Erasmus Wilson

Sir William James Erasmus Wilson FRCS FRS (25 November 1809 – 7 August 1884), generally known as Sir Erasmus Wilson, was an English surgeon and dermatologist.

Biography

Wilson was born in London, studied at Dartford Grammar School before St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and at the University of Aberdeen, and early in life became known as a skilful surgeon and dissector.

It was his sympathy with the poor of London and a suggestion from Mr. Thomas Wakley of The Lancet, of which he acted for a time as sub-editor, which first led him to take up skin diseases as a special study. The cases of scrofula, anaemia, and blood-poisoning which he saw made him set to work to alleviate the suffering of persons so afflicted, and he quickly established a reputation for treating this class of patients. It was said that he treated the rich by ordering them to give up luxuries; the poor by prescribing for them proper nourishment, which was often provided out of his own pocket. In the opinion of one of his biographers, we owe to Wilson in great measure the habit of the daily bath, and he helped very much to bring the Victorian Turkish bath into use in Great Britain, and in the process writing a number of works on spas, baths and thermo-therapy, all of which overlap in their content.

Indeed, his works on spas, baths, and thermo-therapy were directly related to his work on the health of skin. His earliest such works on this topic outlined the relationship between various applications of water, vapour baths, the action of heat and cold through such media on the action of the skin, and the relationship between this and health in general. Moreover, his works had a direct impact on the hydrotherapy movement of the time (then known as hydropathy), and the overlapping sanitary reform movement. He applauded the establishment of Public Baths and Wash-houses, as "amongst the noblest of the institutions…as they are one of the greatest discoveries of the present age", and dedicated his 1854 book Healthy Skin to another sanitary reform proponent, Edwin Chadwick "In admiration of his strenuous and indefatigable labors in the cause of Sanitary Reform".