A Dubliner by birth and education, Robert Bentley Todd (1809-1860) settled in London, achieving success as physician and educator. He was professor of anatomy and physiology at King's College, and a founder of King's College Hospital. His publications were numerous; he edited a Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology in which he introduced the terms afferent and efferent and pointed to the location of the major lesion of tabes dorsalis. He described postictal paralysis in his Lumleian Lectures (1849); the features of "Todd's paralysis" are discussed. He appeared for the prosecution at the Smethurst murder trial (1859). He prescribed wine and brandy copiously for fevers.