Julius Michael Millingen (1800–1878) was an English physician and writer. He was one of the doctors treatingLord Byron at his death.

He was born in London on 19 July 1800, a son ofJames Millingen. He spent his early years inCalais andParis, and was sent to school inRome. In holidays he took walking tours in Germany, on one of which he is said to have visitedGoethe inWeimar. In 1817 he entered theUniversity of Edinburgh, and attended medical classes there until 1821, when he received a diploma from theRoyal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.^[1]

When theLondon Philhellenic Committee was formed, Millingen was recommended to it byWilliam Smith, and on 27 August 1823 he left England forCorfu, with letters of introduction to the Greek government and toLord Byron. Arriving atAsos inCephalonia in November of that year, he found Byron atMetaxata, and spent some time with him there. He later accompanied him toMissolonghi, and attended him in his last illness, which, at the autopsy, Millingen pronounced to be purulentmeningitis. He was accused by Francesco Bruno, another of Byron's doctors, in an article in theWestminster Review, with having caused his death by delayingphlebotomy. Millingen replied at length in hisMemoirs.^[1] A modern view is that both doctors were culpable in Byron's death, for their use ofbloodletting.^[2]

Soon after Byron's death in 1824, Millingen had a severe attack oftyphoid fever; on recovering he was appointed surgeon in the Greek army, in which he served until its surrender to the Turks.^[1] On 31 March 1825, he was appointed surgeon of theNeokastro garrison which at the time was undergoing asiege by Egyptian troops.^[3] He was taken prisoner byIbrahim Pasha, and released only after representations byStratford Canning, then British ambassador to theSublime Porte. In November 1826 Millingen went toSmyrna, and after a short stay inKutaya andBroussa, settled in 1827 inConstantinople. There he attained a reputation as a physician.^[1]

Millingen was also court physician toMahmud II and his four successors as Sultan; he was one of a commission appointed to inquire into the death of SultanAbdulaziz. He was also a member of theInternational Medical Congress on Cholera held in Constantinople in 1866, and an original member and afterwards president of theGeneral Society of Medicine.

In 1858, Millingen wrote an article on oriental baths for a French medical journal,^[4] an English translation of which later appeared inThe Free Press as part of an issue largely devoted to what is now known as theVictorian Turkish bath.^[5] At that time the paper was owned by David Urquhart and financed by Richard Crawshay, both soon to become involved in the building of the Hammam Turkish Bath at 76 Jermyn Street, London.^[a] Crawshay wrote asking Millingen for advice and was sent a further article with two illustrations which may have provided some input to the design of The Hammam.^[7]

Like his father, Millingen was an archæologist. For many years he was president of the Greek Syllogos or Literary Society of Constantinople, where he lectured in Greek on archæological subjects. He discovered the ruins ofAczani inPhrygia, an account of which was published byGeorge Thomas Keppel, and excavated the site of the temple of Jupiter Urius on theBosphorus.^[1]

In a major fire atPera in 1870, Millingen lost most of his belongings, and a manuscript biography of Byron. He died in Constantinople on 1 December 1878.^[1]

Millingen published:^[1]

• Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece, with Anecdotes relating to Lord Byron, London, 1831, vol. i. only (vol. ii. remained in manuscript). Its publication involved him in controversy withEdward John Trelawny.^[2]
• Arbitrary Detention by the Inquisition at Rome of three Protestant Children in Defiance of the Will of their Father, London, 1842.

He also contributed an article in French on "Oriental Baths" to theGazette Médicale d'Orient, 1 January 1858.^[1]

Millingen separated from his first wife Marie Angélique Dejean (1812–1873), a Roman Catholic who then embraced Islam, and was married twice.^[8] She married, secondly,Kıbrıslı Mehmed Emin Pasha.^[9]

The children of the first marriage included:

• A daughter, Evelin orEvelina (1831–1900), who married Count Almorò Pisani.^[10][11][12]Henry James wrote in a letter that she "makes one believe in the romantic heroines of D'Israeli and Bulwer".^[13]
• Frederick van Millingen (1833/34–c.1901), the second son, took the name Osman Bey and joined the Ottoman army; and later called himself Vladimir Andrejevitch. He was in the Ottoman service 1853 to 1864, but clashed withFuad Pasha.^{[1][9][14][15]}
• James R. van Millingen (Constantinople, 1835; id. 1876), who became the Director of Ottoman Telegraphs

The children of the second marriage included:

• Alexander van Millingen (1840–1915), the third son.^[16]
• Charles [van] Millingen (Constantinople, 1842 – Tehran, 1880) and John [van] Millingen (Constantinople, 1842 – 1844), twin brothers

The children of the third marriage included:

• Julius Robertson van Millingen (Constantinople, 22 November 1848 – Dunblane, Scotland, 16 November 1940)
• Edwin [van] Millingen (Constantinople, 30 April 1850 – Constantinople, 7 April 1900), who was an oculist in Eastern Europe.^[1]

Marie Millingen, née Dejean, took the name Melek Hanum. She was divorced by her second husband, and wrote an autobiography,Thirty Years in the Harem (1872).^[17]

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1894). "Millingen, Julius Michael".Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 37. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

• 1800 births
• 1878 deaths
• 19th-century English medical doctors
• 19th-century English writers
• English archaeologists
• English people of Dutch-Jewish descent
• British philhellenes in the Greek War of Independence
• Court physicians

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