William Blair (surgeon)

William Blair (1766 to 1822) was an English surgeon born in Lavenham, Suffolk, the youngest son of a physician of the same name. He trained in London, became surgeon to the London Lock Hospital and later to the Asylum, the Finsbury Dispensary, the Bloomsbury Dispensary for the sick poor and the New Rupture Society, and was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and of medical societies in several cities. He edited the London Medical Review and Magazine and wrote on health and disease, including The Soldier's Friend in 1798 on keeping volunteers and soldiers healthy, and The Vaccine Contest in 1806, an outline of the arguments for and against cow-pox inoculation. A keen Methodist, he gave his collection of rare Bibles to the British and Foreign Bible Society. His article on ciphers in Rees's Cyclopaedia was called by David Kahn the finest treatise in English on cryptology until 1916. He died in Bloomsbury in 1822.