Henry Vandyke Carter was born in 1831. He studied medicine at St George's Hospital, and became a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1853. He was a student of Human and Comparative Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, working with Richard Owen and John Thomas Queckett, from 1853-1855. He was a Demonstrator in Anatomy at St George's Hospital until 1857. He worked for Henry Gray on the illustrations of Gray's Anatomy (London, 1858). Carter joined the Bombay Medical Service in 1858, where he served as Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Grant Medical College, and Assistant-Surgeon in the Jamsetjee Jheejeebhoy Hospital. He was Civil Surgeon at Satara from 1863-1872. He was sent to Kathiawar in 1875, to research leprosy. He was appointed in charge of the Goculdas Tejpal Hospital in Bombay in 1876. He was appointed acting Principal of Grant Medical College, and Physician of the Jamsetjee Jheejeebhoy Hospital in 1877. During his time in India, Carter made a number of contributions to tropical pathology including studies in leprosy, mycetoma and relapsing fever. Carter retired in 1888, and was appointed Honorary Deputy Surgeon-General and Honorary Surgeon to the Queen. He died in 1897.
Born, 1816; Lecturer on Physiology and Comparative Anatomy, Guy's Hospital, 1846-1856; Physician to Guy's Hospital, 1858-1868; President of the Clinical Society, 1871-1872; Physician to the Prince of Wales, 1871; Physician in Ordinary to Queen Victoria, 1887-1890; died, 1890.
Born, Colchester, Essex, 1816; educated privately; assistant in a school at Lewes; student at Guy's Hospital, in 1837; M D, London University, 1846; medical tutor, [1841], Lecturer on Natural Philosophy, 1843-1847, Lecturer on Physiology and Comparative Anatomy, 1846-1856, Guy's Hospital; Fellow, Royal College of Physicians, 1848; Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution, 1847-1849; Assistant Physician, 1851, Physician, 1856-1868, joint Lecturer on Medicine, 1856-1865, Consulting Physician to Guy's Hospital, 1868-1890; member of the London University Senate; censor of the College of Physicians, 1859-1861, 1872-1873; Fellow, Royal Society, 1869; member, General Medical Council, 1871-1883, 1886-1887; Physician to the Prince of Wales, 1871; created a baronet, 1872; Physician Extraordinary, 1872, Physician in Ordinary to the Queen, 1887-1890; died, 1890.
Publications include: An oration delivered before the Hunterian Society (London, 1861); Clinical Observation in relation to Medicine in modern times (1869); The Harveian Oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians (J Churchill and Sons, London, [1870]); 'Alcohol as a Medicine and as a Beverage. Extracts from the evidence given by Sir W. G. ... before the Peers' Select Committee on Intemperance (London, [1878]); A Collection of the Published Writings of W. W. Gull, Edited and arranged by T D Acland, 2 volumes (London, 1894, 1896); many papers in Guy's Hospital Reports.
Charles Hall was an army surgeon from 1758-1783, and served in the American War of Independence. He took an MD from Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1782. He settled in Shrewsbury, where he published The medical family instructor in 1785, based partly on lectures by William Hunter. He is confused in the DNB and elsewhere with Charles Hall (1745?-1825?), and MD of Leiden.
James Brocklehurst (fl 1835-1845) was a chemist and druggist in Hyde, Cheshire.
Born, Aberdeen, 1736; educated, school at Fouran, University of Aberdeen; trained with his his uncle, Dr John Fordyce of Uppingham, [1851-1855]; medical student, University of Edinburgh, 1855; M D, 1758; studied anatomy under Albinus at Leyden, 1759; commenced a course of lectures on chemistry, 1759; added courses on materia medica and the practice of physic, 1764, and continued to teach for nearly thirty years; licentiate of the College of Physicians, 1765; Physician, St Thomas's Hospital, 1770-1802; Fellow, Royal Society, 1776; 'speciali gratia' fellow of the College of Physicians, 1787; important part in compiling the new 'Pharmacopeia Londinensis,' issued 1788. assisted in forming a Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge, 1793; died, 1802.
Publications include: Elements of Agriculture and Vegetation, [Edinburgh, 1765]; Elements of the Practice of Physic third edition (J Johnson London, 1771); A Treatise on the digestion of food (London, 1791); A Dissertation on Simple Fever, or on fever consisting of one paroxysm only (J Johnson, London, 1794); A second dissertation on fever; containing the history and method of treatment of a regular tertian intermittent (London, 1795); A third dissertation on fever Containing the history and method of treatment of a regular continued fever, supposing it is left to pursue its ordinary course (London, 1798-99); A Fourth Dissertation on Fever. Containing the history of, and remedies to be employed in irregular intermitting fevers (J Johnson, London, 1802); A fifth dissertation on fever, containing the history of, and remedies to be employed in, irregular continued fevers edited by W C Wells (J Johnson, London, 1803).
