| David Bayford | |
| Occupation: | Surgeon and physician |
| Known For: | Dysphagia lusoria |
| Birth Date: | 1739 |
David Bayford, FRS (c.1739 – 1790) was a London surgeon, who practised from 1761 to 1782. In later years of his life he practised as a physician.[1]
He was born in Hertfordshire and educated as a surgeon. He became a member of the Corporation of Surgeons, and practised as such for some years at Lewes, Sussex.[2]
In 1761, while still an apprentice surgeon, he made his discovery of the unique and bizarre cause—compression of the oesophagus by an aberrant right subclavian artery—of a fatal case of obstructed deglutition for which he coined the term dysphagia lusoria and for which he is eponymously remembered. This discovery remained unrecorded until 1787, when a paper describing the case was read on his behalf before the Medical Society of London.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1770, when he was described as a Professor of Anatomy at Surgeon's Hall; and many years Lecturer in that Science and the Operations of Surgery.[3]
He was created MD by Frederick Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1782. Later disbarred as a surgeon, he was admitted a Licentiate of the College of Physicians in 1787.[2]