HEBERDEN, William (1710-1801), a practical physician of some celebrity, was born in London in the year 1710. In the end of 1724 he was sent to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship about 1730, became master of arts in 1732, and took his degree in physic in 1739. He remained at Cambridge about ten years longer as a practitioner of physic, and gave an annual course of lectures on materia medica. In 1746 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London; and two years afterwards he left Cambridge to establish himself in London, where he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1769, and was employed in a very extensive medical practice for more than thirty years. Latterly he passed his summers at a house which he had taken at Windsor, but he continued his practice during the winter for some years longer. In 1778 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Society of Medicine at Paris. He died 17th May 1801.

Heberden’s first publication seems to have been a short essay on the incongruous composition of the mithridate and theriac, entitled Antithcriaca (1745). He also wrote several papers for the Royal Society, which were published in its Transactions ; and he was one of the principal contributors to the first three volumes of the Medical Transactions, published, in a great measure at his suggestion, by the College of Physicians. He is, however, best known by his Commentaries on the History and Cure of Diseases, the result of careful notes made in his pocket-book at the bedside of his patients. In accordance with his directions the work was published posthumously in 1802; prefixed to it is a short notice of his life.