Thomas Kirkland

Thomas Kirkland M.D. (1721–1798) was an English physician and medical writer.

Life Kirkland was born at Ashbourne, Derbyshire, the son of Thomas Kirkland, an attorney, and his father's second wife, Mary Allsop. After a grammar school education he was apprenticed to a surgeon in Loughborough. He studied under Thomas Lawrence in London.

Kirkland became a surgeon at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire. In January 1760 he became involved in the murder case around Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers: he was called in to attend the steward of Lord Ferrers after he had been shot by his master. Kirkland, detained to dinner with the disturbed Earl, left the house covertly, brought a magistrate with armed men, and removed the wounded steward, Johnson, who soon died. He was a witness at the trial.

By 1774 Kirkland had graduated M.D. at Edinburgh. He subsequently became a member of the Royal Medical Societies of Edinburgh and London. He died at Ashby-de-la-Zouch on 17 January 1798. An Essay on the Inseparability of the different Branches of Medicine, (London, 1783). An Account of the Distemper Among the Horned Cattle: At Caulk in Derbyshire, in 1783. And of the Remedies Recommended, for the Cure, with Observations (1783) An Inquiry into the Present State of Medical Surgery, 2 vols., London, 1783-6. With Appendix, edited by his son, James Kirkland, surgeon to the Tower of London, 1813. A Commentary on Apoplectic and Paralytic Affections, and the Diseases connected with the Subject, London, 1792. Observations on the Use and Abuse of Mercury as a Cure for Syphilis, as a letter to Samuel Foart Simmons.