Born, 1840; apprenticed in 1856 to his great-uncle, William Robinson Martindale; Martindale went to London to gain further experience for two years he worked with James Merrel, 1862; attended the Pharmaceutical Society's school of pharmacy at Bloomsbury Square, passed the 'minor' examination in 1864 and the 'major' 1866; assistant at the pharmacy and manufacturing house of T. N. R. Morson in Southampton Row; pharmacist to the University College Hospital, where also he taught pharmacy in the medical school and became demonstrator in materia medica, 1868-; carried out original research, such as that on carbolic acid plaster and dressings with Joseph Lister, and he improved excipients for pills, and bases for pessaries and suppositories; took over the New Cavendish Street pharmacy of Hopkin and Williams, 1873; examiner for the Pharmaceutical Society, 1873-1883; Elected to the Pharmaceutical Society's council in 1889, treasurer in 1898 and then president for the year 1899–1900; died, 1902.
Publications: The Extra Pharmacopoeia (1883)
Alfred Bertheim was associated with Paul Ehrlich at the G Speyer-Haus in Frankfurt am Main from 1906 to 1914, in research which culminated in the discovery of salvarsan.
John Ward was vicar of Stratford-on-Avon and a medical practitioner.
The Medical Club was a London dining club which became known, from at least 1905, as the Sydenham Medical Club. Its membership was restricted to six physicians, six surgeons, and six apothecaries (subsequently general practitioners). The origins of the Club are obscure; the earliest election to membership recorded here is that of Mr [Charles] Nevinson, elected in 1775 in place of Mr Carlisle deceased. Early meetings took place at the Thatched House Tavern, St James's Street.
The Company of the Barber-Surgeons of London was formed by the union of the Company of Barbers and the Fellowship of Surgeons in 1540. The barbers had carried out minor surgery such as bleeding and lancing of abscesses, while the more erudite surgeons attempted to evolve some principles in surgery, and were involved in the mutilating surgery of warfare. The Barber-Surgeons became responsible for instigating teaching programmes and the licensing of men to practice the art of surgery; they also appointed surgeons to the armed forces. A rift occurred in 1745. The surgeons broke away and formed the Company of Surgeons, which, in 1800, became the Royal College of Surgeons.
Lyon Falkener (1867-1947), MRCS, LRCP; nd locum tenens at Claybury Asylum and the Western Fever Hospital, Fulham; nd Assistant House Surgeon at the Metropolitan Hospital, London and nd General Practitioner at Icart, Guernsey.
Jordanus Ruffus or Giordano Ruffo was farrier to Frederick II (1194-1250), Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, in the later 13th century.
Williamson was in general practice at Ventnor until his death at the age of 52. He was Honorary Surgeon to the Royal National Hospital for Consumption at Ventnor, and Honorary Medical Officer to the convalescent home at Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, attached to the Royal Hampshire County Hospital.
The Harland family were based in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
Dr. William Harland (1786?-1866) trained at Edinburgh before practising in Scarborough; he was three times Mayor of the town, a friend of the engineer George Stephenson and the designer of a steam-powered car.
His son Dr. William Aurelius Harland (1822-1858) likewise trained at Edinburgh; as a consequence of an unwise marriage to a servant girl (see MS. 7682/22-23), he left England for Hong Kong in 1846. Here he became resident surgeon of the Victoria Seamen's Hospital and studied natural history, mineralogy and Chinese medical jurisprudence, publishing extensively in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. He died of a fever in 1858, shortly before he was due to publish a study of the natural history of Hong Kong.
Another son of Dr. William Harland, Edward Harland (1831-1895) (whom the letters mention in passing), was joint founder of the Harland and Wolff ship-building firm.
"On William Aurelius Harland, collector of Hong Kong plants" by James R. Troyer, in Archives of natural history (Vol. 24, pt. 1 (Feb. 1997), pp.149-152), gives further information but gives his birth-date as 1818/19 on the basis of an error in the age given on his tombstone.
Thomas Brigstocke Humphreys was a chemist in Portmadoc, he appears later to have relocated to London since some of the ephemera in the volume carry the same name but with an address in Blackheath.
Joshua Henry Porter served in the 97th regiment, and was commended for his services at the siege of Sebastapol and the fall of Lucknow. He worked at the Army Medical School, Netley where he was assistant professor of military surgery. Porter was also deputy commander of the British Ambulance Service in France during the Franco-Prussian war and medical officer in charge of the Kabul force in the Afghan war. He died at Kabul in 1880.
