Thomas Hodgkin RMS (17 August 1798 – 5 April 1866) was a British physician, considered one of the most prominent pathologists of his time and a pioneer in preventive medicine.

[6] He then studied at the University of Edinburgh, where the lecturers who impressed him included Andrew Duncan, the younger, and Robert Jameson in natural history.

[citation needed] In 1821, Hodgkin went to France, where he learned to work with the stethoscope, a recent invention of René Laennec.

[11] This contact led to another appointment as physician to Abraham Montefiore, married to Henriette, daughter of Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

[12] Staying in Paris for an extended period from September 1824 to June 1825, Hodgkin made significant medical contacts.

Harrison disliked Hodgkin's progressive views, and support for the new University College, London, and had been personally offended by them in one instance (see below).

The position went to the rival candidate Benjamin Guy Babington, and Hodgkin moved reluctantly into private practice, after a period of convalescence.

[18][19] In around 1847, Hodgkin became guardian to an Aboriginal Australian youth, Warrulan, who had been brought to England in 1845 by Edward John Eyre,[20] arranging for him to be educated at the Quaker Sibford School.

Hodgkin like many other Quakers was concerned both with the abolition of slavery and the reduction of the impact of western colonization on indigenous peoples around the world.

[24] In 1827, in a letter supporting the missionary Hannah Kilham who was working with West African languages, he published for the first time long-held ideas on "civilisation";[25] a Civilization Society in London had been a Hodgkin family initiative some years earlier.

The formation, however, of the British African Colonization Society by Cresson had Hodgkin's support, and he found himself isolated from natural allies who were Quakers or physicians.

[33] Hodgkin became involved in campaigning concerning the Boothia Peninsula and the Hudson's Bay Company around 1836–37, through his friend Richard King.

[34] The Narrative contained a piece Hodgkin had written on the indifference of the company to the indigenous peoples of western Canada.

[35] Hodgkin then took up the behaviour of the company with Benjamin Harrison, Treasurer of Guy's, disastrously mixing his professional life with his activism: Harrison was concerned in the management of the company as deputy chairman, and was related by marriage to John Henry Pelly, the chairman, who had crossed swords with King at parliamentary hearings.

[40] For a while microscopy suffered in its reputation, but by 1840 histology was a recognised discipline, and in time the view of Hodgkin and Lister that "globules" were optical artefacts became accepted.

[citation needed] Hodgkin was one of the earliest defenders of preventive medicine, having published On the Means of Promoting and Preserving Health in book form in 1841.

Among other early observations were the first description of acute appendicitis, of the biconcave format of red blood cells and the striation of muscle fibers.

Hodgkin also translated with Thomas Fisher, from the French of William-Frédéric Edwards, On the Influence of Physical Agents on Life (London, 1832; Philadelphia 1838).

[2] Other works by Hodgkin were Biographical Sketches: of James Cowles Prichard (1849); and of William Stroud (1789–1858), a medical collaborator.