Wilde, Sir William Robert Wills 1815-76
Irish oculist, aurist and topographer

Born in Castlerea, County Roscommon, he studied at London, Berlin and Vienna, and returning to Dublin, served as medical commissioner on the Irish Census (1841 and 1851), publishing a major medical report, The Epidemics of Ireland (1851). He also wrote on ocular and aural surgery, pioneered the operation for mastoiditis, invented an ophthalmoscope and founded St Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital. His topographical works include The Beauties of the Boyne and the Blackwater (1849), which established him as the leading authority on the Boyne valley, and Lough Corrib, with Notes on Lough Mask (1867). He published a major catalogue of the holdings of the Royal Irish Academy, and was apparently fluent in Gaelic. He married (1851) Jane Francesca Elgee (Wilde), famous as the Young Ireland poet 'Speranza' of the Dublin Nation, but his own politics seem to have been Tory Home Rule. He was named Queen Victoria's Irish oculist in ordinary and also attended King Oskar I of Sweden.