William Ranking’s father was a doctor at Hastings. He himself began his medical studies at the Webb Street School in London and continued them at St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge, where he took the degrees of M.B. in 1837 and M.D. in 1842. He visited Paris before settling, in 1840, in Bury St. Edmunds, where he became physician to the Suffolk General Hospital. After seven years, he moved to Norwich and was appointed to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. He was chiefly known to the profession for his editorship of the Half-Yearly Abstract of the Medical Sciences from 1845 to 1864 (in conjunction with C. B. Radcliffe after 1852) and as joint editor of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal from 1849 to 1852.

G H Brown

[Medical Circular, 1853, ii, 369; Gentleman's Magazine, Aug. 1867, iv (N.S.), 252]