from the unhealthiness of the seat of war, and then by their supineness in meeting the crisis, each member of the board excusing himself on various pretexts from proceeding to the scene of action (see report of evidence given before a committee of the whole House of Commons, 1810). Under these circumstances the War Office sent out Blane to report; and when it was decided, chiefly on medical grounds, to recall the expedition, he was charged with the arrangements for bringing home the sick and wounded.
This perhaps unprecedented instance of employing a naval medical officer in the work of the army department undoubtedly raised Blane's reputation, whether or no (which does not appear) it may have given rise to any jealousy. He was at once liberally rewarded and thanked, and received the honour of a baronetcy from the prince regent on 26 Dec. 1812.
On the accession of George IV Blane became one of his physicians in ordinary, and filled the same office in the next reign. Consultations on medico-political questions and compensatory honours flowed in upon Blane from foreign countries. The emperor of Russia, the king of Prussia, and the president of the United States sought his advice and acknowledged his services. In 1821 the medical officers of the navy presented him with a piece of plate. In 1829 he founded a prize medal for the best journal kept by the surgeons of the royal navy. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the Institute of France, and other learned bodies. In 1821 Blane's health began to fail, but not seriously till 1834. He died on 26 June 1834 at his house in Sackville Street. An unfinished portrait of him by Sir M. A. Shee is in the College of Physicians. He married, 11 July 1786, the only daughter of Mr. Abraham Gardiner, and had six sons and three daughters. He was succeeded in the title by his third son, Hugh Seymour Blane; the two elder died previously.
Blane was undoubtedly a man of great original force of character, and he became a very completely equipped physician. He united in an uncommon degree adequate scholarship and considerable dialectical skill with scientific acumen and great administrative capacity. He does not appear to have made any reputation as a hospital teacher, but his books are well written and full of original observations. Although there is no one subject in which he made any striking discovery, the general body of fact and argument in his writings constitutes an important contribution to medicine and to the science of health. His tract entitled ‘Medical Logic,’ intended to show the fallacies which beset medical inquiries, contains a good deal of common sense with some philosophical pedantry. Of his other dissertations the most important are: ‘On the Comparative Health of the British Navy from 1779 to 1814 (‘Medico-Chirurgical Transactions,’ vol. vi. 1815); ‘Observations respecting Intermittent Fevers, the cause of the sickness of the army in Walcheren, &c.’ (ib. vol. iii. 1812); ‘On the Comparative Prevalence and Mortality of different Diseases in London’ (ib. vol. iv. 1813). He wrote also: ‘Observations on the Diseases of Seamen,’ London, 8vo, 1st ed. 1785, 2nd ed. 1790, 3rd ed. 1803 (with a pharmacopœia for the naval service). ‘Elements of Medical Logick,’ London, 1819, 8vo, 2nd ed. 1821, 3rd ed. 1825. ‘Select Dissertations on Medical Science collected,’ London, 1822, 8vo, 2nd ed. 2 vols. 1833, including those quoted above with others, namely: ‘On Muscular Motion’ (the Croonian Lecture read before the Royal Society, 18 and 20 Nov. 1788); ‘On the True Value and Present State of Vaccination’ (also in ‘Med.-Chir. Trans.’ vol. x. 1819); ‘On the Mechanical Compression of the Head in Hydrocephalus;’ ‘On the Yellow Fever,’ &c., &c. ‘Statement of the Progressive Improvement in the Health of the Royal Navy at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, London, 1830, 8vo. ‘Warning to the Public on the Cholera of India,’ London, 1831, 8vo. ‘Reflections on the Present Crisis of Public Affairs,’ 1831, 8vo, &c.
[Authentic Memoirs of Physicians and Surgeons, 2nd ed. 1818, p. 135; London Medical Gazette, 1834, xiv. 459, 483; Gent. Mag. 1835, p. 93; Mundy's Life of Rodney, 2 vols. London, 1830; Munk's Coll. of Phys. (1878), ii. 325; Archives of St. Thomas's Hospital; Blane's Works.]
BLANEFORDE, HENRY (fl. 1330), chronicler, was a monk of St. Albans. A fragment of his chronicle has been preserved. Beginning with the year 1323 he possibly intended to continue the work of Trokelowe, which ends at 1330. What we have of his chronicle, however, ends in 1324, though it contains a reference to an event of 1326. The only manuscript of Blaneforde now known to exist is in the British Museum (Cotton MSS. Claudius, D. vi.) In this Blaneforde's chronicle follows the 'Annals of Trokelowe' without break. From this manuscript Hearne printed the work in his 'Annales Edwardi II,' Oxford, 1729 ; it has been edited by H. T. Riley in the ' Chronica Monasterii S. Albani,' Rolls Ser. From a reference to this writer as Blankforde in Walsingham's 'History,' i. 170, Mr.