In the seventeenth century, Edinburgh physicians began to hold meetings in their own homes to discuss the regulation of medical practice and the ways in which standards in medicine could be improved.
Sir Robert Sibbald, an eminent physician and noted historian, was a member of this group. He had the opportunity to petition King Charles II, who granted the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh its Royal Charter in 1681.
Thus, Sir Robert is generally accepted to be the founder of the College. The founding Fellows of the College were concerned not only with the advancement of medicine as a reputable science, but also with alleviating the miseries of the City's poor and needy.
For more than 300 years, the College has remained independent of control by government, and its mission today lies close to the ideals of its founders 'to promote the highest standards in internal medicine' not only in Edinburgh where it was founded and has developed, but wherever its Fellows, Collegiate members and Members practise.
The College acts in an advisory capacity to government and other organisations on many aspects of health and welfare and medical education. It was instrumental in founding the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in 1729 and, over the years, has influenced the development of medical schools in North America, Australasia, Asia and Africa.
The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh now has over 10,000 Fellows and Members and maintains strong links with many overseas countries, where more than half of them live and practise medicine. (Copied from http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/about/history.php)
After being a student of Owen's College, Manchester, the author obtained his MD at Cambridge in 1892, having studied also in Germany and in France. In the same year he was appointed to the Chair of Pathology and Bacteriology at McGill University, Montreal. He was A.D.M.S. to the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in 1914-1918, and had been elected FRS in 1905.
Robert Storrs was born on 23 June 1801, only child of John Storrs, a baker and provision dealer of Doncaster, and his wife Elizabeth (née Robertshaw). Robert was apprenticed for several years to a local surgeon, John Moore and an apothecary, Benjamin Popplewell, before leaving in August 1822 to spend two years walking the wards of Guy's Hospital, London. Whilst there he presented four papers to the Guy's Hospital Physical Society. In London he met his future wife, Martha Townsend, whom he eventually married in March 1827. They had thirteen children, of whom twelve survived their father.
Storrs returned to Doncaster in June 1824 to set up as a sole practitioner in the town. In July 1830 he was appointed honorary surgeon to Doncaster Dispensary. He was heavily involved in treating victims of cholera in 1832. In 1835 he was elected a municipal councillor on a Reform ticket, and in 1837 was one of the founder members of the Doncaster Lyceum. The extent to which his practice had prospered can be gauged from the census return for his household in 1841, when it comprised in addition to family members, a governess, two surgeon apprentices, and one male and four female servants. Storrs later took a close interest in puerperal or childbed fever as a result of the notorious outbreak which struck Doncaster in 1841, and he subsequently published the results of his investigations in the Provincial Medical Journal. He died of typhus on 14 September 1847.
The author obtained his MD at Edinburgh in 1869, and was elected FRCP in 1875, and was Professor of Clinical Medicine at Edinburgh University in 1885. He was knighted in 1911 [Cf. B.M.J. 1922, i, pp. 617, 618.]
Andouille is described as 'Maître-Chirurgien juré et Démonstrateur Royal de St. Cosme'. The author is called 'celeberriums Chirurgus' by Haller (cf. Bibliotheca Chirurgica, Vol. II, p. 384): he was a 'Premier Chirurgien du Roy' in 1742.
Robina Addis was one of the earliest professionally trained psychiatric social workers in Britain, qualifying in 1933. She went on to have a varied career, first in child guidance and then for the National Association for Mental Health, from which she retired in 1965.
Mourant was born on 11 April in 1904 in Jersey. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey before winning a King Charles I Scholarship to Exeter College Oxford where he read Chemistry. He graduated with a first class degree in Chemistry (taking crystallography as his special subject) and in 1926 went on to do research under J.A. Douglas on the geology of the Channel Islands (D.Phil. 1931). In 1928 he was appointed Demonstrator in Geology at Leeds University and the following year was given a place on the Geological Survey of Great Britain mapping coal measures in Lancashire. He left in 1931. Mourant's interest in geology continued throughout his life and he continued to publish articles on geology alongside haematological and medical publications.
Mourant returned to Jersey and in 1933 established the Jersey Chemical Pathology Laboratory, which he ran for five years. He then returned to London, intending to pursue a career as a psychoanalyst. As part of the necessary preparation he underwent psychoanalysis himself and in 1939 began medical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, London. On the outbreak of war Mourant continued his medical training but when Jersey was occupied by the Germans in 1940 he lost contact with his family who remained on the island. During the period 1940-1945 Mourant played an active role in Channel Island exile groups.
Mourant graduated B.M. and B.Ch. in 1943 and held a number of House posts before his appointment in 1944 as Medical Officer in the National Blood Transfusion Service. Mourant had developed an interest in haematology during his medical training and during this period pursued research into blood serum. He discovered the antibody anti-e, thus helping to establish the three-factor theory of the Rhesus system, and the Lewis factor and shared in the discovery of the Kell factor. With R.R. Race and R.R.A. Coombs he went on to develop the antiglobulin test.
In 1945 Mourant took up a post as Medical Officer with the Galton Laboratory Serum Unit before in 1946 being appointed Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC)'s newly established Blood Group Reference Laboratory, based at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, London. Mourant held this post to 1965. The Laboratory received international recognition in 1952 when the World Health Organisation named it as their International Blood Group Reference Laboratory. Mourant's interests were increasingly anthropological and his work on human blood group distribution world-wide saw publication of two major books: in 1953 the pioneering work The Distribution of Human Blood Groups and other Biochemical Polymorphisms and in 1958 The ABO Blood Groups and Maps of World Distribution. In 1952 Mourant was appointed Honorary Advisor (de facto Director) of the newly established Nuffield Blood Group Centre. It was administered by and housed in the Royal Anthropological Institute, reporting to its Blood Group Committee. From 1952 to 1962 the Centre was funded by the Nuffield Foundation but the MRC then took over responsibility for financing the Centre, which changed its name to the Anthropological Blood Group Centre.
In September 1965 Mourant retired from the Directorship of the Blood Group Reference Laboratory to become Head of the MRC's newly established Serological Population Genetics Laboratory (SPGL). This was established by the MRC as a unit that would combine the testing work undertaken in the Blood Group Reference Laboratory with the statistical and bibliographical work of the Anthropological Blood Group Centre, which was then amalgamated into the SPGL. The work of the SPGL was thus divided between two sections. The first was a testing laboratory, working principally for the Human Adaptability Section of the International Biological Programme (IBP). The second comprised the Anthropological Blood Group Centre that had been transferred to the SPGL, concentrating on preparing a second edition of The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups. The SPGL was based in premises rented by St Bartholomew's Hospital, London.
In 1971 the MRC announced that it was to close the SPGL. However, Mourant was anxious that the SPGL complete its work on The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups and other projects, including its work for the IBP. The MRC agreed to extend its support of the work on the distribution of human blood groups to 1973. Through assiduous fund-raising Mourant found support for the other projects and was able to see them through to completion. The SPGL finally closed in 1976. Mourant retired to the family home in Jersey where he continued to publish on haematology and physical anthropology as well as geology. Mourant was elected FRS in 1966. He died on 29 August 1994.
Cicely Delphine Williams was born December 1893. She first attracted the attention of the medical world when she identified the protein deficiency disease kwashiorkor whilst working with the British Colonial Service in the Gold Coast in 1928-1935, and she continued to be active in the debate over protein nutrition throughout her life. She was equally important as a pioneer of maternal and child care in developing countries with a system based on local traditions and resources rather than on the use of expensive drugs and western systems of child care. As first Head of the Maternal and Child Health Section of the World Health Organisation in 1949-1951 she expounded this philosophy, as she did in subsequent teaching appointments in Beirut, America and London. Her primary area of interest was maternal and child health, encompassing nutrition, breast feeding, birth control, the training of personnel and the development of health services. She was an active member of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, speaking at their meetings. Williams died in 1992.
Sir (William) Richard Shaboe Doll qualified in medicine at St Thomas' Hospital Medical School, University of London, in 1937. After five years military service, he started research in the field of gastroenterology with Sir Francis Avery Jones at Central Middlesex Hospital in 1946. During the next twenty years, he contributed many papers on the aetiology and treatment of peptic ulcer.
In 1948, he joined the Medical Research Council's Statistical Unit at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine under Sir Austin Bradford Hill, with the primary objective of investigating the cause(s) of a dramatic increase in the mortality of lung cancer. On Bradford Hill's retirement in 1961, he took over the directorship of the Unit and continued in this post until his appointment, in 1969, as Regius Professor of Medicine in the University of Oxford. Ten years later, in 1979, he became the first Warden of Green College, Oxford, a new College established primarily to serve the special interests of clinical medicine at Oxford. Whilst at Oxford, he directed the Cancer Epidemiology Unit established by the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He continued to work as an honorary member of Sir Richard Peto's research group at Oxford after his retirement in 1983.
Doll's principal research interests were the effects of smoking, ionising radiation, oral contraceptives, and the occupational hazards of cancer. In 1981, he published with Richard Peto a report on the Causes of Cancer at the request of the Office of Technology Assessment of the US Congress. His pre-eminence in the field of epidemiology led to a steady stream of honours and lecture opportunities across the world. He received 15 honorary degrees from the universities at home and abroad, and a number of awards including the Royal Society's Royal Medal, the BMA Gold Medal, General Motors Mott Prize and the UN Award for Cancer Research. Sir Richard Doll was a Foreign Associate of the American Association of Arts and Science and received his OBE in 1956, FRS in 1966, was knighted in 1971, and became a Companion of Honour in 1996. In 2002 Doll was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Doll died on 24th July 2005, aged 92.
Professor Ernest Basil Verney (1894-1967), MD, FRCP, FRS, was a physiologist and pharmacologist. An outline of his life and career follows: Born 1894; Exhibition to Downing College, Cambridge, 1913; First class honours part 1 natural science tripos, 1916; Shuter scholar, St Bartholomew's Hospital, anatomy and physiology, 1916-1918; Served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1918-1919; MB, BChir (Cantab) MRCP (London), 1920; Assistant to E.H. Starling in the Institute of Physiology, University College London, 1921; Married Ruth Eden Conway, 1923; Assistant to Professor T R Elliott in University College Hospital Medical School, 1924; Chair of Pharmacology at University College London, 1926; Acquitted of charge of using stolen dog in research, 1926; Breakdown in health, 1930; Sheild Reader in Pharmacology in Cambridge, Fellow of Darwin College, 1934; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1936; First Sheild Professor of Pharmacology, Cambridge, 1946; Honorary DSc, University of Melbourne, 1956; Visiting Professor at the University of Melbourne Baly medal of the Royal College of Physicians Honorary member of the Physiological Society, 1957; Retired; Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology, Cambridge, 1961; Personal chair at University of Melbourne, work on adrenal secretions, 1961-1964; Died 1967.
Paul Ehrlich was a leading medical researcher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1908. He is best remembered for 'Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet', Compound 606, the arsephanemine drug salvarsan which was a cure for syphilis, discovered in 1909.
Eileen Palmer, Olive Johnson, and Edith How-Martyn worked closely together in the British birth control movement during a period from the 1920s to the 1950s. How-Martyn had been active in this cause since before the First World War. They were all involved with the Birth Control International Information Centre and Birth Control Worldwide organisations during the 1930s, and Palmer accompanied How-Martyn on one of her several tours of India to promote birth control. How-Martyn undertook a number of other foreign tours, before emigrating to Australia with her husband around 1940. There is an entry for How-Martyn in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and some obituaries and other biographical material in A.8.
Michael Scott Montague Fordham: Born, 1905; Trinity College Cambridge, 1924; St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1927; Junior Medical Officer, Long Grove Mental Hospital Epsom, 1932; Fellowship in Child Psychiatry, London Child Guidance Clinic, 1934; Consultant post to help evacuee children in hostels in the Nottingham area, 1942; helped set up a proposed training centre for analytical psychology, 1942; Appointed consultant to the Child Guidance Clinic at the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, 1946; first editor of Journal of Analytical Psychology, 1955; Founder Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry, 1971; died, 1995.
Frieda Fordham:
Born Winefride Rothwell on 23 Feb 1903. She first pursued a career as a dancer, but in 1920 married Percy Campbell Hoyle, by whom she had two sons. Following the end of this marriage, she studied at the London School of Economics and trained as a psychiatric social worker. Working in that capacity at the London Child Guidance Clinic, she met Michael Fordham, whom she married in 1940. She later trained as an analytical psychotherapist. Her publications included the much reprinted (and translated into several languages) An Introduction to Jung's Psychology (Penguin, 1953), widely regarded as a classic text on this subject. She was also responsible for the famous opening words of the BBC radio programme 'Listen with Mother' - 'Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin'. After a decade of increasing ill-health, she died on 7 Jan 1988.
Hans Grüneberg was born in Germany and studied medicine in Bonn and biology in Berlin. At the invitation of J B S Haldane, he moved to London in 1933, where R A Fisher and M J D White were also working on genetics. Grüneberg established the subject of development genetics, along with C H Waddington. He studied the pathological processes in mutant mice, and formulated a 'pedigree of causes' of genes, which was an important model for human disease. In 1943 he published Genetics of the Mouse (extensively revised in 1952), a work which influenced many experimental laboratories.
Professor Sir Alexander Haddow FRCP, FRS (1907-1976) was an experimental pathologist specialising in cancer research.
