Charles White (surgeon)

Charles White FRS (4 October 1728 – 20 February 1813) was an English physician and a co-founder of the Manchester Royal Infirmary, along with local industrialist Joseph Bancroft. White was an able and innovative surgeon who made significant contributions in the field of obstetrics.

White kept the mummified body of one of his female patients in a room of his house in Sale for 55 years, probably at least partly because she had a morbid fear of being mistakenly buried alive.

White was born in Manchester, England, on 4 October 1728, the only son of Thomas White, a surgeon and man-midwife, and his wife Rosamond. After being educated by the Reverend Radcliffe Russell, White joined his father's practice as an apprentice, in about 1742. He subsequently studied medicine in London under the obstetrician William Hunter, before completing his studies in Edinburgh and rejoining his father's practice as a surgeon and man-midwife.

From the 1750s onwards, White became increasingly recognised as an able and innovative surgeon. He presented a paper to the Royal Society in 1760 describing his successful treatment of a fractured arm by reuniting the ends of the broken bone. In 1762, the year he became a fellow of the society, he presented another paper, on the use of sponges to stop bleeding. He became a member of the Company of Surgeons that same year.

White was also highly regarded in the field of obstetrics. His influential book, Treatise on the Management of Pregnant and Lying-in Women, was published in 1773, in which he recommended that women should give birth naturally, and that the delivery should not be assisted until the baby's shoulders had been expelled. He also advised mothers to get out of bed as soon as possible after giving birth, and strongly advocated cleanliness and ventilation.

He defended the controversial theory that "All organisms are arranged in a static chain of being, rising through small gradations from plants to animals to humans". He argued that non-white races were inferior and closer to the primitive due to their skin pigmentation, and that women resembled the darker races because their bodies revealed areas of darker pigmentation: "the areola round the nipple, the pudenda, and the verge of the anus", especially as seen in pregnant women.

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