Dr David van Zwanenberg (1922-1991) started researching his biographies in the early 1970s, but sadly he died before he could finish editing the material. The completed biographies, together with van Zwanenberg's working notes and indices, were kindly donated to Suffolk Record Office's local studies library collection at Ipswich by his widow, Aldyth van Zwanenberg. The reference number of this written material is Suffolk Record Office (Ipswich): q.s.614. The biographies cover men and women practising medicine in its various forms in Suffolk from earliest times (Abbot Baldwin, an 11th century physician, is one of the earliest mentioned) until 1900. To qualify for an entry, the person should have practised (or at least have been apprenticed) in Suffolk during this period.
With the aid of an initial grant from the Friends of the Wellcome Library and subsequent donations from the Suffolk Family History Society, the British Society for the History of Medicine, the Gwen Dyke Memorial Trust Fund (Suffolk Local History Council), the Ipswich Medical Staff Committee and several other individual donors, Dr Edward Cockayne arranged for Bechmann Limited of Woodbridge to design a computer database to accommodate the Suffolk Medical Biographies. He then used some of the money which had been donated to pay others (notably the late Olive Hockett and her husband Phillip) to type the material collected by David van Zwanenberg on to the database, whilst he himself, as honorary editor, and with the valuable help of local historian Mr Peter Northeast, checked many of the original references and has added a great deal of new information to the work. All this has been achieved under the financial umbrella of the Suffolk Records Society, which has kindly acted as banker for the project.
The data should eventually appear on the Suffolk Record Office's website, but in the meantime this site has been set up under the sponsorship of the Suffolk Medical History Society.
Any comments about the medical men and women whose names appear on
this website should be made by e mail to the editor:
E. E. Cockayne
If you are interested in recent literature about the history of medicine in Suffolk, please see Stutter's Casebook, A Junior Hospital Doctor, 1839-41, edited by E. E. Cockayne and N.J.Stow, published by Boydell and Brewer, July 2005, ISBN No 1843831139.
Most of the references are self-explanatory, but readers might find the
word "subscriber" under reference number 238 somewhat puzzling.
The word derives from published book lists to which the doctor was a subscriber.
For more information consult Eighteenth Century Medics, by Wallis, P J, Wallis,
R V, and White. Published by Newcastle University, 1985 and 1988.
