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Born, Edinburgh, 1714; graduated MA, St Andrews University, 1730; studied medicine in Edinburgh; studied of anatomy under Monro; moved to London, 1734, studied under Cheselden, visited the wards of the London hospitals; attended the lectures of Winslow in Paris, Boerhaave and Albinus, Leyden; M D, Rheims, 1736; licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 1737; Fellow, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 1738, and commenced practice as a physician; Professor of the Theory of Medicine in Edinburgh University, 1747; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1752; lectured on chemistry, 1756; first physician to the King in Scotland, 1761; President, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 1763-1766; died, 1766.

Publications include: An Essay on the vital and other involuntary motions of animals (Edinburgh, 1751); An Essay on the virtues of Lime-Water in the cure of the Stone (Edinburgh, 1752); Physiological Essays (Hamilton, Balfour and Neill, Edinburgh, 1755); Observations on the Nature, Causes, and Cure of those Disorders which have been commonly called Nervous Hypochondriac, or Hysteric, to which are prefixed some remarks on the sympathy of the nerves (T Becket and P du Hondt, London, J Balfour, Edinburgh, 1765); Observations on the dropsy in the brain, by R W (Edinburgh, 1768); The Works of R. W. ... Published by his son [R Whytt] (Edinburgh, 1768).

Unknown

Jean-Baptiste Biot was born in Paris and educated at the Ecole Polytechnique. His fields of research included astonomy, the Earth's atmosphere, and light and optics, but he is best known for his work on electricity and magnetism; the Biot-Savart law in electromagnetics is named after him, and Felix Savart.

Born in Edinburgh in 1873, Balfour received his education at George Watson's College and at the University of Edinburgh where he graduated MB CM in 1894. After graduation he joined his father in general practice but it soon became clear that he was inclined toward preventive rather than curative medicine. He went to Cambridge University in 1895, taking his Diploma in Public Health in 1897. He returned to Edinburgh University where he graduated MD with a thesis on the toxicity of dyestuffs and river pollution for which he was awarded the Gold Medal. He took the Edinburgh BSc in Public Health at Edinburgh University in 1900 before serving as a civil surgeon in the Transvaal in the second Boer War, 1900-1901. On his return he became interested in tropical medicine through his friendship with Sir Patrick Manson and took a course at the School. In 1902 he was appointed Director of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratory at Khartoum and Medical Officer of Health to that city. He remained in Khartoum until 1913 and his work was published in four reports from the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories (1904-1911). On his return to England, he founded and directed the Wellcome Bureau of Scientific Research and organised what was to become the Wellcome Museum of Medical Science. He made an extensive tour of South America and the West Indies. He took on many different roles during World War One, at the outbreak he was in uniform in France, in 1915 he became a temporary Lt Col, Royal Army Medical Corps. In 1915-1916 he became a member of the Medical Advisory Committee, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, he was the President of the Medical Advisory Committee, Mesopotamia 1916-1917, Scientific Adviser to Inspecting Surgeon-General, British Expeditionary Force, East Africa, 1917 and President of the Egyptian Public Health Commission, 1918.

He returned as Director in Chief of the Wellcome Bureau and became a member of the Colonial Advisory Medical and Sanitary Committee and Medical Research Committee. In 1921 he visited Mauritius to advise on sanitation and went to Bermuda in 1923 on a similar expedition. In 1923 he was appointed the first Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 1926 he revisited the Sudan at the invitation of the Government, presided at the opening of the State Institute in Warsaw and gave an address at the opening of the School of Hygiene in John Hopkins University in America. He was elected President of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 1925-1927, he became D.Sc and LL.D (Edinburgh) and LL.D of Johns Hopkins and Rochester Universities in USA and also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London and Edinburgh. In 1920 he received the Mary Kingsley Medal of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He was knighted in 1930. He died from a fall from a window of a nursing home in Kent on 1 January 1931. Selected publications include (medicine): Medicine, Public Health and Preventive Medicine (with C. J. Lewis, 1902); Memoranda on Medical Diseases in Tropical and Sub-Tropical Areas (1916); War Against Tropical Disease (1920); Reports to the Health Committee of the League of Nations on Tuberculosis and Sleeping Sickness in Equatorial Africa (1923); Health Problems of the Empire (with H. H. Scott, 1924); (novels/historical adventures): By Stroke of Sword (1897); To Arms (1898); Vengeance is Mine (1899); Cashiered and Other War Stories (1902); The Golden Kingdom (1903).

