Baynham, William (1749–1814)
William Baynham, anatomist, the son of Dr. John Baynham of Caroline County, Virginia, was born the seventh of December, 1749. After serving a laborious apprenticeship of five years under Dr. Walker, a physician of Caroline County, he was sent to London to complete his medical education.
In 1769 he entered St. Thomas' Hospital as a student and by his diligence soon attracted the attention of the professor of anatomy, Mr. Else. Between the two a mutual attachment arose which lead Baynham to direct his attention specially to the study of anatomy and surgery. In the former he soon became so proficient that in 1772 he was engaged by the professor of anatomy at Cambridge as his prosector, a position he held for several years. During those months in which he was not occupied at Cambridge, he practised at Margate as a partner of Mr. Slater, a surgeon of that place. This he found to be a pleasant and profitable connection, but was induced by Mr. Else to return to London and become his assistant demonstrator. In this work he acquired that intimate knowledge of anatomy for which he was so justly celebrated. During the five years in which he held this position he prepared for the museum many valuable and beautiful specimens.
He had now acquired a reputation as anatomist and surgeon for, though a stranger to the governors, he failed by one vote only of election as successor to Mr. Else, who died suddenly without having made a promised arrangement that Baynham should be advanced to the professorship after his death. On June 7, 1781, he became a member of the Surgeons' Company of London and began to practise in that city. Membership in the Surgeons' Company gave him equal rank with the first English surgeons of the day, men such as Pott, Cooper, Abernethy and John Hunter.
After a residence of sixteen years in England he returned to Virginia and settled in Essex County, where he continued to live until his death. The remainder of his life was spent in the service of his fellow creatures. He soon had an enormous practice which was largely surgical, and it was said that there was scarcely any known operation that he did not perform with success, and he particularly signalized himself by his operations for stone, cataract and extrauterine gestation. His biographer truthfully said of him that he probably had no superior as a surgeon, and certainly none as an anatomist; that Physick (q. v.) and Baynham were the only men he knew of in America who had done anything towards the improvement of their calling. He was an excellent physician as well. He was frequently called to large cities, sometimes to other states, to perform operations, and his advice was often sought by persons from a distance. He is known to anatomists as the discoverer and demonstrator of the vascularity of the rete mucosum.
He discharged his duties to society in a most exemplary manner, and while he had eccentricities of temper, and was somewhat gloomy and austere, he had a warm heart and was ever a friend and benefactor to the poor and needy. Virginia has furnished another remarkable instance of a similar successful career in a remote country district in the career of Dr. J. P. Mettauer. Dr. Baynham married a daughter of the Rev. John Mathews of Essex County. He died on the eighth of December, 1814, on the day after he had completed the sixty-sixth year of a useful and laborious life.
He did two successful operations for ectopic pregnancy, one in 1790, the second in 1799, and he is supposed to have been the first surgeon who did this successfully. His account of these operations was published in the New York Medical and Physical Journal and Review, vol. i. Several posthumous accounts of surgical cases were published in the Philadelphia Journal of Medical and Physical Sciences.