Alfred Swaine Taylor
{{Short description|English toxicologist and medical writer (1806–1880)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Use British English|date=October 2016}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Alfred Swaine Taylor
| image = Alfred Swaine Taylor2.jpg
| birth_date = {{birth date|1806|12|11|df=y}}
| birth_place = Northfleet, Kent, UK
| death_date = {{death date and age|1880|05|27|1806|12|11|df=y}}
| death_place = London, England
| burial_place = Highgate Cemetery
| occupation = Toxicologist, Surgeon, Chemist, Forensic Scientist, Expert witness, Author
| years_active = 1831–1870
| spouse = {{marriage|Caroline Cancellor
|1834|1876|end=died}}
| children = 2
}}
Alfred Swaine Taylor (11 December 1806 in Northfleet, Kent – 27 May 1880 in London) was an English toxicologist and medical writer, who has been called the "father of British forensic medicine".Rosenfeld, Louis, [http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/reprint/31/7/1235 'Alfred Swaine Taylor (1806–1880), pioneer toxicologist – and a slight case of murder'],Clinical Chemistry 31:7 (1985)[http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/4355 Alfred Swaine Taylor]. Royal College of Physicians of London (2009) He was also an early experimenter in photography.Taylor, Roger, Impressed by Light. British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860, (Yale University Press, 2007), p.378.
File:Grave of Alfred Swaine Taylor in Highgate Cemetery.jpg (west side)]]
Career
Taylor studied medicine at Guy's Hospital and St Thomas's Hospital and was appointed Lecturer in Medical Jurisprudence at Guy's Hospital in 1831. In 1832 he succeeded Alexander Barry as joint Lecturer on Chemistry with Arthur Aitken. He published textbooks on medical jurisprudence and toxicology, contributed to the Dublin Quarterly Journal and medical periodicals, and edited the Medical Gazette. He was the main dissector of Lavinia Edwards's body, a woman who was determined to have been born male, and he wrote extensively about her.{{cite book |last1=Gonda |first1=Caroline |editor1-last=Mounsey |editor1-first=Chris |title=Developments in the histories of sexualities: In search of the normal, 1600-1800 |date=2013 |publisher=Bucknell University Press |location=Lanham, Maryland |isbn=9781611485004 |chapter=Chapter 10: "An extraordinary subject for dissection": The strange cases of James Allen and Lavinia Edwards}} He appeared as expert witness in several widely reported murder cases. He also developed the use of hyposulphate of lime as a fixing agent for photography.
He is buried at Highgate Cemetery.
Works
- On the Art of Photogenic Drawing, 1840
- The Elements of Medical Jurisprudence Interspersed with a copious selection of curious and instructive cases and analyses of opinions delivered at coroners' inquests, 1843
- Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, 1844
- Medical jurisprudence, 1845
- A thermometric table on the scales of fahrenheit, centigrade and Reaumur, compressing the most remarkable phenomena connected with temperature, 1845
- On the Temperature of the Earth and Sea in Reference to the Theory of Central Heat, 1846
- On poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence and medicine, 1848
- On poisoning by strychnia, with comments on the medical evidence at the trial of William Palmer for the murder of John Parsons Cook, 1856
- The principles and practice of medical jurisprudence, 1865
References
External links
- [http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10245914 Picture] at Science and Society website
- Coley, Noel G., [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1036419/ 'Alfred Swaine Taylor, MD, FRS (1806–1880): forensic toxicologist'], Medical History, 1991, 35:409–427
- Earles, M. P., [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27017 ‘Taylor, Alfred Swaine (1806–1880)’], Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 20 Dec 2007
- Flanagan, Robert James and Katherine Watson, [https://web.archive.org/web/20110728104857/http://www.tiaft2006.org/proceedings/pdf/CT-o-01.pdf 'Alfred Swaine Taylor MD FRS (1806–1880)']
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Category:Burials at Highgate Cemetery
Category:19th-century English medical doctors
Category:English medical writers
Category:Medical jurisprudence