Cheyne, John (1777–1836)

Scottish physician who, with William Stokes, gave his name to Cheyne–Stokes breathing, or periodic respiration.

Cheyne was born in Leith and apprenticed to his physician father at the age of 13. In 1809 he settled in Dublin. He took the first professorial chair in medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland 1813.

In 1818 Cheyne described the periodic respiration that occurs in patients with intracranial disease or cardiac disease. His paper described the breathing that would cease entirely for a quarter of a minute or more, then would become perceptible and increase by degrees to quick, heaving breaths which gradually subside again.