Johnston, George (1814–89), obstetrician, was born 12 August 1814 in Dublin, third of seven sons and two daughters of Andrew Johnston, MD, army surgeon and PRCSI (1817), and Sophie Johnston (née Cheney). He entered TCD in 1830 (there is no record of graduation), was awarded MRCS (England) (1837), studied in Paris before graduating MD (1845) from Edinburgh University, and was awarded licentiate (1852) and licentiate in midwifery (1859) from the (R)K&QCP(I).
Appointed assistant master (1848–51) to the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, he published, jointly with Edward B. Sinclair (1824–82), Practical midwifery (1858), an account of 13,748 deliveries at the hospital during 1847–54. His appointment as master (1868–75) coincided with a period of high maternal mortality rates due to puerperal fever, and controversy stimulated by Evory Kennedy (qv), ex-master and governor. Realising that puerperal fever was a contagious disease, and noting that maternal mortality rates were higher in large maternity hospitals than in smaller ones, Kennedy proposed a radical restructuring of the hospital to lessen the likelihood of infection, including the building of small chalets for maternity patients, and isolation wards for patients suffering from puerperal fever. Johnston rejected the theory of the contagious nature of puerperal fever, and argued that high mortality rates were due to patients entering the hospital only after unsuccessful attempts had been made to deliver them, and that the ‘mental distress’ of mothers, often unmarried and spurned by their relatives, was an additional factor (Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, xlviii, no. 95 (Nov. 1869), 225–9). In 1869 he initiated a medical audit in which maternal mortalities rates were determined from the actual number of deliveries and deaths. In his annual Clinical reports he justified the status quo and argued that maternity hospitals prevented rather than caused puerperal mortality, which he believed arose within the patient's own home.
Physician to the Dublin General Dispensary between 1840 and 1850, he served as surgeon-superintendent to the emigration commissioners for the South Australian colonies, and was consulting physician to the Whitworth Hospital, Drumcondra, Dublin. Fellow (1863), vice-president, censor (1864–5), and examiner in midwifery (1866–8, 1870–71), he was elected president in 1880 of the (R)K&QCP(I); he was president of the Obstetrical Society of Dublin and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He contributed articles to the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science. A strong advocate of the use of forceps, he wrote a report of 752 cases of forceps delivery in hospital practice.
His grandfather William Johnston (1728–92) and uncles Francis Johnston (qv), founder of the RHA, and Richard Johnston (1759–1806), were all distinguished architects. Johnston continued in private practice from his home, 15 St Stephen's Green, North, Dublin, where he died 7 March 1889. He married (2 February 1843) Henrietta Williamson; they had four sons and two daughters.