Groggster

By Groggster

Fitting The Bill To Perfection

I headed out to our nearest market town, West Malling, today for a bit of shopping, a stroll and hopefully a blip image.
I wasn't having any luck until I was walking along the High Street and noticed this blue plaque relating to a William Perfect, who seemed to have quite the resume! Intrigued, I was determined to find out more when I got back home. My apologies if this seems a bit niche!
William Perfect was a British surgeon, obstetrician, early psychiatrist, pioneer of humane treatment of mental illness, a freemason and a poet.
He was born in Oxford, the son of a clergyman of Huguenot extraction who was a vicar of East Malling in Kent from 1745.
In 1749 he was apprenticed under William Everred, a London surgeon, for seven years and attended lectures by Colin MacKenzie, a Scottish obstetrician, which would lead to him opening his own medical and obstetric practice in West Malling High Street in 1756. He obtained his Medicinae Doctor (M.D) from St. Andrew's University in 1783.
In the 1760's, with Humphrey Porter, a doctor in Aylesford, Kent (my home village) he conducted an extensive programme of inoculation against smallpox, in Kent and further afield whilst also treating and accommodating mentally ill people in his home, a practice he continued until his death in 1809.
He pioneered a new way of treating mental illness and advocated gentle treatment of patients and considered it contributed much to their best chance of recovery and should always be adopted in preference to the more 'rigourous' methods of the time.
He also published a series of medical books, journals and case studies whilst still finding time to become a Provincial Grand Master in the freemasons and an author of collections of prose and poetry.
What an inspiring man and a fascinating piece of local history!

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