Author: Palin, Ralph
Biography:
PALIN, Ralph (1776-1828: ancestry.com)
He was baptised on 15 Sept. 1776 at St. James, Audley, Staffordshire, the son of Elizabeth and Ralph Palin. Nothing is known of his education but he had some medical training, perhaps as an apprentice to a physician or apothecary, and secured a position as ship’s surgeon in 1801 on HMS Généreux, captured from the French in 1800. He had gained the qualification of MD by 1822 and was presumably specializing in gynecology when he published a rambling generalized account of the influence of climate and social factors on upper-class women, Observations on the Influence of Habits and Manners [etc.]. A medical review at the time complained about his obscure metaphysical style and hinted that he might have acquired it in practice on the Continent. Wallis records the MD but provides no details of the source of his qualifications or place of practice. His only known publication in verse, Iphotelle, or, The Longing-Fit (1810), inspired by Pope’s Rape of the Lock, debunks some of the folk wisdom associated with pregnancy, such as cravings for unusual foods and the idea that the foetus could be directly affected by the mother’s imagination. Reviewers were cool: they noted the similarity to Pope’s work but pointed out that the author lacked Pope’s gifts in versification. Palin seems not to have married. He died in his home county and was buried at St. Giles, Haughton, Staffordshire, on 22 Apr. 1828. (ancestry.com 8 Aug. 2023; findmypast.com 8 Aug. 2023; MR 66 [1811] 109; BC 37-8 [1811], 407-8; London Medical and Physical Journal 47 [1822], 315-24; Peter John Wallis, Eighteenth-Century Medics [2nd edn. 1988])