Whitley Stokes

Whitley Stokes (1763–1845) was an eminent Irish physician and polymath. A one-time United Irishman, in 1798 he was sanctioned by Trinity College Dublin for his alleged republicanism. In 1821, he published a rebuttal of Robert Malthus's thesis that, as spurs to population growth, in Ireland attempts to improve the general welfare are self-defeating. The country's problem, Stokes argued, was not her "numbers" but her indifferent government. Medical and academic career Stokes was born in Waterford, son of Gabriel Stokes (1732–1806), DD, chancellor of the cathedral, and master of Waterford endowed school, where the young Stokes had his primary education. At age 16 he was admitted to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) (Scholar 1781, BA 1783, MA 1789, MB & MD 1793) and completing studies medicine at the University of Edinburgh. His first venture as a medical practitioner was in public health. He studied not only his patients' ailments but also their environments, noting that in the slums of Dublin certain families rented a small room for a few guineas a year, sub-letting to others who paid them sixpence-halfpenny per week to lay down a bed of straw in a corner. Having been admitted as a licentiate of the College of Physicians in 1795 without examination, in 1798 he was appointed Regius Professor of Medicine at TCD (a position he held until 1811), and was elected a Fellow of the College in 1800. At the same time "with the assurance of a polymath", he was Donegall Lecturer in Mathematics from 1807 and offered a course in natural history. He left TCD to hold the chair of medicine at Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) 1819-1828. Returning to TCD he became Regius Professor of Physic (1830-1840). In 1814 he funded an English-Irish dictionary.