John Mudge was born in 1721, and was the fourth son of Zachariah Mudge, who was the first headmaster of Bideford Grammar School. He was the second son to have been born in Bideford, and the third son to have been educated at Bideford Grammar School under the tutelage of his father. However, whilst there, his father took up an ecclesiastical post in Plymouth, and he finished his education at Plympton Grammar School.
He studied medicine at Plymouth, and afterwards developed a large practice there, helped by his family connexions, his skill and his affable manner. In 1777, he published a dissertation on smallpox, and how it could be prevented by inoculation, and the paper showed a considerable advance in knowledge and understanding than anything that had been written before.
In May of that year, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
In his spare time, he set about building telescopes, and in that same year, 1777, he was awarded the Copley Medal for his ‘Directions for Making the Metals for Reflecting Telescopes’, on which he gave a talk to the Society, and in which he brought the science of making telescopes to a new level.
Anyone acquainted with the Copley Medal will know that it is the Society’s highest award, is not awarded lightly, and is not given at all in years when no-one is thought worthy of it. After winning the award he continued to build even larger telescopes, two with magnifications of two hundred times. Both are now in private hands.
At around this time, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine by King’s College, Aberdeen.
A year later, in 1778, he published a book entitled ‘A Radical and Expeditious Cure for recent Catarrhous Coughs’, with a drawing of a remedial inhaler. He patented it, and it was found to be very effective. It looked like a beer tankard, with a flexible nozzle in the top, through which alternate breaths of steam and cold air could be taken. It proved to be very popular, and became known as the Mudge Inhaler. Herbs and other medicines such as opium could be added to the water. When news of surgical anaesthesia came from America, it was the natural choice for the administration of ether. It was used well into the twentieth century, when more sophisticated treatment became available.
At this time, a little coterie of well-known people was beginning to form in Plymouth, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, the artist and co-founder of the Royal Academy, whose 250th anniversary we are celebrating this year, who was himself a Plymothian, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who liked to visit Sir Joshua, Zachariah Mudge himself, now his son, John, and John Smeaton, the engineer, who was at this time building the first Eddystone Lighthouse in Plymouth Sound.
When the lighthouse was finally completed, it is said that he and Zachariah Mudge went to the top of the lighthouse, singing hymns and praising God, but then Smeaton reminded his friend that a lighthouse was to be measured by how it stood up to stormy weather, not calm, and it therefore remained to be seen how sturdy a structure it was. He mentioned that he needed a local man to go out in a storm to see how the lighthouse fared, and of course John Mudge volunteered without hesitation.
His opportunity came in 1762, when a great storm hit Plymouth, causing £80,000 worth of damage to Plymouth and the Sound, but John reported that so little damage had been done to the lighthouse that all the repairs could be done with a pot of putty.
John Mudge was busy on the domestic front as well. He married three times, and had twenty children His affability obviously extended to his wives as well as his patients.
He died 26 March 1793, aged 71,and is buried near to his father in St. Andrew’s Church, Plymouth, where a memorial bust was erected, honouring him, soon after his death.
Samuel Johnson said of him to a patient, that if his medicine didn’t cure her, his conversation would,.
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