MEAD, Richard (1673-1754), physician, was born on August 11, 1673, at Stepney (near London), where his father, at one time minister of the parish, had been ejected for nonconformity in 1662. He was sent to Utrecht, where he studied for three years under Graevius; having decided to follow the medical profession, he then went to Leyden and attended the lectures of Hermann and Pitcairn. In 1695 he graduated in philosophy and physic at Padua, and in the following year he returned to his native place, entering at once on a successful practice. His Mechanical Account of Poisons appeared in 1702, and in 1703 he was admitted to the Royal Society, to whose Transactions he contributed in that year a paper on the parasitic nature of scabies. In the same year he was also elected physician to St Thomas’s Hospital, and appointed to read anatomical lectures at the Surgeons’ Hall. On the death of Radcliffe in 1714 Mead became the recognized head of his profession; he attended Queen Anne on her death-bed, and in 1727 was appointed physician to George II., having previously served him in that capacity when he was prince of Wales. He died on February 16, 1754. For his place in the annals of medical science see Medicine, p. 811 of the present volume.

Besides the Mechanical Account of Poisons, of which a second edition appeared in 1708, Mead published a treatise De Imperio Solis et Lunae in Corpora Humana et Morbis inde Oriundis (1704), A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Method to be used to prevent it (1720), De Variolis et Morbillis Dissertatio (1∙747), Medica Sacra, sive de Morbis insignioribu^aui in Bibliis memorantur Commentarius (1748), On the Scurry (1/49), and Monita et Praecepta Medica (1751). A Life of Mead by Dr Maty appeared in 1755.

MEADVILLE, a city of the United States, county seat of Crawford county, Pennsylvania, on the left bank of French Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany river, and at the junction of the Franklin branch with the main line of the New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio Railroad, 102 miles from Salamanca. It is a well-built town, maintains a large trade with the oil regions, and has railway and other machine works, glass works, woollen mills, and paper mills. The Meadville theological school was established by the Unitarians in 1844; and Allegheny College, opened in 1816 as a Presbyterian Church institution, has been carried on since 1833 by the Methodist Episcopal Church. Meadville was founded by General David Mead as a fortified post in 1789. In 1816 it had only 400 inhabitants; but the number was 3702 in 1860, 7103 in 1870, and 8860 in 1880.