Company, though he retained the post of surgeon to the Eye Infirmary until 1816. He took possession of Astley Cooper's house at 3 New Broad Street in 1816, when that surgeon moved to Spring Gardens, and he soon acquired a fair share of practice. At this time he suffered so much from palpitation of the heart that he discontinued his clinical lectures, and in 1819 resigned his joint lectureship on surgery with Astley Cooper, though he again began to lecture upon surgery in 1834 in conjunction with Frederick Tyrell [q. v.], at St. Thomas's Hospital. He was chosen president of the Hunterian Society in 1827, and in the same year he acted as president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society.

He filled all the important offices at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He was elected a member of the council in 1830; Hunterian orator in 1838; examiner in surgery, 1841–58; chairman of the board of midwifery examiners, 1855; vice-president in the years 1845, 1846, 1854, 1855, and president in 1847 and 1856. He was a member of the veterinary examining committee in 1833, and on the formation of the queen's medical establishment he was appointed one of her surgeons extraordinary, afterwards becoming surgeon in ordinary to the prince consort and serjeant-surgeon.

Travers was the first hospital surgeon in England to devote himself to the surgery of the eye, and with his colleague (Sir) William Lawrence he did much to elevate this branch of surgery from the condition of quackery into which it had fallen. Travers was also a good pathologist, inheriting the best traditions of the Hunterian school, for he worked upon an experimental basis. He died at his house in Green Street, Grosvenor Square, on 6 March 1858, and was buried at Hendon in Middlesex. He was thrice married: first, to Sarah, daughter of William Morgan (1750–1833) [q. v.], in 1809; secondly, in 1813, to the daughter of G. Millet, an East India director; and thirdly, in 1831, to the youngest daughter of Colonel Stevens. He had a large family, but the eldest son alone was educated for the medical profession.

There is a bust of Travers at the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was executed in 1858 by William Behnes (1794–1864). A portrait painted by C. R. Leslie belongs to the family.

Travers published: 1. ‘An Inquiry into the Process of Nature in repairing Injuries of the Intestines,’ London, 1812, 8vo. 2. ‘A Synopsis of the Diseases of the Eye and their Treatment,’ London, 1820, 8vo; 3rd ed. 1824, issued in New York, 1825. 3. ‘An Inquiry concerning … Constitutional Irritation,’ London, 8vo, 1826; this was followed by ‘a Further Inquiry’ into the same subject, published in 1835. 4. ‘The Physiology of Inflammation and the Healing Process,’ London, 1844, 8vo.

[Medical Times and Gazette, 1858, xvi. 270; Lancet, 1851 i. 48, 1858 ii. 278; Gent. Mag. 1858, i. 444; Pettigrew's Medical Portrait Gallery, vol. iii.]  TRAVERS, EATON STANNARD (1782–1858), rear-admiral, born in 1782, was third son of John Travers of Hethyfield Grange, co. Cork. He entered the navy in September 1798 on board the Juno in the North Sea, where during the following year he was actively engaged in boat service along the coast of Holland. He was similarly employed in the West Indies during 1800–1. In March 1802 he was moved to the Elephant, and in October 1803 to the Hercule, then carrying the flag of Sir John Thomas Duckworth. In November, Duckworth remaining at Jamaica, the Hercule was attached to the squadron under Commodore Loring, blockading Cape Français. On 30 Nov., when the French ships agreed to surrender, Travers was with Lieutenant Nisbet Josiah Willoughby [q. v.] in the launch which took possession of the Clorinde after she had got on shore, and claimed to have been the chief agent in saving the ship by swimming to the shore and so making fast a hawser, by which the frigate was hauled off the rocks. In January and February 1804 he was again with Willoughby in the advance battery at the siege of Curaçoa, and was afterwards publicly thanked by the admiral for his gallantry and good conduct. On 23 Sept. 1804 he was promoted to be lieutenant and to command the schooner Ballahou; but in February 1805, on her being ordered to Newfoundland, Travers was appointed to the Surveillante, in which again he saw some very active and sharp boat service on the Spanish Main.

In 1806 the Hercule returned to England, and in December Travers was appointed to the Alcmène frigate, employed on the coast of France till she was wrecked off the mouth of the Loire on 29 April 1809. He was afterwards in the Impérieuse, in the Wal-