John Elliotson

John Elliotson (29 October 1791 – 29 July 1868), M.D. (Edinburgh, 1810), M.R.C.P. (London, 1810), M.B. (Oxford, 1816), M.D. (Oxford, 1821), F.R.C.P. (London, 1822), F.R.S. (1829), professor of the principles and practice of medicine at University College London (1832), and senior physician to University College Hospital (1834).

He was a prolific and influential author, a respected teacher, always at the ‘leading edge’ of his profession (one of the first to use and promote the stethoscope, and one of the first in Britain to use acupuncture), renowned for both his diagnostic skills as a clinician and his extremely strong prescriptions: "his students said that one should let him diagnose but not treat the patient".

In concert with William Collins Engledue, M.D., Elliotson was the co-editor of The Zoist: A Journal of Cerebral Physiology & Mesmerism, and Their Applications to Human Welfare, an influential British journal, devoted to the promotion of the theories and practices (and the collection and dissemination of reports of the applications) of mesmerism and phrenology, and the enterprise of "connecting and harmonizing practical science with little understood laws governing the mental structure of man", that was published quarterly, without a break, for fifteen years: from March 1843 until January 1856.