John Cheyne

For centuries there have been strong medical links between Scotland and Ireland. In the last quarter of the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th, there were more Irish than Scots graduates from the Medical Schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Most returned to practice in Ireland including such famous names as Colles, Stokes and Corrigan. No less important was John Cheyne, the son of a surgeon in Leith who was the fourth generation of the Cheyne family to practise Surgery there. He moved to Dublin where he found fame as a physician, becoming Professor of Medicine and Physician General to the forces in Ireland. Many regard him as the father of Irish medicine, whose name lives on eponymously in “Cheyne-Stokes” respiration.

Born in Leith, John Cheyne was the son of a surgeon who had succeeded his uncle in the Leith surgical practice. He in turn, had succeeded his uncle. John Cheyne junior was, therefore, the fourth generation to join the practice and all were Fellows of the College.

(John Cheyne senior (roll no 248); his uncle, John Cheyne (roll no: 235); and his uncle, John Cheyne (roll no: 123).)

Whilst still a schoolboy at the Royal High School he began at the age of 13 to assist his father in dressing and bleeding patients. When he began to attend medical lectures aged only 16 he found that he was as knowledgable as most of them. He enrolled for formal study graduating at the age of 18 in 1795. The day after graduation he joined the Royal artillery as assistant surgeon in Woolwich, seeing service in England and Ireland. His initial army career was marked by the pursuit of pleasurable activities “ much of his time being spent in shooting, playing billiards reading, and in the complete dissipation of time.” In 1799 he returned to Leith where he was appointed to the charge of the Ordinance Hospital in Leith Fort and was able to act as an assistant to his father. This was to be a turning point in his career as a result of his meeting Dr (later Sir) Charles Bell (qv) who stimulated his interest in pathology and in medicine. He wrote “Esays on Diseases of Children in 1801 and an important monograph on the pathology of the larynx and bronchi in 1809. His was reckoned to be the first description of acute hydrocephalus. Cheyne became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh in 1810 and in 1811 he moved to Dublin where he became Physician to Meath Hospital.

He was a keen observer of clinical problems and a prolific writer, particularly about diseases of children, acute illnesses and epidemics. Able to draw of the extensive case documentations of his father and great uncles, he made important contributions to the understanding of croup and tracheitis. He wrote about hydrocephalus and his monograph on apoplexy contained what is regarded as the first illustrated case of sub arachnoid haemorrhage. Within two years of arriving in Dublin he was appointed Professor of Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

His association with military surgery continued throughout his life and his lectures on the topic were immensely popular. In 1820 he was appointed Physician-General in Ireland, then regarded as the highest medical rank in the country. Ill health forced him to rtire early to England.

John Cheyne died and was buried in Sherington, Buckinghamshire in 1836. Ten years later William Stokes in describing a pattern of respiration seen in the terminally ill, recognised its original description by Cheyne and the eponym “Cheyne-Stokes Respiration” was coined and remains in everyday use.