William Heberden.

Abstract

The son of an innkeeper, William Heberden was educated at a charitable parish school in south London, where the emphasis was firmly on the classics. It was an interest he maintained for his entire life. In his 1782 preface to Commentaries on the History and Cure of Diseases, which he wrote in Latin, Heberden reached back to ancient Rome. “Plutarch says that the life of a vestal virgin was divided into three portions; in the first of which she learned the duties of her profession, in the second she practiced them, and in the third she taught them to others”, he noted. “This is no bad model for the life of a physician: and, as I have now passed through the two first of these times, I am willing to employ the remainder of my days in teaching.”