Joseph Brandreth

{{Short description|English physician (1746–1815)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2016}}

{{Use British English|date=September 2016}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Joseph Brandreth

| honorific_suffix =

| image = Joseph Brandreth.png

| birth_date = 1745

| birth_place = Ormskirk, Lancashire, England

| death_date = 10 April 1815

| death_place = Liverpool, Lancashire, England

| known_for = Physician to the Duke of Gloucester and Elizabeth, Countess of Derby

}}

Joseph Brandreth M.D. (1745 – 10 April 1815) was an 18th-century English medical practitioner, who served as Physician to the Duke of Gloucester.

He was born at Ormskirk, Lancashire, in 1745. After taking a doctorate of Medicine at Edinburgh in 1770, where his thesis, De Febribus intermittentibus, was published, Brandreth exercised his profession in his native town until about 1776, when he succeeded to the practice of Matthew Dobson, in Liverpool, on Dr Dobson's retirement to Bath. He was appointed to the staff of the Infirmary in 1780, and was the first doctor in Liverpool to realise the value of applying cold water on fever. This remedy was described by Brandreth in a paper entitled On the Advantages arising from the Topical Application of Cold Water and Vinegar in Typhus and On the Use of Large Doses of Opium in certain cases. He practised in Liverpool for the remainder of his life, and became an eminently successful and popular practitioner. He was a man of wide and various reading, and possessed a most accurate and tenacious memory, which he attributed to his habit of depending on it without referring to notes. He established the Dispensary at Liverpool in 1778, and for thirty years gave great attention to the Infirmary. The Infirmary had 84 beds, and Brandreth and other senior physicians and surgeons gave their services free of charge. The discovery of the utility of applying cold in fever is ascribed to him.{{cite book |title=British Medical Journal, Volume 2 |last=Hart (1861) |year= |isbn=1-143-46665-9 |page=284 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SUoBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA284|access-date=8 June 2011}} This remedy he described in a paper On the Advantages arising from the Topical Application of Cold Water and Vinegar in Typhus, and on the Use of Large Doses of Opium in certain Cases.

The most famous physician in Liverpool at this time was James Currie, who also led a distinctive life devoted to the services of mankind. Alongside Dr Currie, Brandreth was admitted to the Freedom of the Borough in 1802. Brandreth is also considered one of the leading physicians of Liverpool in the Hanoverian era.{{Cite book|title=A Medical History of Liverpool from the Earliest Days to the Year 1920|last=From the data collected by Dr Thomas Herbert Bickerton|publisher=John Murray, Albemarle Street|year=1936|location=London|pages=45|via=Liverpool Medical Institution}}

Dr Joseph Brandreth lived on Church Street in the centre of Liverpool for some time during his practice. He died at Liverpool on 10 April 1815.