Thomas Bates (surgeon)

Thomas Bates ( † probably 1760) was an English physician.

Life

Little is known about Bates ' life. He served in 1709 as a naval surgeon in the Mediterranean. Later he worked as a physician of Queen Anne and George I, whose successor. In July 1714 rinderpest broke out on farms in the vicinity of London and Bates was asked to curb the epidemic. The initiated disease hygiene measures, culling of infected animals and then bury under a layer of quicklime, lime, proved to be effective quickly. In order to enforce such measures, Bates recommended compensation payments to affected cattle farmers who were to receive 40 shillings per Killed animal. Whether Bates was aware of the measures against rinderpest, carried out in Italy by Giovanni Maria Lancisi, but were not published until 1715 in De peste bovilla is unknown. How Lancisi presented Bates notes that the disease can also be transmitted indirectly not only from animal to animal, but.

1718 Bates was elected to the Royal Society.

The rinderpest broke out again in 1745 in England. Bates - now living in retirement and in Alton - referred to its original publication on the subject, how this attention was, is not known.

Writings

• Thomas Bates: A brief account of the contagious disease Which raged among the milch cowes near London, in the year 1714 And of the methods thatwere taken for Suppressing it. . In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 1718, 30: 872-885.