Alexander Kinloch Forbes was an Indian civil servant and historian of Gujarat.He was the author of Râs Mâlâ.

John Bishop King was the son of William King M.D. (Cantab.) F.R.C.P. (1786-1865), who practiced in Brighton. J.B. King passed as M.D. in 1855 and travelled East in the same year; after a short period in India he settled at Penang. The Medical Directory lists him as resident there until 1898; in 1899 he is listed as living in Brighton, where he remains until 1901; in 1902 he is absent from the Directory, presumably dead.

His wife Joanna (née Smith) was the daughter of Captain Smith of Penang; they were married in Penang in 1866.

Sambon was intermittently employed by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum from 1903 onwards.

He organised the 11th International Congress of Medicine (Rome, 1894).

William Hunter was born, 1718; attended the local Latin school; Glasgow University, 1731-1736; medical apprenticeship in Hamilton; went to London to learn midwifery from William Smellie, 1740; John Douglas's anatomy assistant and tutor to Douglas's son William George, 1741; surgical pupil of David Wilkie at St George's Hospital; studied anatomy and surgery, Paris, 1743- 1744; began building a surgical and midwifery practice, London; set up an anatomy course, 1746; member of the Company of Surgeons, 1747; temporary man-midwife at the Middlesex Hospital, 1748; man-midwife to the new British Lying-in Hospital, 1749-1759; member of the Society of London Physicians, 1754; licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, 1756; consultant physician, British Lying-in Hospital, 1759; physician-extraordinary to the queen, 1762; steward, then treasurer, and finally president of the Society of Collegiate Physicians; fellow of the Royal Society, 1767; professor of anatomy, Royal Academy of Art, 1768; died, 1783.

William Cumberland Cruikshank was born in Edinburgh in 1745. He attended both Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities and graduated in 1767. He was the pupil of John Moore, and became assistant to William Hunter. He moved to London in 1771, and gave anatomy demonstrations. He was later made a partner in the Windmill Street School by Hunter, and after Hunter died Cruikshank continued with Hunter's nephew, Matthew Baillie. Cruikshank attended Dr Johnson during his last illness. He received an honorary MD from Glasgow University in 1783. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1797. He published The Anatomy of the Absorbing Vessels of the Human Body, in 1786. He died in 1800.

Thomas Buzzard was educated at King's College Hospital and joined the British Army staff in the Crimea immediately after qualifying M.D. in 1855. On his return he made his career as a neurologist. In 1873 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; a brief biography, accordingly, is to be found in William Munk's The roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London ("Munk's Roll").

Martin, James (fl 1904-1913), trained as a veterinary surgeon at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgery and later became a vet in Wellington Salop.

John Abernethy was born in London in 1764 and attended Wolverhampton Grammar School. He trained in medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and the London Hospital, being named Assistant Surgeon at St. Bartholomew's in 1787. From 1791 onwards he gave extremely popular lectures on anatomy, physiology and surgery which were the basis of modern medical training at St. Bartholomew's; indeed, his eminence in the medical profession of the time is due to these talents as an educator and presenter rather than to original research. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1796 and became full Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's in 1815. He resigned the latter post in 1827 and died in 1831.

The television series was produced by Bill Duncalf, with the exception of the 1961 programme on Ross which was produced by Shelagh Rees. The first two scripts were also by Duncalf; Anthony Coburn and Anthea Browne-Wilkinson scripted the 1961 programmes.

Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (originally Weiss) was born, 1697 at Frankfurt (Oder); stuided medicine at Leiden University, 1702-; Lecturer at Leiden University on anatomy and surgery, 1719-1721; Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, Leiden University, 1721-1745; Professor of the Practice of Medicine, 1745-; died, 1770.

George Paterson [1734-1817] matriculated at Leyden University on March 4th, 1763.

Norman Henry Ashton was born in London on the 11th of September 1913. He became a junior laboratory assistant at a private laboratory in Brook Street, London in 1928 where he remained until 1931. He then moved to the Princess Beatrice Hospital, West Kensington, London where he was pathological laboratory assistant. While in this post he studied for the examinations of the College of Preceptors, which could be taken part-time, first at the Chelsea Polytechnic, then at Kings College, and later at Westminster Hospital Medical School. In 1939 he qualified in Medicine and Surgery and Registered as a Medical Practitioner (MRCS, LRCP). After 2 years at Westminster Hospital he moved to the Kent and Canterbury Hospital in 1941 where he was pathologist until 1945.

