Gustavus Hume

Gustavus Hume (1730 – 7 February 1812) was the president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in the first part of 1795. He specialised in the diseases of children. He was one of the surgeons who examined the body of the journalist William Jackson after he died from poisoning in a Dublin court in 1795 while awaiting sentencing for high treason.

Early life and family Gustavus Hume was born in 1730 to a family of Scottish origin, some of whom settled in Ireland in the seventeenth century. His father was Robert, and his grandfather was Thomas Hume, of Humewood, County Wicklow, who was an ancestor of the Irish Conservative politician William Wentworth Fitzwilliam Hume-Dick. and his great grandson was Lieutenant Colonel Sir Gustavus Hume

Career

It is not known to which physician Hume was apprenticed. In 1758, he was living in Longford Street, Dublin, when he was appointed surgeon to the Mercer's Hospital. He developed a successful practice and specialised in the diseases of children. He liked to prescribe oatmeal porridge and as a result received the nickname "Stirabout Gusty" which was referred to in William Norcott's The Metropolis as follows:

Hume was an early member of the Board of Examiners for Surgeons to County Infirmaries. He did not join the Dublin Society of Surgeons, but was one of the censors named in the first charter of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland.

Together with Dr Adrien, Hume examined the body of the journalist William Jackson in the dock of the King's Bench, Christ Church, on May Day 1795, after Jackson died from poisoning while awaiting sentencing for high treason. Vice President Clement Archer was elected in Hume's place.

He built a mansion in Merrion Square to a design by Samuel Sproule, which was later divided into two large houses, in one of which Sir John Banks, physician to Queen Victoria, lived. In 1775, John Gilborne wrote of Hume: