Alexander Marcet

Alexander John Gaspard Marcet, who lived from 1770 to 1822, was a Geneva-born physician who settled in London and became a British citizen in 1800. He took his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh in 1797 with a thesis on diabetes, held posts at London dispensaries, and became a physician at Guy's Hospital in 1804, where he also lectured on chemistry until 1819. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815, he published chemical papers and, in 1817, an essay on the chemical history and medical treatment of calculous disorders, in which he noted that the pain of a kidney stone is often caused by its passage down the ureter. He was married to the writer Jane Marcet, and he retired to Geneva as an honorary professor of chemistry.