Golding Bird FRS FRCP FLS FGS (9 December 1814 – 27 October 1854) was a British medical doctor and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

Having developed an interest in chemistry while still a child, largely through self-study, Bird was far enough advanced to deliver lectures to his fellow pupils at school.

In 1843, he was appointed assistant physician at Guy's, a position for which he had lobbied hard, and that October he was put in charge of the children's outpatients ward.

In 1851, acute rheumatism led Bird to take an extended holiday with his wife in Tenby, where he pursued investigations in botany, marine fauna and cave life as pastimes.

Among the recipients of the medal were Nathaniel Ham (1896), Alfred Salter (1897), Russell Brock (1926), John Beale (1945), and D. Bernard Amos (circa 1947–1951).

[22] By the time Golding Bird was a medical student at Guy's, the hospital already had a tradition of studying physics and chemistry as they related to medicine.

An early example dates from 1832, when he commented on a paper on the copper sulphate test for arsenic poisoning, delivered by his future brother-in-law R. H. Brett to the Pupils' Physical Society.

Taking the view that existing texts were too mathematical for medical students, Bird avoided such material in favour of clear explanations.

The book proved popular and remained in print for 30 years, although some of its mathematical shortcomings were made good in the fourth edition by Charles Brooke.

For medical use, particularly when treating a problem with nerves, a unidirectional current of a particular polarity was often needed, requiring the machine to have split rings or similar mechanisms.

[38] The faster the interrupter switches, the more frequently an electric shock is delivered to the patient; the aim is to make the frequency as high as possible.

Although the treatment worked, in that it caused the bladder to empty, Bird suspected in many cases it did so more through fear and pain than any therapeutic property of electricity.

The name is a reference to the acupuncture technique of moxibustion and was probably influenced by the introduction of electroacupuncture, in which the needles are augmented by an electric current, two decades earlier in France.

[44] The healing of the blister under the silver electrode was of no importance for a counter-irritation procedure, but it suggested to Bird that the electric moxa might be used for treating obstinate leg ulcers.

Electrically, the machine worked like a voltaic pile constructed from wooden dowels, each with a bifilar winding of copper and zinc coils.

According to Bird, the patient's body would provide a conductive path across each cell, thus preventing the device from building up a medically useful voltage at its terminals.

Snow had previously investigated arsenic poisoning when he and several fellow students were taken badly ill after he introduced a new process for preserving cadavers at the suggestion of lecturer Hunter Lane.

However, the makers of the stove, Harper and Joyce, produced a string of their own expert witnesses, who convinced the jury to decide that death was caused by apoplexy, and that "impure air" was only a contributing factor.

Among the unscientific claims made at the inquest by Harper and Joyce were that carbonic gas would rise to the ceiling (in fact it is heavier than air and, according to Bird, would lie in a layer close to the floor, just where the sleeping Trickey's head would rest) and that "deleterious vapour" from the coffins in the vaults had risen into the church.

In a subsequent clarification, Bird made it clear that any stove burning carbonaceous fuel was dangerous if it did not have a chimney or other means of ventilation.

[56][57] Bird read a paper to the Senior Physical Society in 1839, reporting on tests he conducted of the effects on sparrows of poisoning by carbonaceous fumes.

Also in 1839, Bird published a comprehensive paper in Guy's Hospital Reports, complete with many case histories, in which he documents the state of knowledge.

[63] In his great work Urinary Deposits, Bird devotes much space to the identification of chemicals in urine by microscopic examination of the appearance of crystals in it.

Sometime in the middle of the 19th century, a new way of thinking started to take shape, especially among younger physicians, fuelled by rapid advances in the understanding of chemistry.

Addison preferred to believe that the condition was caused by intemperance or some other external factor, and that since the whole body had been disrupted, it could not be localised to a specific organ.

For example, Liebig had predicted that the ratio of uric acid to urea would depend on the level of activity of a species or individual; Bird showed this to be false.

In a reply full of anger and sarcasm, Bird pointed out that in his original paper he had already made clear that he claimed no credit for the earlier instrument.

The Literary Gazette, for instance, thought that it "teaches us the elements of the entire circle of natural philosophy in the clearest and most perspicuous manner".

The reviewer recommended it as suitable not just for students and not just for the young, saying that it "ought to be in the hands of every individual who desires to taste the pleasures of divine philosophy, and obtain a competent knowledge of that creation in which they live".

They note with approval the many newly included descriptions of the latest technology, such as the dynamos of Henry Wilde and Werner von Siemens, and the spectroscope of Browning.