# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Scudamore, Charles

​SCUDAMORE, Sir CHARLES, M.D. (1779–1849), physician, third son of William Scudamore, a surgeon, and his wife Elizabeth Rolfe, was born at Wye, Kent, where his father was in practice, in 1779. His grandfather and great-grandfather were surgeons at Canterbury, and descended from an ancient Herefordshire family seated at Ballingham in that county. He was educated at the ancient grammar school of the town, of which the Rev. Philip Parsons was then master. He began his medical education as apprentice to his father, and continued it at Guy's and St. Thomas's hospitals in London for three years, after which he settled in practice as an apothecary at Highgate, and there remained for ten years. He began medical study at Edinburgh in 1813, and graduated M.D. at Glasgow on 6 May 1814, reading a thesis ‘De Arthritide,’ which was published at Glasgow in 1814. He was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London, 30 Sept. 1814, and began practice as a physician in Holles Street, London. He had some knowledge of chemistry, and in 1816 published in London ‘An Analysis of the ​Mineral Water of Tunbridge Wells.’ In the same year he published the book by which he is best known at the present day, ‘A Treatise on the Nature and Cure of Gout,’ dedicated to Matthew Baillie [q. v.] It is based on the author's observation of about one hundred cases of gout, and contains one of the first contributions to the study of the distribution of gouty changes throughout the body. He mentions that there were at the date of his graduation only five hackney carriages and less than twenty private carriages in Glasgow, and attributes the rarity of gout there to the constant walking even of the rich citizens.
He is the first English author who mentions the frequent presence of a circular chest, instead of an elliptical one, in persons subject to gout. These original observations are accompanied by an abstract of the chief books on gout and by many pages of obsolete pathological theories. He showed little capacity for observing disease at the bedside, but had acquaintance with morbid anatomy. A second edition appeared in 1817, a third in 1819, and a fourth in 1823. In 1820 he published ‘A Chemical and Medical Report’ on several English mineral springs, and in that year was appointed physician to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Gotha. In 1824 he wrote ‘An Essay on the Blood,’ in 1825 one ‘On Colchicum,’ in 1826 ‘Observations on Laennec's Diagnosis,’ and in 1827 ‘A Treatise on Rheumatism,’ which is an interesting picture of the period when rheumatic fever was beginning to be separated in medical writings from chronic rheumatism, and when the relation of heart-disease to rheumatic fever, though known from the clinical teaching of David Pitcairn [q. v.], was but imperfectly observed. Scudamore treated rheumatic fever by bleeding, purgatives, colchicum, tartar emetic, opium, and quinine. He went to Ireland in March 1829 in attendance on the Duke of Northumberland, then appointed lord-lieutenant, who knighted him at Dublin on 30 Sept. 1829. He was also admitted an honorary member of Trinity College, Dublin, during his stay in Ireland. In 1830 he published a book of ‘Cases illustrating the Remedial Power of the Inhalation of Iodine and Conium in Tubercular Phthisis,’ of which a second edition appeared in 1834. He spent part of every year at Buxton, and was physician to the Bath Charity there, and published ‘An Analysis of the Tepid Springs of Buxton’ (1820). In 1839 he printed a ‘Letter to Dr. Chambers’ on gout, repeating his former views. In April and May 1843 he visited Gräfenberg, and on his return published a small book on the water-cure treatment. His last work, published in 1847, was ‘On Pulmonary Consumption,’ in which notes of cases of small value are embedded in a mass of compilation. He married, in 1811, Georgiana Johnson, but had no children. He died in his London house, 6 Wimpole Street, of disease of the heart, 4 Aug. 1849.
N. M.