Thomas Glass (physician)
Thomas Glass (1709–1786) was an English physician and medical writer. Life Thomas Glass was born on 14 May 1709 in Tiverton, Devonshire, second of the nine children of Michael Glass, dyer, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Handford. He was schooled initially at Tiverton by the clergyman John Moore, and afterwards at Exeter by André de Majendie, an émigré Huguenot pastor. He was entered as a medical student at Leyden on 29 October 1728, and graduated MD in July 1731. On 10 February 1737 he married Mary (1715–1783), daughter of Sir Nathaniel Hodges, who died before him. They had four daughters: Mary (Mrs. Parminter), who predeceased her father, Elizabeth, Ann (Mrs. Lowder), and Melina or Melony (Mrs. Daniell). The Glasses lived first at Tiverton Castle, then moved in 1740 to Exeter, leasing part of Bedford House; in 1773 they moved to Bartholomew Yard, Exeter. Glass first practised medicine at Tiverton, and after moving to Exeter, he became a physician of the Devon and Exeter Hospital on its foundation and practised with great success there. To his brother Samuel Glass, a surgeon at Oxford, he imparted a process of preparing magnesia alba, an absorbent antacid and mild purgative which was