James Hinton (surgeon)

James Hinton was a Victorian English surgeon and author, born at Reading and baptised in November 1822, the son of a Baptist minister. After a youth spent as a draper's apprentice and insurance clerk, he studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, qualified in 1847 and worked as a surgeon in Essex, on a voyage to Jamaica and then in London. He became interested in diseases of the ear, was appointed aural surgeon to Guy's Hospital in 1863 and gained a reputation as the most skilful aural surgeon of his day. He also wrote popular works on physiology, health and the relation of science to religion, among them Man and his Dwelling Place, Life in Nature and Questions of Aural Surgery. His radical advocacy of polygamy damaged his reputation after his death in the Azores in 1875.