Francis Trevelyan Buckland (17 December 1826 – 19 December 1880), better known as Frank Buckland, was an English surgeon, zoologist, popular author and natural historian. He was born in a noted family of naturalists. After a brief career in medicine he took an interest in fishes and other matters. He was one of the key members and founders of the acclimatisation society in Britain, an organisation that supported the introduction of new plants and animals as food sources which was influenced by his interest in eating and tasting a range of exotic animal meats, a practice which he adopted from his father.
Life and career
left|thumb|Buckland family silhouette with Frank under the table
Frank was the first son of Canon William Buckland, a noted geologist and palaeontologist, and Mary, a fossil collector, palaeontologist and illustrator. Frank was born and brought up in Oxford, where his father was a Canon of Christ Church. His godfather was the sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey. Educated at home by his mother, he went, at eight and a half, to a boarding school in Cotterstock, Northamptonshire staying with his uncle John Buckland. From 1837 to 1839, he went to a preparatory school in Laleham, Surrey, run by his uncle, John Buckland, a brutal headmaster who flogged his pupils quite excessively. Relief came with a scholarship to Winchester College, a school with an unbroken history of six hundred years. Here he was taught by the Second Master, Charles Wordsworth, who sent letters of praise to his father. Winchester had a harsh regime, but was much preferable to his previous school. While at Winchester he continued to take an interest in animals, trapping rats and mice, dissecting and sometimes eating them. Students complained of a foul smell emanating from the remains of a cat under his bed. Towards the end of his schooling, he was dissecting human parts that he obtained from the hospital on the sly. He was known for his exploits with a lancet. One student with a dolichocephalous head heard Frank muttering "what wouldn't I give for that fellow's skull!" He was not a first-rate scholar, but managed to gain entrance to Christ Church, Oxford in October 1844, after failing to get a scholarship to the smaller Corpus Christi. He joined a debating club and the first essay he read was on "whether Rooks are beneficial to the farmer or not". He became a friend of the curator at Surrey Zoo and when he heard that a panther had died, he had it dug up and declared that the meat "was not very good". When the British Association met in 1847 at Oxford, Frank took along his pet bear Tigleth Pileser dressed in student attire of a cap and gown to the party. Charles Lyell wrote that Buckland introduced the bear formally to him and other zoologists present. This was not to go on for long as the Dean finally informed him that "either you or your bear must go". In 1845 Frank went to Giessen for three months to study chemistry under Justus von Liebig. In September 1846 he made a trip around Switzerland. Frank also attended some of the lectures of his father.
Buckland studied at Christ Church from 1844 to 1848, graduating at the second attempt. Passing out in May 1848 and at the advice of Richard Owen and Sir Benjamin Brodie, his father sent him to study surgery in London at St George's Hospital under Caesar Hawkins. He attended classes by Henry Gray where another classmate was Francis Day. A visit to Paris in 1849 gave him a chance of comparing their methods with those in London. In London most of the nurses were illiterate; one who claimed to read was tested with a label reading "This lotion to be applied externally only".
The nurse interpreted it as "Two spoonfuls to be taken four times a day".
Buckland was made a MRCS in 1851. He was appointed Assistant Surgeon (= house-surgeon) at St George's, 1852. A vivid word-portrait was written by a surgical colleague, Charles Lloyd: