Thomas Alcock (surgeon)

Thomas Alcock (1784 to 1833) was an English surgeon, born at Rothbury in Northumberland. After an apprenticeship to a surgeon in Newcastle he became, in 1805, resident medical officer at the Sunderland Dispensary, and in 1806 or 1807 he moved to London as a general practitioner. From 1825 he devoted himself to surgery alone, and from 1813 to 1828 he was surgeon to St. James's Workhouse. A visit to Paris in 1823 led him to publish in 1827 an essay on the use of the chlorides of soda and lime in hospital gangrene, a practice then widely applied in France by Antoine Germain Labarraque. His Lectures on Practical and Medical Surgery, given to the students of the Borough Dispensary, appeared in The Lancet in 1825 and 1826 and were republished with additions in 1830, and he contributed many papers to medical journals. He met the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who wanted a life mask made.