He was born at Leven, Fife, the son of a miner, and grew up in Broxburn, West Lothian. In 1924-1929 he studied at Edinburgh University, graduating MB ChB; following this, he served as house physician and Carnegie Research Student at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and worked in general practice in Hull, before becoming an assistant lecturer in bacteriology at Edinburgh University. He became a full lecturer and Davidson Reserch Fellow in 1932, his research leading to the qualifications of PhD and MD in 1937 and DSc in 1938.
By 1936 he joined Ernest Kennaway's team at the Royal Cancer Hospital (now the Marsden Hospital) in London, and in 1946 became Director of the Chester Beatty Research Institute, succeeding Kennaway. During these years his work built on Kennaway's achievement of extracting chemicals from coal tar that proved carcinogenic to animals. Haddow reasoned that if these carcinogens were compared to other closely related but non-carcinogenic chemicals the differences between them would prove significant in explaining the genesis of cancer. He also discovered what is known as the Haddow Effect, in which a carcinogenic chemical can be used to arrest a cancer caused by some other carcinogenic chemical (provided that the two chemicals are not closely related). Clinical trials at the Royal Cancer Hospital led to the adoption of the platinum compound cisplatin as a treatment for cancer of the ovary, and other compounds such as chlorambucil, melphalan and busulphan are used for treatment of breast and ovarian cancer, and malignant blood diseases.
Haddow was elected FRS in 1958 and knighted in 1966, receiving many other honours such as the Croix de Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. He was president of the International Union Against Cancer 1962-1966. His other activities included work with the BBC, service on the Press Council, and work with the Pugwash Conferences of scientists opposed to nuclear weapons.
He was married twice, to Dr Lucia Lindsay Crosby Black (d.1968), with whom he had one son, William George Haddow (b.1934), and after her death to Feo Standing née Garner, scientific photographer, who survived him.
He died in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, in 1976, and was cremated there.
Born, 1900; Educated at Wychwood School Oxford; Madras College, St Andrews, 1916; Edinburgh University to read Zoology, 1918; B.Sc: works with Dr F A E Crew; goes to Cambridge as Scientific Assistant to Dr T S P Strangeways with MRC funding, 1923; Junior Beit Fellowship, Ph.D, 1924; Senior Beit Fellow; Director of the Strangeways Research Laboratory, 1929-1970; Messel Research Fellow of the Royal Society, 1931-1943; D.Sc Edinburgh, 1932; Foulerton Research Fellow of the Royal Society, 1943-1967; FRS, 1952; DBE, Royal Society Research Professor, 1963; retires as Director of the Strangeways Laboratory, 1970; Research Worker in Division of Immunology, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, 1970-1979; Research worker at Strangeways Laboratory, 1979-1986; died, 1986.
The Rev Dr Hubert Carey (Hugh) Trowell, OBE, MD, FRCP (1904-1989) Physician, paediatrician, and nutritionist. Born, 1904; Qualified at St Thomas's Medical School, 1928; House Physician, St Thomas's Hospital, 1928-1929; Colonial Medical Service, Kenya, 1929; Study of kwashiorkor, 1930-1958; Senior Physician and Senior Paediatrician, Mulago Hospital, Kampala, Uganda, 1935-1958; Return to England, 1959; Ordained into Anglican Church, 1960; Vicar at Stratford-sub-Castle, and chaplain to Salisbury Hospital, 1960-1970; First Chairman of London Medical Group for Study of Medical Ethics, 1960-1964; Study Secretary of the newly formed Institute of Religion and Medicine, 1960-1966; Chair of BMA working party on the ethical aspects of euthanasia, Retired, study of 'dietary fibre', 1970; President of Institute of Religion and Medicine, 1979; died, 1989.
Hans Georg Epstein was born in Berlin on the 25 April 1909. He was educated in Switzerland and Bavaria but returned to Berlin where he studied for a doctorate in physics from the Department of Physical Chemistry at Berlin University, gaining the 'very rare distinction' (Ref.: PP/HGE/A/B/6) of summa cum laude in 1934.
In the late 1930s, Dr Epstein, also known as 'Eppy' or 'Ep' to work colleagues and friends, moved to England and worked briefly in London before moving to Oxford to pursue his scientific research.
It was in Oxford that Epstein began specialising in research and development in the field of anaesthesia. He was employed at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford at the suggestion of the first Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetics, Sir Robert Macintosh who was keen to develop new forms of ether inhaler, ether being the principle anaesthetic of the day.
With the outbreak of war, in 1939, Epstein was taken on by the Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics to help develop a portable yet reliable inhaler that could be used on the battlefield where access to oxygen cylinders and anaesthetic gases was not possible. It was also essential that individuals with no medical training could safely and effectively use the apparatus. The resulting product was the Oxford Vaporizer, which was manufactured by the Lord Nuffield-owned Morris Motors Ltd and used by allied troops across the world (Ref.: PP/HGE/C/A/5, copy of letter from Sgt Alex Hood, 1943).
