Caleb Hillier Parry

Dr. Caleb Hillier Parry, 1755-1822, is remembered as a distinguished Bath physician, original describer of several syndromes, geologist and eminent agriculturalist, creator of the Parry Library, and close friend and collaborator of Edward Jenner. Scion of a landed family in Pembrokeshire, Parry began his education at a private school in Cirencester, where he first met his lifelong friend, Edward Jenner. After three years at the Dissenters' Academy in Warrington, he became in 1773 a medical student at Edinburgh under William Cullen, moving two years later to London as a house-pupil of Dr. Thomas Denman. Returning to Edinburgh, Parry then graduated in 1778 with an inaugural dissertation on rabies. Before this, he was elected President of the Medical Society of Edinburgh, and helped to gain the Society its Royal Charter, a unique distinction. Admitted a licentiate of the Royal Society of Medicine in September, Parry married Miss Rigby, a noted beauty, in October. In 1779 the couple settled in 13 Catherine Place, Bath. Success did not come immediately, and in 1781 Parry published 'Proposals for a history of the fossils of Gloucestershire', of which he left a collection of 20,000 items. A substantial MS existed, but remained unpublished. In 1785 he advised Jenner how to fly a hydrogen balloon at Berkeley Castle, only two years after Montgolfier's first flight. Parry soon became Physician to the Puerperal Charity, in 1782 Governor and Physician to the Bath General Hospital, later known as the Royal Mineral Water Hospital, and in 1789 the first Physician to the Casualty Hospital, which later merged with Bath City Infirmary to form the United Hospital, of which his son became first Physician. From 1788 to 1793 Parry was an enthusiastic member of the Gloucestershire Medical Society, consisting of Parry, Jenner and three old friends, which met three times a year at the Fleece Inn