Charles White (physician)

Charles White was an English physician, born in Manchester in 1728 and dead in 1813, who co-founded the Manchester Royal Infirmary and, in 1790, St Mary Hospital for Lying in Women, and made contributions in orthopaedics, surgery and obstetrics. The only son of a surgeon and midwife, he apprenticed in his father practice from about 1742, studied under William Hunter in London from 1748 and at Edinburgh, and returned to Manchester in 1751. He remained surgeon to the Infirmary for thirty eight years. He described reuniting the ends of a broken arm bone, used sponges rather than ligatures to stop bleeding, devised a method of reducing shoulder dislocations, and excised an infected humeral head in a boy instead of amputating. His 1773 Treatise on the Management of Pregnant and Lying-in Women urged clean, ventilated rooms, hand washing and early rising after childbirth. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a founder of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.