Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/65

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geon to the London Hospital on 18 July 1827. He was appointed full surgeon on 28 March 1831, resigning on 3 Dec. 1845. He died at Brighton, after a prolonged illness, on 11 April 1846.

Scott revolutionised one department of surgery by introducing the passive treatment of diseased joints. His method, however, was distasteful to his contemporaries owing to the unnecessary complications with which he surrounded it; but stripped of these, his principle remains a potent factor in surgery. He treated chronic ulcers by the method his father had taught him of strapping the leg from the toes upwards, and he was thus opposed to Baynton's method, which consisted in applying the strapping for only a short distance above the ulcer. Scott's dressing and Scott's ointment are still known to every student of surgery, though they are now rarely used. His dressing had, as its base, a camphorated mercurial compound. Constant practice is said to have rendered him the most skilful bandager in London, at a time when bandaging in the London hospitals was almost a fine art.

Scott was distinguished as a surgeon by the rapidity and by the general accuracy of his diagnosis. He displayed great decision and energy in the treatment of his patients. He was a bold, but not particularly brilliant operator, and he is said to have been the first surgeon in England to remove the upper jaw. He was of an uncertain and irritable temper, which disease sometimes rendered overbearing.

His works are: 1. ‘Surgical Observations on … Chronic Inflammations … particularly in Diseases of the Joints,’ 8vo, London, 1828; a new edit. by W. H. Smith, London, 8vo, 1857: a most valuable work, for it lays down very clearly the necessity for putting at rest diseased joints. 2. ‘Cases of Tic-douloureux and other Forms of Neuralgia,’ 8vo, London, 1834. 3. ‘Cataract and its Treatment,’ 8vo, London, 1843: the object of this work was to introduce a sickle-shaped knife, but the instrument never came into general use.

[Medical Times and Gazette, xiv. 136; additional facts contributed to the writer by Walter Rivington, esq., F.R.C.S. Engl., consulting surgeon to the London Hospital, and by R. J. Newstead, esq., secretary of the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital.]

D’A. P.


SCOTT, JOHN (1794–1871), horse-trainer, was born at Chippenham, near Newmarket, on 8 Nov. 1794. His father was a jockey and a trainer, who became landlord of the Ship inn at Oxford, and died at Brighton in 1848, aged 97. At an early period John entered his father's stables, and at the age of thirteen won a fifty-pound plate at Blandford. As a lightweight jockey he rode for Sir Watkin Wynne, Mr. Saddler of Alsworth, Sir Sitwell Sitwell, and Mr. Stevens of Bourton-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire. In 1815 James Croft, the trainer of Middleham, put into his charge Sir William Maxwell's Filho da Puta, which ran at Newmarket against Sir Joshua. Shortly after this he was engaged as private trainer to Mr. Houldsworth of Rockhill in Sherwood Forest. The next eight years of his life were spent at Rockhill; he then trained for two years for the Hon. E. Petre at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and brought out Theodore, the winner of the St. Leger in 1822 (Black, Jockey Club, p. 280). In 1825 he purchased Whitewall House, Malton, with training stables, which accommodated a hundred horses, and he resided there for the remainder of his life. For many years he had the best horses in England under his charge, and handled them with unrivalled skill. Among his principal employers were the Duke of Westminster, the Marquis of Exeter, Lord Derby, Lord Chesterfield, the Hon. E. Petre, Mr. John Bowes, General Anson, Lord Falmouth, and Major Yarburgh. The first victory of note which he gained from Whitewall was the St. Leger of 1827, won by the Hon. E. Petre's Matilda. Many more triumphs at Doncaster followed. Before 1862 he trained in all sixteen winners of the St. Leger.

St. Giles in 1832 was the first of six Derby winners which he trained, the others being Mundig in 1835, Attila in 1842, Cotherstone in 1843 (who also won the Two Thousand Guineas), Daniel O'Rourke (who unexpectedly beat Stockwell in 1852), and West Australian in 1853, the first horse that ever won the three great events—the Two Thousand Guineas, the Derby, and the St. Leger. He also trained eight winners of the Oaks. With Meteor he won the Two Thousand Guineas for Mr. Bowes in 1842, and with Impérieuse he beat Blink Bonny for the One Thousand Guineas in 1837. Among other horses trained at Whitewall were Velocipede, one of the best horses of his generation, Lord Derby's Toxophilite and Canezou, and Mr. Bowes's Hetman Platoff and Epirus. The Whitewall horses would have gained more victories in the south of England had the facilities for travelling been what they have become.

John Scott was much esteemed by all his employers, and among his most intimate friends was Baron Martin, who, with Rudston Read, was an executor of his will. At