During the war Epstein helped to develop other products, such as life jackets for airmen, but his principal interest and expertise lay in the research and development of anaesthetic inhalers. In 1956, the Epstein Macintosh Oxford (EMO) inhaler was released, superseding the Oxford vaporizer. The EMO was a more sophisticated yet simpler apparatus that used internal bellows to maintain a constant flow of gases. A later version, known as the EMOTRIL (which used Trichloroethylene), was specifically developed for analgesia in obstetrics.
Through the 1950s and 1960s Epstein continued his research and development of anaesthesia inhalers, building himself a global reputation as a leading expert in this field. His inhalers harnessed the latest anaesthesia agents, such as Halothane: an example was the Oxford Miniature Vaporizer (OMV), a version of which found use during the Falklands conflict in 1982 (Ref: PP/HGE/C/A/4 Times newspaper clipping).
Epstein's research was often accompanied by a personal interest in the historical development of the subject concerned. His papers include many items that show an interest in the historical developments in anaesthesia, as well as a wider interest in topics such as the history of scientific research into resuscitation (Ref: PP/HGE/H/1 and PP/HGE/H/2).
During his time at Oxford, Epstein developed a reputation as an informative and entertaining lecturer. He was given many invitations to speak on a range of anaesthesia topics; however, most memorable were his lectures and demonstrations on the subject of anaesthetic explosions.
Epstein also found time to research and co-write Physics for the Anaesthetist. It was hailed as a seminal resource in the field of anaesthesia and three editions were published between 1946 and 1963. However, delays in publishing a fourth, revised edition were blamed on Epstein and led to him being ejected from the project in 1982 (Ref: PP/HGE/E/A/2), much to his dissatisfaction. The fourth edition was eventually published in 1987, though Epstein remained bitter as to the amount of credit attributed to himself and Lord Nuffield within this edition (Ref: PP/HGE/E/A/3 draft letter to Per Saugman).
Epstein spent the latter years of his working life, and part of his retirement (until the mid 1980s) conducting anaesthesia research tests for the medical apparatus manufacturer Penlon. Retirement also allowed Epstein to pursue his interests outside of science, including cycling and food and wine connoisseurship. Dr Hans Epstein died in Oxford on 1 August 2002.
Dr Margaret Lowenfeld was a paediatrician who became a pioneer of child psychology and psychotherapy. Her outstanding contributions sprang from her recognition that play is an important activity in children's development. She invented non-verbal techniques that enabled children to express themselves, including The Lowenfeld World Technique and Lowenfeld Mosaics. The former involved the use of sand trays and miniature toys. The child guidance clinic Lowenfeld established in the late 1920s in London's Notting Hill developed into the Institute for Child Psychology.
Further biographical information can be found on the Dr Margaret Lowenfeld Trust website at http://www.lowenfeld.org/Lowenfeld/default.asp.
Born, 1884; Educated at Barnard Castle School, 1898-1902; Emmanuel College Cambridge, 1902; Research student, Emmanuel, working under Gowland Hopkins, 1906; Demonstrator in Department of Physiology, St Thomas's Hospital, 1909-1911; MA,MB(Cantab), 1910; Beit Memorial Fellowship, 1910-1912; Chair of Physiology of the University of London in the King's (subsequently Queen Elizabeth's) College for Women, 1913-1920; Married May Tweedy, 1914; MD (Cantab), 1915; Work on the absorption of alcohol, under the MRC for the Liquor Control Board, c 1918; Chair of Pharmacology at the University of Sheffield, 1920-1933; FRS, 1925, FRCP, 1928; Chairman, League of Nations Nutrition and Vitamins Standardisation Commission, 1931; Appointed Secretary to the Medical Research Council, 1933; Fullerian Professor of the Royal Institution, 1936-1937; KCB, 1937; Honorary Physician to King George VI , 1937-1941; Chairman of the Advisory Medical Panel of the British Council, 1942; Work on the role of agene in flour in the causation of canine hysteria, 1946; Visited South Africa to advise on medical research, 1948; Attended African Scientific Regional Congress, 1949; Retired as Secretary to the Medical Research Council, 1949; Visited India to advise on medical research policy, 1950-1951; Visit to Australia and New Zealand to advise on medical research, 1951; died, 1955.
