Charles Bernard (baptised 1652 – 1710) was an English surgeon, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and master of the Barber Surgeons' Company in 1703.[1]
He was born at Waddon in Surrey, the son of Samuel Bernard, formerly vicar of Croydon, and his wife, Elizabeth; the physician Francis Bernard was his brother. In 1670 he was apprenticed to the surgeon Henry Boone.[2] [3]
Bernard, a Tory and High Churchman, was elected surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1686, by special command of the king.[2] He was elected to the Royal Society in 1696.[4] He was the chief surgical practitioner in London of his time, noted for saving the leg of a young Benjamin Hoadly, later to become Bishop of Winchester, from amputation. He became sergeant-surgeon to Queen Anne in the first year of her reign.[2]
Bernard died at Longleat on 9 October 1710, where he was treating Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth. He was a bibliophile, and his library was auctioned on 22 March 1711.[1]
Bernard in 1679 married Susanna Gardner, and they had a son and three daughters. Of the daughters, Elizabeth married Ambrose Dickins, apprentice to Bernard who became a physician and FRS, and another married William Wagstaffe.[1]
The first of a series of Charles Bernard Lectures, funded by the Barbers' Company, was given by Rodney Hemingfield Taylor (1942–2017) in 2001.[5] [6]