Clarke, Joseph (1758–1834), physician, was born 8 April 1758 at Tamnadoey in the parish of Desertlin, Co. Londonderry, second son of James Clarke, well-to-do farmer; his mother may have been a Maconchy. He attended local schools and was taught Latin by a clergyman; his mother's uncle, Dr Maconchy, recommended that Joseph should be sent to Glasgow University, where he studied arts subjects in 1775 and 1776. He transferred to Edinburgh to study medicine for three years, graduating MD (September 1779). While acting as travelling companion to a young man who vainly sought improved health in Europe, Clarke took the opportunity to attend William Hunter's lectures on obstetrics in London in 1781. On his great-uncle's advice he enrolled as a pupil of Henry Rock in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin. Even after he was appointed assistant master there (1783), he was glad to accept a post as companion to another young traveller, because the inheritance from his family, £400, was almost exhausted. He visited English and continental hospitals, and wrote a letter from Brussels (1783) suggesting that the Rotunda should improve the ventilation of the wards.
On his return Clarke took up his post in the Rotunda, and also from 1784 was assistant to George Cleghorn (qv), professor of anatomy in TCD and his great-uncle's friend; on 7 April 1786 he married Isabella Cleghorn, the professor's niece, whose fortune was £1,500. In the same year (3 November) he was elected master of the Rotunda; the combination of obstetrics and the dissection of cadavers was undoubtedly not an ideal one, but Clarke retained his post in TCD until 1788, and acquired a reputation as an excellent teacher. An outbreak of puerperal fever in the Rotunda in 1787–8 was brought under control by his reforms; he improved accommodation in the hospital so that two convalescent women would no longer have to share a bed, and used wards in rotation to allow some cleaning and whitewashing. Of still greater importance was his achievement in improving ventilation, which brought about a sharp drop in neo-natal mortalities. He kept meticulous records of all 10,387 cases he had dealt with in his seven years in the Rotunda, as well as of 3,878 deliveries in private practice. These were published in the first volume of the Transactions of the King and Queen's College of Physicians, providing a very valuable resource for colleagues. Clarke's other publications were equally useful. He completed (1786) an account of the Dublin method of handling the third stage of labour, which Fielding Ould (qv) had left unfinished, and wrote A treatise on human milk (1786). He also published Observations on the puerperal fever (1790) and, among other essays, Remarks on the causes and cure of some diseases of infancy (1793). Noted for his skills, energy, and success as an accoucheur, he returned to a flourishing private practice in 1795; his lifetime fees totalled £37,252. He was a vice-president of the RIA. Urged to attend a meeting of the BMA in Edinburgh in 1834 to share his expertise with colleagues, he died there suddenly, possibly of cholera, on 10 September 1834. His wife survived him, but his only son, James Clarke, a doctor, had died (1820) of typhus contracted in the Dublin House of Industry, and his two daughters died in 1829 and 1833. One of them was married to Robert Collins, a master of the Rotunda, who published a Short sketch of the life and writings of the late Joseph Clarke, which includes an autobiographical fragment.