In 1946, Ashton enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was posted in West Africa , before being transferred to Egypt in 1947. He was discharged from the Army in the same year and became Director of Pathology at the Institute of Ophthalmology in 1948. Here he established a laboratory of international repute, which contributed to research and provided a clinical service to Moorfields Eye Hospital and other hospitals around the world. He was responsible for the training of the first generation of ophthalmic pathologists in Britain. He remained at the Institute until his retirement in 1978. He was also Professor of Pathology at the University of London from 1957 to 1978.

In 1953, Ashton's investigations into Retrolental Fibroplasia (RLF), now known as Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), revealed that the exposure of premature babies to high levels of oxygen in order to relieve breathing difficulties, could cause an obliteration of growing retinal blood vessels followed by disorganised regrowth and scarring which led to blindness. As a consequence, oxygen delivery to babies was strictly controlled and the sight of many infants was saved. In 1960, he was the first in Europe to identify Toxocara Canis (the dog roundworm) as a cause of retinal disease in children, leading to a national campaign to rid the streets of dog faeces. In 1965, he founded Fight for Sight (one of the foremost charities supporting eye research in the UK) and was chairman of the charity from 1980 to 1991, when he became a patron. He had a key role in establishing the European Pathology Society, of which he was made life president. Ashton's other major research was in the areas of diabetic retinopathy (retinal disease caused by diabetes) and hypertensive retinopathy (retinal disease caused by high blood pressure).

Professor Ashton received countless honours and awards for his academic achievements, including the Doyne Medal in 1960. In 1971 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and was appointed CBE in 1976. Two years later, he was awarded the Gonin Gold Medal (the highest award for ophthalmology). In honour of his work for Fight for Sight and his research achievements, the new Institute of Ophthalmology building which opened in Bath Street, London in 1992 was named after him. In 1981 Ashton received the first Jules Stein Award with A Patz, he also received the International Pisart Vision Award in 1991, the Royal Society's Buchanan Medal in 1996, and the Helen Keller Prize in 1998. At various stages of his career and his retirement he was president of five societies of pathology and ophthalmology and was elected Master of the Society of Apothecaries in 1984. In all, he contributed to 274 scientific publications during his lifetime.

In addition to his professional accomplishments, Ashton was a highly acclaimed and witty public speaker as well as a keen performer of amateur dramatics and a gifted artist. He died in London on the 4th of January 2000.

Sir Alan Sterling Parkes was an endocrinologist and Fellow of the Royal Society. Parkes worked through an epoch-making era in reproductive biology.

Charles Enrique Dent was born in 1911. Having begun his scientific career as a chemist, Dent qualified in medicine in 1944 and then began to work on disorders of amino-acid metabolism, being an early pioneer of the technique of paper chromatography for the analysis of body fluids. He developed both chromatographic and chemical tests for metabolic disorders and was instrumental in defining a number of new amino acid diseases. Another associated early interest was in metabolic bone diseases such as rickets and osteomalacia. These concerns broadened over his career to include the cause and treatment of many conditions such as hyperparathyroidism, renal stone formation, sarcoidosis and various malabsorption syndromes. A continuing interest in genetics accompanied the study and treatment of all these conditions as many were shown to be hereditary. Several are also associated with mental deficiency.

An outline of Dent's life follows:
1911: born in Burgos, Spain (family normally resident in Singapore); 1915: family moved to England. Educated at Bedford School and Wimbledon College (exact dates unknown); 1927: left school to work in a bank; subsequently left, obtained a post as a laboratory technician and studied at evening classes at Regent Street Polytechnic; 1930: became a Chemistry student at Imperial College, London; 1931/2: BSc, Chemistry; 1934: PhD on copper phthalocyanin (later marketed by ICI as 'Monastral Blue'); Went to work for ICI Dyestuffs Group in Manchester; 1937: entered Univeristy College, London, as a medical student; 1939-1945: war service in France and as a consultant in chemistry in the scientific department of British censorship (as a specialist in secret writing), including service in Bermuda and the USA; 1943: awarded FRIC; 1944: qualified in medicine and became house physician to Sir Thomas Lewis at UCL; Married Margaret Ruth Coad; 1945: became Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians. Appointed Assistant to the Medical Unit at UCH Medical School under Sir Harold Himsworth; Went to the recently liberated concentration camp at Belsen as part of the MRC study group; studied the treatment of starvation by amino-acid mixtures; 1946-1947: Rockefeller scholarship - studied in Rochester, NY, USA. Post-war research, initially in the field of amino-acid metabolism. Pioneer in the field of partition chromatography for the study of biological fluids. Developed methods of random testing for metobolic disorders; Defined new amino-acid diseases such as various forms of Fanconi syndrome, Hartnup disease, argininosuccinic aciduria and homocystinuria; 1949: awarded MD; 1951: persuaded University College Hospital, London, to establish a metabolic ward with beds, laboratories and outpatient clinics. Appointed Reader in medicine. Research interests broadened to include the study of clinical disorders of calcium and phosphorus metabolism, vitamin D deficiency and the action of parathyroid; increasing emphasis on the clinical side of his work, rather than laboratory science; 1954: became Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; 1956: appointed Professor of Human Metabolism; 1962: appointed Fellow of the Royal Society; 1976: awarded CBE. Died, September.

