William Cadogan

Biographical Timeline

• 1711 – Born in Usk or Cowbridge, Glamorganshire. Third son of Roger of Usk and Jane Thomas of Trer-groes
• 1727–1731 – Matriculated as a Servitor at Oriel College, Oxford aged 16. Graduated BA (June 18)
• 1732–1737 – Studied ‘physic’ at Leyden University. MD with thesis De Nutritione, Incremento et Decremento Corporis (Gulielmus Cadogan, 1737)
• 1737–1746 – Served as a physician to the army, possibly with overseas experience
• 1747 – Married Frances Cochran, daughter of Archibald Cochran, an Antiguan plantation owner. Their daughter Frances (born May 21). Elected one of the four consultant physicians to the newly founded Bristol Infirmary on December 15.
• 1748 – Cadogan wrote a letter to one of the Governors of the Foundling Hospital in London, which was later published as An Essay upon Nursing and the Management of Children.
• 1749 – Became Governor of the London Foundling Hospital
• 1752 – Resigned from Bristol Infirmary; moved to Hanover Square, London. Elected Fellow of the Royal Society
• 1754 – Appointed Physician to the Foundling Hospital.
• 1755 – Returned to Oxford to receive the degrees of MA, MB, and B&D. Med by royal mandate
• 1758 – Elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Served multiple terms as Censor and later delivered the Harveian Oration (1764, 1792)
• 1762 – Served as Army Physician in Lisbon but returned after illness (gout) .
• 1771 – Published A Dissertation on the Gout, widely read and went through ten editions in two years. Controversial text arguing gout stemmed from indolence and intemperance rather than hereditary causes. Multiple editions of the gout treatise appeared; attracted criticism and satire.
• 1792 – Delivered his second Harveian Oration.
• 1797 – Died in February 26, London, buried in Fulham churchyard, aged 86.

---

Key Medical Contributions

Nursing and the Management of Children (1748)

In 1748, Cadogan published An Essay upon Nursing and the Management of Children, from their Birth to Three Years of Age in which he dismantled centuries of harmful customs and urged rational infant care. It was published anonymously under the auspices of the London Foundling Hospital in 1748, and quickly recognised as revolutionary.

It quickly became the textbook for child-rearing and one of the earliest rational, guides to infant care. His central claim was that the majority of infant deaths were not natural, but the result of misguided nursing customs and indulgent practices. He urged plain living, fresh air, breastfeeding, loose clothing, and minimal interference.

…the treatment of children in general is wrong, unreasonable, and unnatural … let anyone, who would be fully convinced of this matter, look over the Bills of Mortality; there he may observe that almost half the number of those who fill up that black list, die under five years of age

Ought it not therefore to be the care of every nurse and every parent, not only to protect their nurselings from injury, but to be well assured that their own officious services be not the greatest the helpless creatures can suffer

Clothing and warmth – He denounced the practice of swaddling and binding infants:

The first great Mistake is that they think a new-born Infant cannot be kept too warm: from this Prejudice they load it and bind it with Flannels, Wrappers, Swathes, Stays…as if Nature…had produced her chief Work, a human Creature, so carelessly unfinished as to want those idle Aids.

The mother who has only a few rags to cover her child loosely, and little more than her own breast to feed it, sees it healthy and strong, and very soon able to shift for itself; while the puny infant, the heir and hope of a rich family, lies languishing under a load of finery that overpowers his limbs, abhorring and rejecting the dainties he is crammed with, till he dies a victim to the mistaken care and tenderness of his fond mother

Feeding – He rejected pap, sugar, and butter as first foods, insisting that newborns go straight to the mother’s breast:

The constant Practice is as soon as a Child is born to cram a Dab of Butter and Sugar down its throat…So that they set out wrong and the Child stands a fair Chance of being made sick from the first Hour.

Diet – At three months, he recommended bread, broth, and milk—not boiled, not spiced:

One half of Infants Diet be thin light Broths… The other Part…Bread and Water boil’d almost dry and then mix’d with fresh Milk not boiled…This, without Sugar, Spice, or any other pretended Amendment whatever, will be perfectly light and wholesome.

Exercise and exposure – He urged mothers to let babies be active and outdoors:

The child is to be kept clean and sweet, tumbled and toss’d about a good deal, and carried out every Day in all Weathers.

Maternal care – He railed against wet-nursing and sending infants away:

I am quite at a loss to account for the general Practice of sending Infants out of Doors to be suckled or dry-nursed by another Woman…The ancient Custom of exposing them to wild Beasts or drowning them would certainly be a much quicker and more humane way of despatching them.

When was there a Lamb, a Bird, or a Tree that died because it was young? These are under the immediate Nursing of unerring Nature, and they thrive accordingly.

The essay passed through at least ten English editions and was translated into French (1752, 1768), shaping childcare across Europe. By linking infant mortality to misguided traditions, Cadogan established principles of maternal feeding, fresh air, hygiene, and rational diet that underpin modern paediatrics.

---

Cadogan and Gout (1771)

In 1771, Cadogan published his bold Dissertation on the Gout and All Chronic Diseases. He rejected the prevailing view of gout as hereditary, periodic, and incurable, instead claiming it was self-inflicted through lifestyle.

