Dennis Embleton

Dennis Embleton (1810 to 1900) was a physician and surgeon who spent his working life in Newcastle upon Tyne. Born in the city, he lost his father in 1820 and was apprenticed at sixteen to the senior surgeon of the Newcastle Infirmary, then finished his training at Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals and the anatomy schools of London and qualified in 1834. After two years travelling Europe, largely on foot, during which he sat the examination for the doctorate of medicine at Pisa, he settled as a physician in Newcastle in 1837. He joined the Newcastle School of Medicine in 1839 as Demonstrator of Practical Anatomy, helped negotiate the school's affiliation with Durham University, and in 1870 became its first Professor of Medicine and of the Practice of Physic. He represented Durham on the General Medical Council from 1858 to 1872. Outside medicine he held office in the city's natural history, antiquarian and literary societies and took a lasting interest in the Tyneside dialect.