Born, 1875; Educated at Notting Hill High School, following by University College London, graduating BSc; Awarded an 1851 Exhibition to study bacteriology in Vienna and Munich, and also in Liverpool; Appointed (against considerable opposition as a woman) to the Jenner Memorial Research Studentship at the Lister Institute, London, 1905; work with (Sir) Charles J Martin at the Lister Institute on the process of disinfection, 1905-1908; War work on tetanus antitoxin and serum diagnosis of typhoid, paratyphoid and dysentery, 1915; Secretary of the Medical Research Council Accessory Food Factors Committee, 1918-1945; With colleagues at the Lister, travels to Vienna under the auspices of the Accessory Food Factors Committee to investigate nutritional deficiencies, leading to the discovery of the roles of ultraviolet light and administration of codliver oil in preventing rickets, 1919-1922; Returns to the Lister, continues studies on nutritional factors, 1922; Secretary of the League of National Health Section Committee on the Physiological Bases of Nutrition, 1934-1937.

Moves with the Lister Institute Division of Nutrition to Sir Charles Martin's house in Cambridge, work on nutritive value of bread, flour and potatoes, 1939-1945; founder member of the Nutrition Society, 1941; Retires, becomes member of governing body of the Lister Institute, 1945; President of the Nutrition Society, 1956-1959; died, 1977.

Charles Montague Fletcher, the son of Sir Walter Morley Fletcher (see PP/WMF), was born in 1911. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and was in the team that won the University Boat Race in 1933. He studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital where he graduated in 1937.

Whilst at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, as a house physician and research student to Professor Leslie Witts, Fletcher was involved in the early clinical investigations of penicillin. He administered the first injection of penicillin to a human patient in 1941. His name appears on the tablet in the penicillin memorial rose garden outside Oxford Botanical Gardens.

He joined the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit in South Wales as Director in 1945 until 1952. It was here that he became aware of the differences in interpreting the same chest x-rays by different observers - "observer error". To ensure better standardisation he designed a semi-quantitive scoring system which is now used worldwide. For his work on pneumoconiosis he was awarded the CBE in 1952.

In 1952, Fletcher wished to return to general medicine. Sir John McMichael invited him to join as a consultant physician and a reader in clinical epidemiology (1952 - 1973) at the Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital, where he later became Professor (Emeritus) of Clinical Epidemiology, 1973 -1976. He spent 20 years studying the history of bronchitis and emphysema, and showed conclusively that chronic bronchitis sufferers would improve if they stopped smoking rather than take antibiotics.

From 1958 until 1965 he presented the BBC series Your Life In Their Hands and Television Doctor, 1969-1970. He continued as a medical advisor with the BBC until 1972. He was criticised by the medical profession for giving information to patients concerning their illnesses as it was deemed as harmful to the patient.

Fletcher was instrumental in founding Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) (see SA/ASH) and was their first chairman (1971 - 1978) and later their president (1979 - 1995). In April 1995 he gave an account of the early years of ASH to the symposium "Ashes to Ashes".

He retired in 1976, spending much if his time in the Isle of White. He died on 15 Dec 1995 after suffering a stroke.

In 1965 Dorothy Silberston convened the first meeting of the Relatives of Mentally Ill Patients in Cambridge. Up until 1972 she was secretary of this organisation whose members aims were to learn more about mental illness, support each other and to campaign for health service improvements. Her involvement originated from personal experiences, her daughter Catherine having been diagnosed and hospitalized with schizophrenia in 1961. Dorothy was one of the 400 people who contacted John Pringle after reading his article, 'A Case of Schizophrenia', in The Times, May 1970. She went on to become one of the founder members of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. During the 1970s she contributed to the NSF publication Living with Schizophrenia by the Relatives and helped draft NSF comments on the DHSS Review of the Mental Health Act 1959 and their memorandum to the Royal Commission on the NHS (1977).

