Medical Career
He returned to England and went to Oxford University. Here he found that one of the professors in the medical faculty gave no lectures and the other did not reside there. He therefore began to give unauthorised lectures in anatomy and chemistry. This led to opposition from the professors who argued that his theological opinions were unsound. However his lectures were popular with the students and he was supported by eminent people including William Blackstone and Robert Lowth (who was later Bishop of London). In 1741 he was granted the degree of M.A. and was incorporated from Jesus College. He graduated B.M. in 1744, and M.D. in 1749. Also in 1749 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1754 was made Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
He built up a large practice in Oxford and became very wealthy. However, possibly because of ill health, or following the death of a woman he intended to marry, he returned to Runcorn. Here he built up a practice as large as his practice had been in Oxford. He died from a stroke in Runcorn in 1779 and was buried in the parish church there.
Politically he was a whig and theologically he was a follower of Bishop Hoadly. His Leiden thesis was on pneumonia. He published nothing during his lifetime but his brother Thomas, vicar of Runcorn, edited and published his The Rise of Mahomet, Accounted for on Natural and Civil Principles in 1796. Also after Nathan's death, in 1780, Thomas Alcock published his biography entitled Some Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Nathan Alcock.
Read more about this topic: Nathan Alcock
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