Warner, Joseph

, an eminent surgeon, was born in the island of Antigua, in 1717, on the family estate, which he inherited, together with a ring, famous in history, as the one given by queen Elizabeth to the earl of Essex, and which in the hour of impending danger he entrusted to the countess of Nottingham, who never delivered it to the queen, and this, according to the story, was the cause of Essex’s losing his life. By some means this ring had regularly descended, together with the estate, in the Warner family. Mr. Warner was sent to England at an early age, and educated at Westminster school. At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to the celebrated surgeon, Samuel Sharpe, and after residing seven years with him, was admitted joint lecturer in anatomy at St. Thomas’s hospital with Mr. Sharpe, after whose resignation Mr. Warner continued the lectures for several years. In 1746, during the rebellion in Scotland, he volunteered his professional services, and joined the royal army under the duke of Cumberland, In the course of that campaign he was recalled to London to fill the office of surgeon to Guy’s hospital, a situation which he held, with increasing reputation, and | great professional success, for the long period of forty-four years. During this time his private practice became extensive, and his fame was increased by his valuable treatises on the cataract, the hydrocele, &c. and his still more va-r luable volume of “Cases in Surgery,” 1754, &c. In 1756 he was elected a fellow of the royal society, in whose Transactions a number of his communications were published. In 1764 he was elected a -member of the court of assistants of the then corporation of surgeons, and in 1771, became one of the court of examiners, in which office he continued to discharge his duty most punctually until the last month of his life.

He died at his house in Hatton-garden, July 24, 1801, in the eighty-fifth year of his life, without much illness, but of the mere effects of age, and retained his faculties to the last. He left a very estimable character, both as to professional and private merit. He was among the earliest teachers of anatomy, whose labours have greatly contributed to lessen the necessity of going abroad, and have rendered London at the present day the first chirurgical school in the world. ¹