Between 1982 and 1997 she was member and later chair of the NSF Medico-legal Committee and Honorary Parliamentary Officer and did significant work on the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill introduced in 1981 by Lord Mottistone. Between 1982 and 1995 she held positions as an elected NSF Council member, co-opted Council member and Vice Chairman. From 1996 to 2001 Dorothy Silberston was Honorary Vice-President of the NSF. She resigned from the Fellowship after it changed its name to Rethink.

Dorothy Silberston was very active in local politics and the community. In 1960-1961 she helped establish the Cambridge Association for the Advancement of State Education and from 1969-1973 she served as a Cambridge County Councillor (Labour). She was awared the MBE for her work in connection with the NSF.

From 1973-1980 Dorothy Silberston held the post of Keeper of Nuffield Place, former home of William Morris, Lord Nuffield. In her latter years she continued her involvement with the house (designed by Oswald Partridge Milne in 1914), its history, and survival as a place of historical interest open to the public. She died in 2006.

The National Schizophrenia Fellowship, a registered charity, was founded by journalist John Pringle in 1972 with the aim of acting as the national organisation for all matters concerning people with experience of schizophrenia and related conditions, their families, carers and dependants. Its origins dated back to the public response to an open letter by Pringle to the Times in May 1970 in which he described his own experience of dealing with schizophrenia in a family member. The letter, as well as describing the huge difficulties faced by carers, highlighted problems caused by the closure of large hospitals and lack of adequate community services.

The NSF National Office was based at Kingston upon Thames. It was supplemented by regional offices and Regional Committees, Project Commiteees and a network over 150 local groups. The Groups were run by volunteer co-ordinators, mostly relatives caring for an individual suffering from schizophrenia. Local groups met regularly and organised a range of activities to inform local people, provide support, influence local professionals and liaise with other agencies. The NSF was financed by charitable grants and donations, fund-raising, Local and Health Authority contracts, legacies and members' subscriptions, with about 5% of total income received directly from central government.

By the early 1990s the NSF had over 6000 members, ran over 150 regional projects in the housing, employment and day care fields all over the country. An Advice and Advocacy Service was also provided, answering thousands of queries each year on all apsects of the care and treatment of severe mental illness as well as welfare benefits, carers' problems, accommodation, holidays and other related issues.

The NSF campaigned vigorously for the rate of mental hospital closures to be slowed to allow for the proper development of community facilities for mentally ill people, and for more trained social workers and community psychiatric nurses as well as small domestic style units for those unable to cope outside hospital.

National conferences were held regularly as part of a national and regional programme of training to raise awareness of mental illness. Courses were run for social workers, psychiatrists, GPs, police, and the probation service. The NSF changed its name to Rethink in July 2002. At this point the organisation altered its focus to encompass all severe mental illnesses. Rethink currently have a membership of over 8300. The Head office is in Finsbury Square, London.

Sir Edward Eric 'Bill' Pochin K.B.E. (1909-1990) was a scientist of international stature: a physician, endocrinologist, radiobiologist , and an acclaimed authority on radiological protection. In his clinical career he was involved with the care of patients, teaching and research, and subsequently with development of protection techniques and the setting of standards and their application.

Born, 1895; Educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, 1910-1914; Studies medicine at St Mary's London, and becomes involved with Student Christian Movement, 1916-1922; sets up in general practice in Tavistock, 1922; Starts a Birth Control Clinic in Aldershot, 1932; Sets up the Aldershot and District Women's Welfare Centre and starts a Birth Control Clinic in Guildford, 1934; Sets up Sex Education Centre in Aldershot, 1936; Involved in the beginning of the Marriage Guidance Council, 1937; sets up private practice in Harley Street, 1937; Moves his practice from Harley Street to Baker Street, 1948; died, 1988.

Frederick Gordon Spear (1895-1980) MRCS, LRCP, DTM and H, DPH, was a radiologist. Spear originally studied tropical medicine, and spent some time at the Baptist Mission Hospital at Yakusu in the Belgian Congo in the early 1920s. In 1923 he returned to England and joined the Strangeways Research Laboratory, where he worked until his retirement, serving latterly as Deputy Director.

Wilson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1895. He was educated at King's College, London and Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, London where he undertook his first research at the suggestion of W.W.C. Topley. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War, rejoining Topley at Charing Cross in 1920 as Demonstrator in Bacteriology. He moved with Topley, first to Manchester University as Lecturer in 1923, and then to the newly established London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) as Reader in Bacteriology in 1927. In 1930 he was appointed to the Chair of Bacteriology Applied to Hygiene, a post he held until 1947.

