Wallace, William (1791–1837), surgeon, dermatologist, and venereologist, was born in Downpatrick, Co. Down, son of a solicitor. He is arguably the leading figure in the history of dermatology in Ireland. Apprenticed (1808) to Charles Bowden, a Dublin surgeon, he transferred after his master's death (1810) to Charles Hawkes Todd (qv), who was on the staffs of the Richmond and the Lock Hospitals, where his apprentices saw the manifestations of syphilis and other venereal infections in abundance. He acted as house-surgeon at both hospitals, becoming dedicated to dermatology. He took the letters testimonial of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on 13 June 1813, proceeding MRCSI (equivalent to the later FRCSI) two years later. In London he was a pupil of Thomas Bateman (1778–1821), an established dermatologist, and clinical clerk to Dr Laird at Guy's Hospital. He spent some time, too, with Sir Astley Cooper and John Abernethy (1764–1831). Wallace returned to Dublin in 1817, and in the following year opened the Dublin Infirmary for Diseases of the Skin at 20 Moore St. He advocated potassium iodide as useful therapy for syphilitic lesions. Appointed surgeon to the Charitable Infirmary in Jervis St. (1819), he does not seem to have been an easy colleague. His row with the surgeon James O'Beirne was reported by the medical board to the management committee; both surgeons were admonished for unprofessional behaviour. It appears that in O'Beirne's absence one of his postoperative cases had died, and the surgeon attributed the death to neglect on the part of his junior, who in turn maintained that the operation should never have been performed. Their altercation took place in public, and in the presence of patients. In March 1824 Wallace reported the apothecary and the housekeeper to the Charitable Infirmary's board of management because there was no lint or tow. He complained, too, of the lack of leeches and the dirtiness of the beds and wards.
Wallace's numerous publications include Observations on sulphurious fumigations as a remedy in rheumatism and diseases of the skin (1820), An account of the apparatus for the treatment of diseases of the skin (1825), and A treatise on the venereal disease and its varieties (1833). His ‘Lectures on cutaneous and venereal diseases’, delivered at Jervis Street Hospital and at the Infirmary for Skin Diseases, were carried by the Lancet in the mid 1830s. He insisted that secondary syphilis is contagious, proving this unethically by the inoculation of healthy persons with matter from active lesions. His actions seem indefensible, and one is surprised to find an author who appears to condone it. R. S. Morton (Medical History, x (1966), 38–43) has written: ‘It is of course easy to condemn . . . when the dust and heat of contesting views have settled. Someone, somewhere, had to do these experiments if thousands were to be saved . . . Who better than Wallace with his sound knowledge and faith in a well controlled mercury regime?’ Wallace was desirous that the importance of his research should be acknowledged. His letter to the London Medical and Surgical Journal (16 Nov. 1833) claims that many of the ‘discoveries’ recently described by Ricord of Paris were anticipated in his own book.
Wallace died 8 December 1837, at the age of 46, from typhus contracted from a patient. He was survived by his wife and a daughter. Another daughter died from scarlet fever at 17. Their father trained the girls to draw representative examples of his patients’ skin lesions. A portfolio of drawings made for Wallace by a professional artist was purchased from his widow in 1838 for £50 by the RCSI, and is held by the Mercer Library.