David Boswell Reid

Prof David Boswell Reid MD FRSE FRCPE (1805 – 5 April 1863) was a British physician, chemist and inventor.

[2] His father gained his doctorate as a physician c.1810 and in 1815 the family was living independently at 7 Roxburgh Place in Edinburgh's South Side.

[5] Reid invited participants at the 1834 meeting of the British Association, in Edinburgh, to visit his laboratory; and among those who took up the offer were some members of parliament.

The post was in the capacity of ventilation engineer, in effect; and with its creation there began a long series of quarrels between Reid and Charles Barry, the architect.

[16] The steam vessels built for the Niger expedition of 1841 were fitted with ventilation systems based on Reid's Westminster model.

[19] Reid's ventilation method was also applied more fully to St. George's Hall, Liverpool, the only building, he said, in which his system was completely carried out.

[22] Leading Tory politicians including Benjamin Disraeli had had enough of his feud with Barry, and Lord Derby thought him a charlatan.

[24] In 1843 Reid sat on the 13-man Royal Commission to inquire into "the state of large towns and populous districts in England and Wales with reference to the causes of disease among the inhabitants, and into the best means of promoting and securing public health".

[25] With the other medical men James Ranald Martin, Richard Owen and Lyon Playfair, he made up the dominant group on the committee.

[5] His stature as an author on sanitation was recognised by the physician Elisha Harris writing in Reid's Ventilation in American Dwellings (1858).

[5] On the outbreak of the American Civil War new military hospitals were erected throughout the country, and Reid was about to leave Washington on a tour of inspection when he came down with a fatal illness.

of Philadelphia for the New York Board of Councilmen, Reid's views on carbonic acid gas in old graveyards and "vitiated" air are quoted; and on "those subtle poisons called miasms" he is said to have reported that he "has detected their escape from graves more than twenty feet deep".