Wilson's researches, initially with Topley, encompassed the Salmonella group of bacteria, brucellosis and tuberculosis, milk hygiene and the control of diphtheria. Topley and Wilson established courses for the Diploma of Bacteriology at both Manchester and the LSHTM, and their celebrated text book Principles of bacteriology and immunity (first published in 1929) had its origins in these courses. After Topley's death in 1944, Wilson continued to revise the publication with A. A. Miles, reaching a seventh edition in 1984. With the approach of the Second World War, Wilson was involved in the planning of the Emergency Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) and became its Director in 1941. He continued as Director of the peacetime PHLS until his retirement in 1963, when he returned to LSHTM as Honorary Lecturer in Microbiology. Wilson died in 1987. He was elected FRS in 1978 (Buchanan Medal 1967). He was knighted in 1962.

Sir George White Pickering FRCP, FRS (1904-1980), was Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford.

Hare was a bacteriologist of repute working through an exciting period in the history of the discipline. Among other activities he reported on the scientific value of bacteriological experiments undertaken in German concentration camps during World War Two [see PP/HAR/B.7]. He was also an historian of the subject. Born, 1899; Royal Masonic School, Bushey, Herts, 1910-1917; Birkbeck College, 1918-1919; St Mary's Hospital: LMSSA, MBBS, 1919-1924; Research scholarship, Institute of Pathology and Research, St Mary's, 1925; Assistant, Inoculation dept, St Mary's, 1926-1930; 1st Assistant, Research Laboratories, Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London, 1931-1936; Canada: Research Associate, Connaught Laboratories, University of Toronto, Lecturer in Department of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine; largely responsible for planning and building of Canadian Government penicillin plant at University of Toronto, 1936-1946; Professor of Bacteriology, University of London, 1946-1964; Honorary Consulting Bacteriologist, St Thomas's Hospital, 1951; Member of Council of Wright-Fleming Institute, 1952-1960; Emeritus Professor of Bacteriology, University of London, 1964; died, 1986.

Physiologist; Nobel laureate.

See the description of the collection for details of the family history, where it is set out as part of an explanation of how the collection is divided into various sections.

Donald Hunter was Director of the MRC Department for Research in Industrial Medicine, at the London Hospital, and author of Diseases of Occupations. Born, 1898; Student at the London Hospital, 1915; Surgeon-probationer RNVR HMS Faulknor, 1918; MB BS London, MRCS LRCP, 1920; MD London, 1922; Member of RCP, 1923; Research fellowship, Harvard, 1926; Assistant Physician, London Hospital, 1927; FRCP, 1929; Goulstonian Lecture, RCP, 1930; Curator of London Hospital Medical School Museum, 1933-1963; Croonian Lecture, RCP, 1942; Director of the MRC Department for Research in Industrial Medicine at the London Hospital, 1943; First editor of British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1944; Hon DIH Society of Apothecaries, 1960; Retirement from London Hospital, 1963; Middlesex Hospital, lecturing on occupational diseases, 1963-1967; Guy's Hospital, lecturing on occupational diseases, 1967-1971; died, 1977.

John Chassar Moir was the first Nuffield Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Oxford, a post he held from 1937 to 1967. At University College Hospital, London, he and Dr Harold Ward Dudley had isolated the new drug ergometrine, responsible for the traditional clinical effects of ergot, which was rapidly and universally adopted for the prevention of haemorrhage after childbirth, and he had written a thesis on rotation of the foetus in childbirth for which he gained his MD and a gold medal from Edinburgh University. At Oxford, he built up the Radcliffe Infirmary, studied the use of diagnostic x-rays in obstetrics, and made an outstanding contribution to gynaecological surgery, the repair of vesico-vaginal fistulae. He was for several years the co-editor and for the sixth edition sole editor, of Munro-Kerr's well-known textbook Operative Obstetrics. He became president of the obstetrics and gynaecology section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and in 1974 was made an honorary fellow. Further biographical details can be found in the obituaries in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet.

