Matthew Dobson (physician)

Matthew Dobson (1732–1784) was an English physician and experimental physiologist. He is now remembered for his work on diabetes

His parents were Joshua Dobson, nonconformist minister at Lydgate, West Yorkshire, and Elizabeth, daughter of Matthew Smith who was minister at Mixenden. He matriculated at Glasgow University in 1750, where he graduated M.A. in 1753. He then moved to Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.D. in 1756. From the end of the decade he worked as a doctor in Liverpool.

Dobson worked with Matthew Turner, and others, to set up the Liverpool Academy of Art in 1769, a local reply to the Royal Academy's foundation in 1768. After a slow start, a first exhibition was held in 1774. (The 1810 foundation of the Liverpool Academy of Arts was in the nature of a fresh beginning.) In 1770 he was appointed physician to Liverpool Infirmary, as successor to John Kennion. He had a house in Harrington Street. When William Enfield wrote his History of Leverpool [sic] (1772), Dobson contributed to it.

About 1776 Dobson gave up his Liverpool practice, which was taken over by Joseph Brandreth. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1778, and became head of the Liverpool Medical Library in 1779. In 1780, suffering from poor health, he retired to Bath, Somerset. He joined the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, established in 1781.

Dobson was physician, and eventually confidant, to Hester Thrale. He played a key role in her second marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, persuading her daughter Queeney to accept Piozzi, whose banishment from the household he said was life-threatening for her mother.

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