John Kidd, M.D., was born in 1776, and when thirteen years of age was admitted at St. Peter’s, Westminster. He was elected to Christ church, Oxford, in 1793, at the golden election, so called from the superior abilities and desire of distinction of the three then elected. Each of them chose a different profession. John Kidd, medicine; William Come, the church; and Joseph Phillimore, the civil law. Dr. Kidd proceeded A.B. 4th May, 1797; A.M. 14th January, 1800; M.B. 23rd April, 1801; and M.D. 20th January, 1804. He was appointed chemical lecturer at Oxford in 1801, Aldrich’s professor of chemistry 1803, reader in anatomy on Dr. Lee’s foundation in 1816, and Regius professor of physic in 1822, when he resigned the Aldrichian professorship.
He was appointed Radcliffe librarian in 1834. He was, too, physician to the Radcliffe infirmary from 1808 to 1826. He was selected to write one of the Bridgewater treatises, and his Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man, 8vo. Lond. 1833, will bear comparison with any others of the series. Dr. Kidd was admitted a Candidate of the College of Physicians 31st March, 1817, a Fellow 16th March, 1818, and he delivered the Harveian oration in 1836. He died at his residence, St. Giles’s, Oxford, on the 17th September, 1851, aged seventy-six.
Dr. Kidd was the author of—
The Outlines of Mineralogy. 2 vols. 8vo. 1820.
A Geological Essay on the Imperfect Evidence in Support of a Theory of the Earth, deducible either from its General Structure or from the Changes produced on its Surface by the operation of Existing Causes. 8vo. 1815.
An Answer to a Charge against the English Universities in the Supplement to the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. 8vo. 1818.
An Introductory Lecture to a Course on Comparative Anatomy illustrative of Paley’s Natural Theology. 8vo. 1824.
The Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man, principally with reference to the Supply of his Wants and the exercise of his Intellectual Faculties. 8vo. Lond. 1833, being the second of the Bridgewater Treatises.
Observations on Medical Reform. 8vo. 1841.
Further Observations on Medical Reform. 8vo. 1842.(1)
William Munk
[(1) Alumni Westmonasterienses, p.437.]