William Brownrigg

William Brownrigg (24 March 1711 – 1800) was a doctor and scientist, who practised at Whitehaven in Cumberland. While there, William Brownrigg carried out experiments that won him not only a place in The Royal Society but the prized Copley Medal.

He was born at High Close Hall, the son of local gentry, George Brownrigg. William's mother, Mary Brownrigg, was from Ireland.

William was educated in Latin and Greek by a local clergyman from the age of 13 and by the age of 15 was apprenticed to an apothecary in Carlisle. Then followed two years studying under a surgeon in London before going to Leiden where he studied under Boerhaave, 's Gravesande, van Royen and Albinus. He graduated in 1737 with his thesis "De Praxi Medica Ineunda" – about the environment where the clinician practices medicine. He gained the degree of Doctor of Medicine (MD).

Brownrigg returned to England and took up medicine with an established doctor called Richard Senhouse in Whitehaven. Senhouse died soon after, making Brownrigg the principal doctor in the area for many years to come. His casebook for 1737-1742 survives and was recently transcribed. It contains descriptions of his patients and remedies and some of the earliest English references to puerperal fever.

In 1741, Brownrigg married Mary Spedding. Mary's father and uncle ran the collieries for James Lowther, whose family had developed Whitehaven into a major seaport. This increased William's local influence and also promoted his interest in the health and welfare of the miners.

Later in 1771, with the threat of an epidemic from Europe, Brownrigg who had studied the subject from outbreaks of typhus at Whitehaven, published a paper "Considerations on the means of pestilential contagion, and of Eradicating it in Infected Places."

His medical interest led him to investigate the gases the miners breathed – fire damp (methane) and choke damp (oxygen depleted air). Carlisle Spedding helped to build a laboratory for Brownrigg and fed it with gases from a nearby coal mine through lead pipes. Brownrigg developed methods of collecting and transferring the gases and supplied James Lowther with gas filled bladders to show to The Royal Society which then elected Brownrigg as a Fellow.

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