| Sir John Eardley-Wilmot | |
| Office1: | Member of Parliament for South Warwickshire |
| Term Start1: | 1874 |
| Term End1: | 1885 |
| Birth Date: | 16 November 1810 |
| Education: | Balliol College, Oxford |
| Father: | John Eardley-Wilmot |
| Children: | 8, including William, Revell, and Sydney |
| Relatives: | John Wilmot (grandfather) Edward Eardley-Wilmot (brother) Robert Williams (father-in-law) |
Sir John Eardley Eardley-Wilmot, 2nd Baronet (16 November 1810 – 1 February 1892) was a politician and judge in the United Kingdom. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for South Warwickshire from 1874 to 1885.
Educated at Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford, Eardley-Wilmot was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1842 and joined the Midland Circuit. He was Recorder of Warwick from 1852 to 1874 and a County Court Judge at Bristol from 1854 to 1863, and at Marylebone from 1863 to 1871.
Eardley-Wilmot wrote a number of works, including a work in Latin in 1829, and in 1853, an update of his father's Abridgement of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England.[1] He also wrote, in 1860, an analytical review of Lord Brougham's Law Reforms, in which he listed "no less than forty Statutes which he has initiated and carried through Parliament, besides upwards of fifty Bills introduced by him at various periods. Great portions of the latter have formed the basis of Legislation, and have been incorporated into other Acts", with others remaining unadopted at that time.[2]
In 1855, he published A Tribute to Hydropathy,[3] in which he recounts his own experience of health improvement via hydropathy at an establishment, including typical adjuncts such as exercise, "simplicity of diet", and the application of various hydrotherapeutic techniques. He also praised Captain R. T. Claridge "for his strenuous exertions in the cause", to which every hydropathist "owes a deep debt of gratitude".[4] While Eardley-Wilmot's publications preceding and subsequent to this work were on the "comparatively dry subject of Law Amendment",[5] he indulged in some word-play in his preface to the fifth edition of Tribute to Hydropathy, while at the same time driving home pertinent points.
The Second Edition of this little Watery Tablet having been long out of print, I have been requested to allow a Third Edition to swim to the press. I considered at first that so fragile a memorial would have sunk, when it had no longer the fact of Hydropathy being a novelty to buoy it up, and when Stansted-Bury, the scene of the liquid discipline described, became forsaken for more commodious baths, or for more favourite resorts. But my friends remind me that sickness belongs to no certain period of time and to no particular locality.[6]
Nevertheless, his tribute to, and discussion of, hydropathy was in earnest. While acknowledging that some physicians of the day considered hydropathy to be a dangerous experiment by credulous people with a passing fad, until leaving room for "fresh fallacies, to deceive the unwary",[7] Eardley-Wilmot disagreed. He thought the underlying principles would prove sound, and that a solid foundation, simplicity of theory, and effective outcomes would outlast criticisms.
Medicine, in truest acceptance of the word, is not the art of administering drugs, but the art of healing. He is the best physician as well as philosopher, who removes or assuages those evils to which the human frame is liable, with least violence done to Nature; and while he obviates the present inconvenience, endeavours, as far as lies in his power, to leave the vital powers unweakened, and undiminished by the remedies he applies.[8]
In 1859, he wrote a memoir on Thomas Assheton Smith, a famous fox hunter in the early 19th century. In 1893, the year after Sir John E. Eardley-Wilmot died, his son, William Assheton Eardley-Wilmot, who was named after the subject of the memoir, published a fifth edition of it. In the preface to the fifth edition, W.A. Eardley-Wilmot wrote:"The first edition appeared when I was a school boy at Old Charterhouse in the City, and I remember being sent to the office of the Sporting Magazine to copy out the verses on the celebrated Billesdon Coplow Run".[9]
On 17 April 1839 he married Eliza Martha Williams (1813–1887) at Leamington Priors in Warwickshire.[10] She was the daughter of Sir Robert Williams, 9th Baronet. With her, he had eight children:
In 1840, when he was still known as John Wilmot, Eardley-Wilmot played in a first-class cricket match for Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and was dismissed for nought in his only innings.[11]
a. Here Eardley-Wilmot draws on his knowledge of Latin (as also in other works), with a footnote stating: "Lat. 'Medeor', to cure or heal".[8]