WHITE, CHARLES

(b.Manchester, England, 4 October 1728; d. Sale, Cheshire, England, 20 February 1813), obstertrics, surgery.

White received his early education in Manchester and was apprenticed in medicine to his father, Thomas White. He subsequently studied in London, where he was greatly influenced by John and William Hunter, and in Edinburgh. He then joined his father in practice and soon achieved a reputation in surgery and obstetrics. White helped to found the Manchester Infirmary (1752)and served as its chief surgeon until 1790. He took a leading part in establishing the lying-in Charity Hospital (1790), now known as St. Mary’s Hospital, and served on its staff. He was also a founder of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society (1781). On 18 February 1762 White was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Corporation (now the Royal College) of Surgeons of London. The first to lecture on anatomy in Manchester, he eventually became the most eminent surgeon in the north of England. In 1803 an eye infection affected his vision; and in 1811 he retired to Sale, where he died completely blind.

White possessed great stamina, an acute and agile mind, and a forceful character tinged with arrogance. His contributions to surgery were extensive, and he introduced conservative techniques. Stimulated by John Hunter, he studied gradation in animals and plants and in 1799 published a suggestive treatise on evolution, unknown to Darwin, in which he rejected the idea that acquired characteristics could become hereditary. For the study of skulls upon which this work is based, White has been called the founder of anthropometry. His main fame, however, derives from his work in obstetrics. Alexander Gordon (1795), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1843), and Ignaz Semmelweis (1847) are correctly given credit for discovering the infectious nature of puerperal fever. Nevertheless, White, although unaware of its causative agent, recognized some of the associated etiological factors and instituted prophylaxis and therapy accordingly. He was the first to insist on absolute cleanliness during delivery and was thus a pioneer in aseptic midwifery. Together with his absolute account of puerperal fever (1773), his recognition of “white leg” (1784), and his enlightened approach to obstetrics in general, it brought him widespread recognition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. White’s main works were A Treatise on the Management of pregnant and Lying-in Women… (London, 1773, 1777, 1784, 1791), repr. in J. George Adami, Charles White of Manchester (1728– 1813), and the Arrest of puerperal Fever (London, 1922), also in French (Paris, 1774), American (Worcester, Mass., 1793), and German eds. (Leipzig, 1775); and An Inquiry Into the Nature and Cause of That Swelling in One or Both of the Lower Extremities Which Sometimes Happens to Lying-in Women, 2 vols. (Warrington, 1784–London, 1801)

A list of his surgical writings is in J. E. Dezeimeris, Dictionnaire historique de la médecine, IV (Paris, 1839), 402–403. He also published An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables and From the Former to the Latter (London, 1799); and three papers of less importance in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 51 (1760) and 59 (1769).

II. Secondary Literature. Adami (see above), with portrait, makes unwarranted claims for White, as do Charles J. Cullingworth, Charles White, F.R.S., a Great Provincial Surgeon and Obstetrician of the 18th Century (London, 1904), and Lancet (1903), 2 , 1071-1076. Edward A. Schumann, “Charles White and His Contribution to the knowledge of Puerperal Sepsis,” in Medical Life, 36 (1929), 257–270, gives a more balanced judgement of his work. See also E. M. Brockbank, Sketches of the Lives and Work of the Honorary Staff of the Manchester Infirmary (Manchester, 1904), 28–65, with a list of local biographical sources; Dictionary of National Biography, xxi, 33–34; and H. Thoms, Classical Contributions to Obstetrics and Gynecology (Springfield, III., 1935), 170–178, with extracts from his book of 1773.

Edwin Clarke