Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Carlyon, Clement

1381370Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 09 — Carlyon, Clement1887Richard Garnett

CARLYON, CLEMENT (1777–1864), physician, was born at Truro 14 April 1777, and educated at the grammar school, where Davy and Henry Martyn were among his schoolfellows. Having taken his degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge, he was appointed a travelling bachelor on the Worts foundation, and, proceeding to Germany, formed the acquaintance with Coleridge for which, apart from his merely local celebrity, he is now principally remembered. After completing his medical studies at Edinburgh and London, he settled in his native town, where he spent a long life of active beneficence. He was five times mayor of Truro, and was chiefly instrumental in the erection of the handsome memorial to Richard Lander, which is so great an ornament to the town. His autobiography, published under the title of 'Early Years and Late Reflections,' in 4 vols., between 1836 and 1858, is in parts exceedingly tedious, but is valuable for the numerous interesting particulars of Coleridge, Davy, and other men of eminence known to the writer. His 'Observations on the Endemic Typhus Fever of Cornwall' (1827) are esteemed, and effected much good in a sanitary point of view. He edited Cornaro and Bernard Gilpin, and wrote several tracts on religious subjects. He died on 5 March 1864.

[Carlyon's Early Years and Late Reflections; Gent. Mag. June 1864, pp. 797–8: Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis.]

R. G.