Though by all accounts an engaging and competent physician, and very much involved in establishing Bath General Hospital in 1742, Dr William Oliver published little apart from this treatise on the therapeutic use of spa waters in the treatment of gout. However his name lives on in the form of the Bath Oliver biscuit, which he invented as a digestive aid for his patients.
John Kent Spender’s obituary (BMJ, 22nd April 1916) described him as ‘The last of the generation of physicians who laid the foundation of modern Bath as a health resort.’ He worked for the greater part of his career at the Mineral Water Hospital in Bath and published prolifically, his most notable book being Therapeutic Means for the Relief of Pain, which won the Fothergill Gold Medal in 1874.