Born, 1920; Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Ipswich Hospital; died, 2001.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing was born in Mannheim, Germany, on 14 August 1840; his father was a civil servant of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Krafft-Ebing went to school and university at Heidelberg, where he studied Medicine. His maternal grandfather, Anton Mittermaier, held the chair of Criminal Law there and is considered to have had a significant effect on his grandson's choice of specialisation. After qualifying in 1863, Krafft-Ebing obtained the post of assistant physician at the Illenau asylum near Baden Baden. He was to remain in regular contact with this institution for the remainder of his life, and particularly with two of his former colleagues there, Heinrich Schüle and Wilhelm Erb. After leaving Illenau in 1869, Krafft-Ebing practised as a nerve doctor in Baden Baden, and after military service in the Franco-Prussian War, as director of a local electrotherapeutic institute. Following a brief period as adjunct professor of Psychiatry at the university of Strasbourg in 1872, Krafft-Ebing was appointed to his first post in the Austrian domains, as medical superintendent of Feldhof, the newly established mental asylum of the province of Styria, and to an associated adjunct chair of Psychiatry at the university of Graz.

In 1880 Krafft-Ebing resigned the asylum post to concentrate on teaching and research. He was already a profilic author, specialising in forensic psychiatry, and his first major work, Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Psychopathologie (1875) was the first textbook in the German-speaking world to concentrate on the interface between psychiatry and the law. With his three-volume Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie auf klinischer Grundlage (1879-80) he established his reputation as a leader in clinical psychiatry. In 1882 Krafft-Ebing was made full professor and five years later Neurology was added to his chair. In 1889 he obtained one of the chairs of Psychiatry at Vienna; then in 1892 he succeeded Theodor Meynert in the second chair, which was associated with a small psychiatric clinic in the university's general hospital. At the same time Krafft-Ebing became president of the Verein für Psychiatrie und forensische Pyschologie, the leading professional organisation for psychiatrists in Austria. In 1886 Krafft-Ebing published Psychopathia sexualis, the work for which he would become best known. In effect this was a catalogue of case histories of abnormal sexual fantasies and practices drawn from numerous sources. Although intended as a manual for the medical and legal professions it soon gained a wider readership, and as one edition followed another more and longer case histories were included, and a greater proportion of the cases described were Krafft-Ebing's own. To some extent the book itself generated the case histories, as patients read it and were moved to correspond with its author, and sometimes visit him. The work ultimately ran to 17 German-language editions, and was translated into at least 5 foreign languages (earliest English edition 1892). In addition to his institutional roles, Krafft-Ebing practiced privately. In 1886 he founded a sanatorium in the suburbs of Graz, Mariagrün, for wealthy patients suffering from a range of nervous disorders, especially neurasthenia. It was in this private sphere that Krafft-Ebing found greater professional and scientific satisfaction, and he resigned his chair at Vienna in early 1902 to concentrate on writing and the sanatorium in Graz. However, his health was not good and he died on 22 December 1902, aged sixty-two, just after completing the 12th edition of Psychopathia sexualis.

George Macdonald CMG, MD, FRCP, Ch.B, DPH, DTM (1903-1967) was a Professor of Tropical Hygiene, 1946-1967, and Director of the Ross Institute, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1945-1967. He was an eminent malariologist who is particularly noted for his work on mathematical modelling of the epidemiology of malaria and other vector-borne diseases, in particular schistosomiasis. He was relatively early in perceiving the value of computer analysis in this area.

Joan Malleson was an important figure in ALRA and the FPA/North Kensington Clinic, she undertook pioneering early work in sex counselling. She died in 1956.

Born, 1906; GCVO,FRCP; Physician, clinical haematologist; died, 1982.

Rudolf Karl Freudenberg was born, 1908; Studied medicine at the Universities of Kiel, Munich and Freiburg; Qualified MD, 1932; Became house officer in surgery in Berlin, 1932; Married Gerda Vorster, 1932; Lost job on account of Jewish background; Obtained job at University Neuro-histological Institute, Vienna, 1935; Did work on physiology of insulin coma treatment, 1936; Invited to join the staff of Moorcroft House, a private psychiatric hospital in Hillingdon, Middlesex, and moved to England, 1937; Obtained British medical qualifications (Scottish Triple), 1939; During World War Two was involved in primate research on leucotomy; Obtained Diploma in Psychiatric Medicine, 1945; consultant and Deputy Superintendent at Netherne Hospital, Surrey, 1947; Physician Superintendent at Netherne, 1951-1973; Senior Principal Medical Officer and Head of Medical Mental Section at the Ministry of Health, 1961-1964; President of Psychiatry Section, Royal Society of Medicine, 1965-1966; Establishment of Netherne Postgraduate Medical Centre (later the Freudenberg Centre), 1969; retired from Netherne, 1973; Senior Principal Medical Officer and Chief Advisor on Mental Health Research at the Ministry of Health, 1973-1977, died, 1983.

