Thomas Turner (surgeon)

Thomas Turner, FRCS, FLS, (13 August 1793 – 17 December 1873) was an English surgeon known primarily for his involvement in developing medical education outside its then traditional base of London.

He was educated at Truro grammar school under its headmaster Cornelius Cardew, and was then apprenticed to Nehemiah Duck, one of the surgeons to St Peter's Hospital, Bristol.

Turner left Bristol at the end of his apprenticeship for London, where, in the autumn of 1815, he entered as a student under Astley Paston Cooper, at the united borough hospitals of Guy and St. Thomas.

On 1 November 1822 Turner in the rooms of the Literary and Philosophical Society began a successful series of lectures on the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the human body.

The suggestion was well received, and in October 1824 a suitable building was engaged and opened in Pine Street, where Dalton gave a course of lectures on pharmaceutical chemistry.

In 1843 Turner had been appointed honorary professor of physiology at the Manchester Royal Institution, where, with the exception of two years, he delivered an annual course of lectures until 1873.