A family of doctors over 250 years: innovation and controversy

A family of Watkins doctors originating in the Northamptonshire town of Towcester included 13 doctors in seven generations during 250 years. In each generation there were between one and four doctors. Three doctors involved themselves actively in innovative yet controversial practises, described in their own writings and publications. Timothy Watkins' (1755-1834) own handwritten lecture notes describe the problems affecting an 18th-century man-midwife, while his accounts book provides insights into his lifestyle. The concept of the waterborne spread of cholera during the 1854 epidemic in Towcester is described by Robert Webb Watkins (1822-1901) during the same year as the observations made by John Snow (1813-58). John Webb Watkins (1833-1903) in his MD thesis (1856) describes his use of chloroform in labour in Towcester during the early 1850s, followed by self-experimentation with chloroform administered to him between 40 and 50 times by Sir James Young Simpson (1811-70) in Edinburgh. Descriptions of the two 19th-century general practitioners offer insights into the exemplary extent of their civic involvement in all walks of local community life, and of their family ties.