Charles Combe

Charles Combe FRS M.D. (1743–1817) was an English physician and numismatist.

He was born on 23 September 1743, in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, London where his father, John Combe, carried on business as an apothecary. He was educated at Harrow School, and among his schoolfellows were Sir William Jones and Samuel Parr. He rose to the sixth form, but did not proceed to university.

Coming to London, he studied medicine, and on his father's death in 1768 succeeded to his business. In 1783 the degree of doctor of medicine was conferred on him by the University of Glasgow, and he began to practise as an obstetric physician. On 5 April 1784 he was admitted by the Royal College of Physicians a licentiate in midwifery; on 30 June he was nominated a governor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1789 he was chosen physician to the British Lying-In Hospital in Brownlow Street, and on resigning the post in 1810 was appointed consulting physician to the institution. He had also a substantial private practice, and made a collection in materia medica, which was purchased by the College of Physicians shortly after his death.

Combe was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 10 January 1771, and a Fellow of the Royal Society on 11 January 1776. He died, after a short illness, at his house in Vernon Place, Bloomsbury Square, on 18 March 1817, in the seventy-fourth year of his age, and was buried in Bloomsbury cemetery, Brunswick Square. A portrait of Combe was painted by Medley, and engraved by N. Branwhite.

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