TOWNSEND, JOSEPH

(b. London, England, 4 April 1739; d. Pewsey, Wiltshire, England, 9 November 1816)

medicine, geology, economics

Townsend was the fourth son of Bridget Phipps Townsend and Chauncy Townsend, a linen merchant, mine inspector, and member of Parliament. He attended Clare Hall, Cambridge university, and received his B.A. in 1762 and his M.A. in 1765. In 1762–1763 Townsend studied medicine in Edinburgh, attending the classes of William Cullen in anatomy, Robert Whytt in physiology, and John Hope in botany.

While a student Townsend came under the influence of Calvinistic methodism and was ordained a minister in 1765. He was an unusually tall man and a powerful speaker, and for a number of years he traveled through England as an evangelical minister. The experience was unpleasant, and his enthusiasm gradually waned. Richard Graves satirized Townsend’s ministry in a novel, The Spiritual Quixote (1772). In 1773 he married Joyce Nankivell, by whom he had two daughters and four sons. She died in 1785 and in 1790 he married Lydia Hammond Clerke, widow of Sir John Clerke. She died in 1814.

Townsend traveled to France, Holland, and Flanders in 1770 as chaplain to the duke of Atholl. In 1786-1787 he traveled through Spain and wrote an important account of the Spanish economy, similar to those travel accounts Arthur Young was writing on Britian and France. Townsend’s Journey Through Spain (3 vols., 1791; 3rd ed. 1814) was popular enough to be translated into German (1792), Dutch (1792-1793), and French (1800).

In 1786 Townsend published an attack on British charity for being too indulgent to the poor, and in his Journey Through Spain he extended this attack to Spanish institutions. He argued that when the poor depended upon charity, the increase of their population would deplete the wealth of the country. Realizing that the populations of Spain had declined, he analyzed the causes. (The population of Spain had declined sharply in the seventeenth century, but at the time he was writing this, it was actually increasing rapidly.) His discussion contributed to the awareness of the importance of populations as an economic factor. Malthus claimed not to have known Townsend’s writings on population until after publishing the first edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), but he expressed an appreciation for Townsend’s writings in the second and subsequent editions of his Essay.

Townsend wrote two very popular manuals for the practice of medicine: The Physician’s Vade Mecum (1781; 10th ed., 1807) and Elements of Therapeutics, or a Guide to Health (1795; 3rd ed., 1801). The latter work contain the first English description of Antonio de Gimbernat’s operation for strangulated femoral hernia, and Townsend also published the first English description of pellagra (under the name of “mal de la rosa”) in his Journey (II , 10).

Townsend developed an early interest in geology and paleontology, perhaps because of his father’s influence. The Journey contains numerous geologic descriptions and speculations. He became friends with William smith, who in 1799 explained to him the method of correlating strata by the kinds of fossils in them. Townsend published one of the first and clearest accounts of Smith’s discovery in the first volume of The Character of Moses Established for Veracity as an Historian, Recording Events From the Creating to the Deluge (2 vols., 1813-1815). Townsend used Smith’s discovery to attack James Hutton’s assertion that there is no evidence concerning the origin of the earth. In spite of his doctrinaire stand, there is considerable merit to Townsend’s geological discussion. At the founding of the Geological Society of London in 1807, Townsend was elected an honorary member.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. For a list of Townsend’s writings, see the General Catalogue of Printed Books of the British Museum. This list does not include his now rare treatise On the Agency of Vital Air in the Cure of Various Diseases, With Cases 2nd ed. (London, 1824), later retitled Townsend on Vital Air, Being Numerous Cases Showing the Effect of Vital Air and Other Factitious Airs: As Judiciously Practiced by Dr. Thornton, 9th ed. (London, 1827); and as Townsend on Pneumatic Medicine, 10th ed. (London, 1830). The only known copies of the 2nd and 9th editions have been in private hands and are described briefly by A.D. Morris (see below).

II. Secondary Literature. The best account of Townsend’s life and career and of his medical contributions is by A. D. Morris, “The Reverend Joseph Townsend MA, MGS (1739-1816) Physician and Geologist–’Colossus of Roads,’“in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine62 (1969). 471-477.

For other biographical information and a discussion of Townsend’s geology, see A. G. Davis, “The Triumvirate: A Chapter in the Heroic Age of Geology,“in proceedings of the Croydon Natural History and Scientific Society, 11 (1943), 122-146. See also Charles Coulston Gillispie, Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1970-1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1951; New York, 1959), for a discussion of Townsend’s The Character of Moses. . . .

Townsend’s demographic ideas have been discussed by Kenneth Smith, The Malthusian Controversy(London, 1951) and by Ashley Montagu and Mark Neuman in an edition of Townsend’s A Dissertation on the Poor Laws by a Well-Wisher to Mankind (Berkeley, 1971). On Spain’s population at the time of Townsend’s visit, see Earl J. Hamilton, “The Decline of Spain,” in Economic History Review, 8 (1938), 168-179; Massimo Livi-Bacci, “Fertility and Population Growth in Spain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Daedalus, 97 (1968), 523-535; and Jorge Nadal, La Poblaction Española, Siglos XVI a XX (Barcelona, 1966). For a discussion of the Spanish economy, see Earl J. Hamilton, War and Prices in Spain, 1651-1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1947; New York, 1969).

Frank N. Egerton III