Gerda Freudenberg was born, 1906; Qualified MD at Freiburg, 1932; Worked in medical posts in Berlin and married Rudolf Karl Freudenberg, 1933; Lost job in Berlin on account of Jewish background, 1935; Found jobs in Vienna, and later Berne, 1936; Joined her husband in England, with their first son, 1938; Worked with League of Friends of Netherne Hospital; Voluntary work for the Council for Music in Hospital, 1947-; Qualification for UK medical practice, 1950; died, 1995.

Siegmund Heinrich Foulkes, FRCPsych (1898-1976), was a psychoanalyst, a pioneer of group analytic psychotherapy and founder of the Group-Analytic Society (London). Elizabeth Therese Fanny Foulkes (née Marx) was his third wife and also a relative. She was a co-founder of the Group-Analytic Society (London) and deeply involved in group analytic psychotherapy. They were both German Jews who emigrated to England in the 1930s.

The Association was started in 1937 following dissatisfaction amongst ophthalmologists with the current arrangements for charging patients (many hospitals were giving free prescriptions). Also it was felt that the National Ophthalmic Treatment Board needed further support, that women should not be excluded from ophthalmic benefit, that the Ophthalmic Committee of the British Medical Association was inadequate and that ophthalmologists needed to conduct their own medico-political affairs. Inevitably, one of the issues which concerned this body throughout the early 1940s was planning for a National Eye Service. In 1946 the Association amalgamated with the reconstituted Faculty of Ophthalmologists.

Unknown

Plans to form a British Microcirculation Society came to fruition in 1963 when the decision was made to hold the 4th European Conference on Microcirculation in Cambridge in 1966. The European Society had emerged from the first European Conference in 1960 and Dr P.A.G. Monro of the University of Cambridge Anatomy School, who was on the Committee, was instrumental in setting up the British Society and was its Secretary until 1980.

The Association was founded in 1911, but further details of its historical background, or that of Osteopathic Trusts Ltd., is not known.

In 1977 the Medical Research Council's Medical Commission on Accident Prevention held a conference with Newcastle Department of Child Health on `Children, the environment and accidents'. The conference highlighted the need for a body specifically aimed at child accident prevention, and a steering group was set up to investigate the establishment of such a body. As a result, the Joint Committee on Childhood Accident Prevention was set up in 1979 for a trial period of 3 years, with a grant from the King's Fund. The Joint Committee aimed to initiate and coordinate research into childhood accidents and their prevention, bringing together people from the fields of health services, engineering, design, standards and education. At the end of the trial period the Joint Committee obtained charitable status and became the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT), funded by the Department of Health and Social Security. Originally, CAPT had six Trustees, a Council of Management of 33 members, an Executive Committee of eight members and a small full-time staff with a paediatrician as part-time Medical Secretary. In 1988 the Executive Committee was replaced by a Professional Committee and a Management Committee. CAPT disseminates information in a variety of ways: working parties, made up of Trust members and co-opted experts, undertake research and produce reports for presentation at seminars; the Trust's resource centre provides an information and advisory service to those involved in child injury prevention; and CAPT cooperates with other bodies to produce publications such as books, factsheets and videos for both general and specialist consumption. For further details of CAPT's work see their website at http://www.capt.org.uk.

The Camberwell Council on Alcoholism (CCA) promoted preventive and diagnostic work in the study of alcoholism as a disease and in the treatment of alcoholics. Founded in 1963, it was the first of the community councils on alcoholism to be established in the UK. It was active in an area of south London where a very visible vagrant alcoholic problem met a growing interest among the doctors of the Maudsley Hospital in the problems of alcoholism as a disease: in particular Dr Griffith Edwards of the Maudsley was very active in setting up this local council. Recent theoretical developments concerning the problem (mainly from the USA) met the 1960s trend towards the development of community-based organisations to deal with social problems, committed to a self-help approach and involved in direct action, education of the public and campaigning. During this early period of the CCA's history the economic climate was favourable, with public money being available to fund projects such as these.

The CCA became involved in the problems created by alcohol over a wide field from the very obvious problem of the vagrant alcoholic to the unsuspectedly large problem of female alcoholism. The pattern of the CCA's activity was to set up groups to deal with a particular problem (e.g. provision of hostel accommodation for homeless alcoholics, setting an Alcohol Education Centre) and then withdraw as these groups became self-supporting ventures. It also liaised with other organisations doing related work. The CCA became inactive in the early 1980s.