· Born 1811 North Tawton, Devon
· Father: retired naval surgeon, general practitioner, North Tawton
· Faculté de Médicine de Paris, 1828-29, 1833-34 and 1836-37
· Edinburgh University, 1837-38, gold medallist
· Moved to Bristol 1841
· Lecturer to Bristol Medical School, 1842-55
· Physician to St Peter's Hospital, 1843-47
· Physician to Bristol Royal Infirmary 1847-62
· Malignant cholera: its mode of propagation and its prevention, 1849
· Director of Bristol Water Co., c. 1850
· Medical Reading Society, 1855-69
· Describes the contagious nature and prevention of Diphtheria, 1861; Anthrax, 1862;     
  Tuberculosis
* , 1867: Scarlet Fever, 1869; also studied cattle plague and sheep smallpox
  Gave evidence to the Sanitary Commission,  advocating a Public Health Service, 1871  

· Elected FRS, 1871
· Typhoid fever: its nature, mode of spread and prevention, 1873
· Died 1880, hemiplegic for his last six years

The William Budd Health Centre in Bristol, one of the first to be provided under the National Health Service Act, 1946, was opened officially on September 16, 1952, by the Minister of Health, Mr. lain Macleod. There is a Blue Plaque in his memory at 89 Park St. and a ward has been named after him at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and another at Royal United Hospitals, Bath .
 

* even in his home city of Bristol Budd’s ideas were not universally accepted. In 1883 two members of the Medical Reading Society wrote articles in the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Journal about Budd’s views on tuberculosis – Shingleton Smith supporting them, and Markham Skerritt concluding that ‘clinical experience is strongly opposed to the theory that phthisis is a contagious disease’.

 

See also Michael Dunnill. Dr William Budd. Bristol: Redcliffe Press, 2006. which is an excellent biography and thoroughly recommended ,

MRS homepage

 
William Budd, 44th member of the Medical Reading Society (1855-1869)