Francis Knight (c. 1748 – 1832) was a British surgeon, an army medical man as well as a society doctor with court connections, who became Inspector of Military Hospitals in 1802.
[6][7] The position gave him the third seat on the Army Medical Board, instituted at the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars.
Charles Maclean, a disaffected medical man and critic of the Board as a whole, wrote in 1810 that Knight's approach was a "nefarious job".
[13] The Helder Expedition saw Keate set up in 1799 temporary general hospitals in East Anglia for returning wounded soldiers, at Colchester, Harwich and Great Yarmouth.
Knight's past conduct on the Army Medical Board was still the subject of serious criticism by his former colleagues Keate and Lucas Pepys, in relation in particular to the 1805 appointment of Borland as his assistant, patronage as applied to inspector posts, and encroachment.
[21][23] In the political furore, the Walcheren campaign was ended by the government on the advice of Gilbert Blane;[24] and the Board's structure was replaced by a new Army Medical Department.
[25] When a friendly society was set up in 1816, for the widows of army medical and hospital staff, by James McGrigor, Knight became its President.