May Tweedy was born in 1882, educated at Hampstead and Bromley High Schools, and then went to Girton College, Cambridge, where she pursued the Natural Science Tripos, Parts I and II, 1902-1905. She then held the post of Research Scholar and Lecturer at Bedford College London, 1906-1914. She married Edward Mellanby in 1914 and collaborated in his research throughout the rest of their lives together. Besides all the work she carried out with her husband on nutrition, she also conducted independently research into the physiology of dentition and the causes of dental disease, and was involved with a number of bodies making policy in this field. She died in 1978.
Ronald MacKeith was born on 23 February 1908 as one of a twin and 11 children of a Southampton general practitioner. He was admitted to Queen's College, Oxford in 1926 and then went to St Mary's Hospital Medical School for his clinical studies, qualifying in 1932. He obtained membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) in 1941 and was elected a fellow in 1952 (FRCP). During the war he served as a medical officer in the Royal Navy and in 1941 married Elizabeth Bartrum, with whom he would have four children.
After the war he joined the staff of Guy's hospital and was appointed Children's Physician in 1948. Shortly afterwards he began a cerebral palsy clinic, which developed into the Newcomen Centre for Handicapped children in 1964, of which he was the first director. He was also during this time paediatrician to the Cassel Hospital and the Tavistock Clinic, emphasising the stong link he saw between paediatrics and child psychiatry.
One of MacKeith's most significant influences on the practice of paediatrics was his more enlightened and humane treatment of handicapped children in and out of hospital. He advocated an inter-disciplinary approach and saw the whole child and family rather than the disability alone. His primary interest remained children rather than the intricacies of rare diseases. His views are set out in books such as The Child and his Symptoms with John Apley, A New Look at Child Health with Michael Joseph and Infant Feeding and Feeding Difficulties with Chris Wood and Roy Meadow, as well as many articles and editorials in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology and other journals.
MacKeith became associated with The Spastics Society (now SCOPE) in the early 1950s and was appointed the Director of the Medical Education and Information Unit (MEIU) in 1958. He was instrumental in developing this unit, which was closely associated with MacKeith personally and accounts for some of its papers being interspersed with MacKeith's own. MacKeith's most significant contribution as director was the foundation of a journal and renowned study groups.
The meetings organised by MacKeith (and now called the MacKeith meetings) were of 2 kinds. There were bi-ennial International Study Groups on Child Neurology and Cerebral palsy, held in Oxford, where international experts were brought together in 'workshops' to discuss specific selected topics and child neurology in general. Secondly, there were large open meetings designed for health professionals, usually devoted to a broad, practical theme and held all over the country.
The Cerebral Palsy Bulletin was founded in 1958, (from 1962 Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology) when MacKeith convinced the Society that such a publication would help them further their objectives of spreading understanding of disabilities and the special needs of those who have them and stimulating research in the area. MacKeith was also instrumental in its recognition by the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy as their official journal and remained senior editor of this and its sister publication, Little Club Clinics (from 1963 Clinics in Developmental Medicine), up until the time of his death. Editorial policy lay with the Editorial Board, which reported to the Medical Advisory Committee of the Society. He was succeeded by Martin Bax, a friend and close colleague, who remained in post until his retirement in 2003. In 1967 the Press was named Spastics International Medical Publications (SIMP), becoming MacKeith Press in 1986 and a separate wholly-owned subsidiary in 2001.
MacKeith was involved with numerous other societies and had wide ranging medical interests. For instance, he was engaged with the topic of medical education and a founder member of the Association for Medical Education and secretary then chairman of the Medical Committee of the Scientific Film Association. Medical ethics and the role of doctors in the public field was another area of interest and he was chairman of the Medical Association for Prevention of War. MacKeith founded the British Paediatric Neurology Association and British Community Paediatric Group and a member of the British Paediatric Association and the Royal Society of Medicine. He was also a keen member of the Johnson Club.
Honours included the James Spence Medal (1972), Rosen von Rosenstein Medal of the Swedish Paediatric Association (1974), the Special Merit Award of the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy (1975) and the Albrecht von Haller Medal from the University of Gottingen (1977).
MacKeith died suddenly on 30 October 1977 after being taken ill several hours earlier at home.
Born, 1915; FRS,OM; Medical Scientist; Nobel Laureate; died, 1987.
Born, 1907; CBE,MD,FRCP, FRS; Haematologist and biographer; died, 1986.
CBE, MA, DSc, DM, BCh, FRS, FRCP, FRCPath, FRS.
Biochemist; Professor of Chemical Pathology, Guy's Hospital Medical School, University of London, 1947-1965; Secretary-General International Union of Biochemistry 1955-1964; Director, Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London, 1965-1976; Wellcome Trust Trustee, 1963-1982, and Deputy Chairman, 1978-1982; Chairman Chemical Defence Advisory Board, Ministry of Defence, 1968-1975.