Benjamin Gooch, eighteenth-century Norfolk surgeon.

BENJAMIN GOOCH, a Norfolk surgeon of the eighteenth century,1 earned a place for his name in surgical history as the innovator of Gooch's splint2 but this was not his only claim to distinction. He was the leading East Anglian surgeon of his day and an outstanding provincial surgeon of the eighteenth century. In 1758 he published the first of three editions of a textbook of surgery and he played a prominent role in the foundation of the first general hospital in Norfolk, the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. The foundation stone of this hospital was laid in 1771, and the two hundredth anniversary of the event is deemed an appropriate occasion to publish an account of Gooch's life and work.