Dennis Embleton was born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was educated at Whitton-le-Wear and then apprenticed to a Newcastle surgeon. He continued his medical studies at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospitals and qualified in 1834. For the next three years, he sojourned in the south of Europe, studying at Paris, Rome, Bologna and Pisa, and becoming a fluent speaker of French and Italian. He then settled at Newcastle and in 1839 became demonstrator of anatomy at the Newcastle School of Medicine, five years after its establishment. He went on to become a lecturer and registrar of the School and in 1852 reader in medicine at Durham University. From 1858 to 1872 he represented the University on the General Medical Council; during the last two years of this period he was joint professor of medicine. From 1853 till his death at the age of ninety, he was associated with the Newcastle Infirmary as physician and consulting physician. A brusque but kindly man, he had many hobbies, and he never allowed himself to be so immersed in practice as to be unable to enjoy them. He was well-known as an antiquary and one of the leaders and inspirers of the educational life of his native city. He kept open house, particularly for friends and visiting savants from France and Italy, and, although he outlived almost all the companions of his earlier years, he had the gift of attracting and interesting the younger generation of students and scholars that succeeded them. At his death, he was generally accepted as the "grand old man" of his profession in the North of England.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1900; B.M.J., 1900; Plarr, i, 376; G. G. Turner and W. O. Arnison, The Newcastle-upon-Tyne School of Medicine, 1834-1934, 1934, 184]