John Haygarth

John Haygarth FRS FRSE (1740 – 10 June 1827) was an 18th-century British physician who discovered new ways to prevent the spread of fever among patients and reduce the mortality rate of smallpox.

[3] Haygarth matriculated at the University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1762 studying medicine for three years and leaving without a degree in 1765.

Like William Cullen, James Currie and Thomas Percival, he was interested in a wide array of medical and social justice issues.

Although he was an Anglican, Haygarth was supported by a network of Dissenting men of science and letters who helped spread his ideas.

From this information he concluded that fever patients should be separated from others and his discovery that only a tiny fraction of the population of Chester had never had smallpox led him to focus his energy on prevention.

In 1778 Haygarth helped found the Smallpox Society of Chester; the group advocated inoculation, an unpopular position at the time, and tried to educate the populace so as to avoid casual contraction of the disease.

He further elaborated his ideas in Sketch of a plan to exterminate the casual small pox from Great Britain and to introduce general inoculation (1793).

[7] The wooden pointers were just as useful as the expensive metal ones, showing "to a degree which has never been suspected, what powerful influence upon diseases is produced by mere imagination".