He reduced chronic disease to three causes: indolence, intemperance, and vexation, with gout serving as their prototype. Cadogan rejected purging, bleeding, and complex prescriptions arguing that regimen, moderation, and activity, not medicine, could cure or prevent the disease. His tone was combative as he accused his peers of being ‘ignorant but enterprising and influential quacks’ protecting their incomes by keeping patients dependent on drugs…

Gout is the offspring of luxury and ease; of intemperance and indolence…Gout is a disease that may be cured… by a regular course of living. I shall prescribe no medicine, physicians have not the power of curing chronic diseases…Physic hath been more hurtful than beneficial to mankind

Cadogan, 1771

The work provoked intense debate. Many physicians attacked Cadogan’s sweeping claims and his dismissal of medical authority including William Falconer, William Carter, Daniel Smith and John Shebbeare:

Burn the books of Hippocrates, Galen, Celsus, Sydenham, Musgrove, Boerhaave, Hoffman and all other rubbish of Greek, Latin, Arabic and modern physicians…Yes, my good readers, hang Wintringham, hang Heberden, hang Adington but for honest Will. Cadogan, real Will Cadogan, liberal Will. Cadogan, rational Will. Cadogan, hang him not; save honest Will. and hang all the rest

Shebbeare, 1772

Perhaps the most memorable response came from the pen of Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger, who published the satire The Doctor Dissected; or, Willy Cadogan in the Kitchen (1771). Here, she ridiculed Cadogan’s lofty rhetoric and his dietetic prescriptions by transplanting them into the world of kitchen servants and pie-crusts.

Beware of pretenders to physical mystery
Nor let ’em phlebotomize, sweat or e’en blister ye
Avoid like a pestilence ignorant quacks
From those in gilt chariots-to plain simple hacks
Disciples ofGalen all shut up your shops,
No need have we now of your balsam or drops;
Dear volatiles, cordials and braces adieu!
Ye all must give place to a system quite new.

Coppinger, 1771

Samuel Johnson’s considered opinion of the Dissertation was that it was ‘a good book in general but a foolish one in particular‘. It was foolish in that it did not consider gout hereditary, but good in that it recommended temperance, exercise, and cheerfulness. 

The controversy lingered. As late as 1827, Cadogan was still caricatured for denouncing pastry while helping himself to pigeon pie at a college dinner and is reported to have addressed a fellow physician thus:

Pray doctor, is that pigeon-pie near you?’ ‘Yes, Sir.’ ‘Then I’ll thank you to send the hind quarters of two pigeons, some fat of the beef steak, a good portion of the pudding-crust and as much gravy as you can spare!’

Dr. Cadogan thought it right to try all things, and considered it his duty to speak experimentally on both sides of the question, to qualify himself to say, in the language of Dido, ‘Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.‘

Nugae Chirurgicae, 1827

By the 20th century, medical historians like John Ruhräh revisited the debate, noting how Cadogan’s essay, though extreme, foreshadowed modern lifestyle medicine.

---

Conviction of truth

Thus I have endeavored to set forth the real causes of chronic diseases in general and the true principles of convalescence, health and longevity. If I have hazarded anything new, or contrary to received opinions, it has been from a thorough conviction of it’s truth, however dangerous to fame and fortune; both which I know are more easily acquired by complying with the world, than attempting to reform it: but it must be somebody equally indifferent to both, as I am, who will venture to tell such truths as are more likely to recoil and hurt the author, than to convince and conciliate the bulk of mankind.

William Cadogan 1772: 100

---

Major Publications

• Cadogan W. An essay upon nursing and the management of children, from their birth to three years of age. 1748
• Cadogan W. Oratio anniversaria in theatro Collegii Regalis Medicorum Londinensium ex Harvaei instituto habita die xviii Octobris, 1764
• Cadogan W. Some of the causes that occasion the mortality of children under two years of age. In answer to queries in the public press concerning the cause of the great mortality of infants in this metropolis under that age. The Gentleman’s magazine 1765; 35: 547-548
• Cadogan W. A dissertation on the gout, and all chronic diseases, jointly considered, as proceeding from the same causes. 1771

---

References

Biography

• William Cadogan MD. The Gentleman’s magazine 1797; 67(1): 352
• Smith GM. Dr William Cadogan. In: A history of the Bristol Royal Infirmary 1917: 68-69
• Still GF. William Cadogan. In: The history of paediatrics. 1931: 379-383
• Rendle-Short J. Infant management in the 18th century with special reference to the work of William Cadogan. Bull Hist Med. 1960 Mar-Apr;34:97-122.
• Rendle-Short J. William Cadogan, eighteenth-century physician. Med Hist. 1960 Oct;4(4):288-309.
• William Cadogan (1711-1797). JAMA 1963; 185(10): 780-781.
• Rendle-Short M, Rendle-Short J. The Father of Child Care—Life of William Cadogan (1711–1797). 1966
• Dunn PM. Dr. William Cadogan of Bristol (1711-1797): Father of infant care in Britain, WEMJ 2013: 112(3-2)
• William Cadogan. Inspiring Physicians, Royal College of Physicians

Eponymous terms

• Coppinger AM de Burgh. The doctor dissected: or, Willy Cadogan in the kitchen. Addressed to all invalids, and readers of a late dissertation on the gout. 1771
• Shebbeare J. A candid enquiry into the merits of Doctor Cadogan’s dissertation on the gout. 1772
• Falconer W. Observations on Dr. Cadogan’s dissertation on the gout and all chronic diseases. 1772
• Carter W. A free and candid examination of Dr. Cadogan’s Dissertation on the gout, and chronic diseases. 1772
• Smith D. A letter to Dr. Cadogan : with remarks on the most interesting paragraphs in his treatise on the gout. 1772
• Cadogan. In : Nugae Chirurgicae. Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts 1827; July-December: 344
• Ruhräh J. William Cadogan [His essay on gout]. 1925
• Dunn PM. Dr William Cadogan (1711-1797) of Bristol and the management of infants. Arch Dis Child. 1992 Jan;67(1 Spec No):72-3. 
• Dunn PM. Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) and the value of breast milk. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2001 Jul;85(1):F73-4.