Francis E. Anstie

English doctor, medical author, and journalist

Francis Edmund Anstie (11 December 1833 – 12 September 1874) was an English doctor, medical author and journalist. He was the first editor of medical journal The Practitioner, established in 1868. He is notable for proposing Anstie's limit, an amount of alcohol that could be consumed daily with no ill effects.

Anstie was born at Devizes, Wiltshire on 11 December 1833, the son of Paul Anstie, a manufacturer belonging to a family long notable for their attachment to liberal principles. He was educated at a private school till the age of sixteen, when he was apprenticed to his cousin, Thomas Anstie, a medical practitioner, with whom he remained three years. In 1853 he entered the medical department of King's College London, where his teachers were Sir William Fergusson, and especially Dr. R. B. Todd, whose doctrines and practice produced a permanent impression upon Anstie's mind. He became M. R. C. S. and L. S. A. in 1856, was M. B. London in 1857, MD 1859. He was admitted a member of the College of Physicians in 1859, fellow 1865. In 1860 he was elected assistant physician to the Westminster Hospital, but did not become full physician till 1873. He was lecturer at that school, first on forensic medicine, afterwards for many years on materia medica, and for a short time on medicine. In 1862 Anstie married a daughter of Mr. Wass of Cromford, Derbyshire, whom he left a widow with a son and two daughters. On his first entrance into professional life Anstie was occupied in administering chloroform for the operations of Sir William Fergusson; but he soon went into practice as a physician, and became very fully occupied in hospital work and in journalism, being for some years a member of the editorial staff of The Lancet; while in the last few years of his life he was beginning to get a good consulting practice. Dr. Anstie's life was cut short by an illness contracted in the course of a sanitary inspection. Some strange cases of fatal disease having occurred in the schools of the Patriotic Fund at Wandsworth, Anstie was called in to make an inspection of the buildings and investigate the causes of the epidemic. In making a post mortem examination he received a slight wound, from the effects of which he died on 12 September 1874. equivalent to two and one half US standard drinks.

At the time of his death Anstie's reputation was rapidly growing, and was as great in the United States of America as it was at home. Offers were made to induce him to accept a professorship and hospital appointment in that country, but family reasons, among others, induced him to decline. In 1874 he took part in the foundation of the Medical School for Women, and acted with great energy as the first dean of the school.

Besides the works mentioned above, he wrote a very large number of papers and articles, some signed, some anonymous. Among the former were:
Anstie, Francis E. Is it food, medicine, or poison. Cornhill Magazine, 1862, 5, 707–716. Anstie, Francis E. Does alcohol act as a food? Cornhill Magazine. 1862, 6, 319–329. Notes on Epidemics, for the use of the Public, 1866. Several medical papers in the Practitioner. Articles in Reynolds's System of Medicine, vol. ii. 1868: Alcoholism, Neuralgia, and Hypochondriasis — the latter jointly with Sir William Gull
Reynolds's System of Medicine, vol. iii. 1871: Pleurisy, Pleurodynia, Hydrothorax, Pneumothorax, and Hepatalgia. On the Hereditary Connection between certain Nervous Diseases (Journal of Mental Science, Jan. 1872). Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System (The Lancet, 1872–73).