GROENVELDT, JOHN, M.D. (1647?–1710?), physician, born about 1647, was a native of Deventer in Holland. He was educated partly in Holland and then under F. Zypæus at Louvain, and in Paris. On 13 Sept. 1667 he was entered as a medical student at Leyden, but graduated M.D. at Utrecht on 18 March 1670. His thesis, 'De Calculo Vesicæ' (Utrecht, 1670), was translated into English and published in London in 1677, and with large additions in 1710. About 1673 he was appointed physician in chief to the garrison at Grave. Ten years afterwards he came to England, settled in Throgmorton Street, London, and was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 2 April 1683. Supported by powerful patronage he passed as a specialist on gout and stone, but was regarded by most of his brethren as a quack. In 1693 he was summoned before the college for mala praxis in the internal use of cantharides, but was not punished. In April 1697 he was again summoned for the same offence, and was fined and committed to Newgate, but was soon released (Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation, iv. 214). A female patient, to whom he is said to have administered thirty-six grains of the medicine, brought an action against him on the following 7 Dec., but though nearly twenty members of the college appeared on her behalf, a verdict was given in his favour (ib. iv. 316). He in turn sued the college for wrongful imprisonment, but the court gave judgment for the defendants on 8 June 1700 (ib. iv. 654). Groenveldt, or Greenfield, as he sometimes styled himself in England, was the author of a small treatise on his favourite medicine, entitled 'Tutus Cantharidum in medicina Usus internus,' 1698 (2nd edition, 1703), which was translated into English, with additions, by John Marten, surgeon, in 1706. He wrote also:
- ‘Dissertatio Lithologica,’ 1684; 2nd edition, 1687.
- ‘Practica Medica,’ 1688.
- ‘Arthritology; or a Discourse of the Gout,’ 1691.
- ‘Fundamenta Medicinse scriptoribus … præstantioribus deprompta’ [anon.], 1714; 2nd edition, with author's name (1715). This handbook, compiled by Groenveldt from the dictation of Zypæus, was published in English in 1715 and 1753.
In May 1710 Groenveldt was living opposite the Sun Tavern, Threadneedle Street, but died apparently in the same year.
[Prefaces and Appendices to Marten's translation of Groenveldt's Tutus Cantharidum Usus, 1706; Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, i. 429-30; Lists of Coll. of Phys.]
GROGAN, CORNELIUS (1738?–1798), United Irishman, born about 1738, was eldest son of John Grogan of Johnstown Castle, Wexford, by his wife Catherine, daughter and heiress of Major Andrew Knox of Rathmacknee. His father, a protestant landlord, was a member of the Irish parliament. Grogan succeeded to the family estates, was high sheriff of Wexford, and was from 1783 to 1790 M.P. for Enniscorthy in the Irish parliament. On the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in 1798 Grogan joined the insurgents, and became commissary-general in their army. When Wexford was taken by the government forces Grogan was tried by court-martial. He pleaded that he had been forced to take a nominal lead, but had been guilty of no overt act, but was beheaded on Wexford Bridge on 28 June 1798. Two other landlords of Wexford who had taken the same action as himself, John Henry Colclough [q. v.] and Bagenal Beauchamp Harvey [q. v.], suffered with him. Their heads were set up on the court-house, and their bodies flung into the Slaney; but Grogan's body was recovered by his followers, and secretly buried at Rathaspick, near Johnstown. His estates were escheated by the crown, but were restored on the payment of a heavy fine to his youngest and only surviving brother, John Knox. Another brother, Thomas, a lieutenant in the British army, was killed at the battle of Arklow on 9 June 1798. A cousin, Edward Grogan, born in 1802, M.P. for Dublin from 1841 to 1868, was created a baronet on 23 April 1859.
[Edward Hay's Insurrection in Wexford (1803); Burke's Baronetage; Grattan's Life and Times of Henry Grattan, 1839-46; Froude's English in Ireland; Cornwallis Correspondence ii. 345, 379, 380.]
GROGAN, NATHANIEL (d. 1807?), painter, a native of Cork, served first as an apprentice to a wood-turner, but becoming acquainted with John Butts, the painter, at Cork, desired to become a painter. He entered the army, however, and served through the American war, at the close of which he returned to Cork to devote himself to art. He was mainly occupied in painting landscapes, but gained his chief successes in humorous subjects, especially drawn from Irish peasant life. In 1782 he sent four pictures to the exhibition of the Free Society of Artists in London. Some pictures by him were exhibited at the Irish Exhibition in London, 1888. Grogan also worked in aquatint, and executed in this method a large plate of 'The Country Schoolmaster' (an impression is in the print room at the British Museum), and some views in the neighbourhood of Cork.
