Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/290

 entered the service of the East India Company, rose high in the confidence of the directors, and for many years conducted the secret correspondence of the company with Indian princes and others; he was consulted on Indian affairs by Burke and Lord North, corresponded with Warren Hastings (cf. Add. MS. 29139, ff. 367, 368), and was subpœnaed as a witness at his trial. He retired in 1782, when the directors granted him a liberal pension for life.

Samuel Charles was educated for the church, matriculated from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, on 8 June 1810, aged 21, and graduated B.A. in 1814 and M.A. in 1816. While an undergraduate he won in 1813 the premium of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge for an ‘Essay on the Signs of Conversion and Unconversion in Ministers of the Church,’ which was published in 1814 (London, 8vo), and reached a third edition in 1830. He took holy orders, attaching himself to the ‘Clapham sect,’ and in 1816 succeeded Zachary Macaulay [q. v.] as editor of the ‘Christian Observer,’ the organ of the ‘sect.’ In 1817 he dedicated to his ‘friend’ Hannah More [q. v.] two volumes of ‘Christian Essays’ (London, 12mo). Another friend was Charles Simeon [q. v.] In 1835 he published a new edition of Lord Teignmouth's ‘Memoirs of Sir W. Jones,’ to which he prefixed a life of Teignmouth [see, first ]. He continued to edit the ‘Christian Observer’ until 1850, when he was succeeded by John William Cunningham [q. v.], and retired to the living of Nursling, near Southampton, to which he had been presented in 1847. He was the author of many tracts, essays, and letters of a religious and theological character, mostly reprinted from the ‘Christian Observer;’ he also acquired considerable scientific knowledge, and maintained against prevalent religious opinion many of the new views propounded by geologists. He died at Nursling on 23 Dec. 1872, in his eighty-fourth year, leaving several children.

[Works in Brit. Mus. Libr.; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1714–1886; Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay, ii. 228; private information.]

 WILLAN, ROBERT (1757–1812), physician and dermatologist, was born on 12 Nov. 1757 at Hill, near Sedbergh in Yorkshire, where his father, Robert William Willan, M.D., one of the Society of Friends, was in practice. He was educated at Sedbergh grammar school, and commenced his medical studies at Edinburgh in 1777, graduating M.D. on 24 June 1780 (‘D. M. I. de Jecinoris Inflammatione’). He then visited London and attended lectures. In 1781 he settled at Darlington, where he published a small tract entitled ‘Observations on the Sulphur Waters of Croft’ (8vo, 1782; 2nd edit. 1786; new edit. 1815). He soon afterwards removed to London, and was appointed physician to the Public Dispensary on its establishment in the early part of 1783. He resigned this appointment in December 1803, when the governors of the charity named him consulting physician, made him a life governor, and presented him with a handsome piece of plate. His practice at the dispensary was very numerously attended, and the number of his pupils was large; many of them subsequently attained to high reputation. He was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 21 March 1785. He was the first physician in this country to arrange diseases of the skin in a clear and intelligible manner, and to fix their nomenclature on a satisfactory and classical basis. As early as 1784 he had begun to attend to the elementary forms of eruption; he sought out the original acceptation of all the Greek, Roman, and Arabian terms applied to eruptive diseases, and he finally founded his nomenclature on this basis. His arrangement and nomenclature were probably decided about 1789, as in the following year his classification was laid before the Medical Society of London and honoured by the award of the Fothergillian gold medal of 1790. The practical utility of his simple classification is evinced in the fact that, notwithstanding the great advances made of late years in cutaneous medicine, it is still used by the profession for all diagnostic purposes.

In 1794 he edited Whitehurst's ‘Observations on the Ventilation of Rooms’ [see ], and in 1796 commenced a series of monthly reports containing a brief account of the weather and of the prevalent diseases of the metropolis. These reports were published in the ‘Monthly Magazine,’ and were continued until 1800, when he collected them into a small volume and published them under the title of ‘Reports on the Diseases of London,’ 1801, 12mo. The work is pregnant with original and important observations, especially on points of diagnosis. His great work, ‘The Description and Treatment of Cutaneous Diseases,’ London, 4to, was issued in parts. The first part appeared in the beginning of 1798, the others at long and varying intervals; the last, which Willan lived to see through the press, in 1808. A remaining part, on ‘Porrigo and Impetigo,’