It is probable that W Downes is William Downes, who became a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1822, and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1823. William Downes practised in Handsworth in Staffordshire.
The biographical information of Alexander Wilson is currently unavailable.
Albert Carless was born in Surrey, in 1863. He was educated at Carrington Lodge, Richmond; at King's College School, London; at King's College London, where he won the senior scholarship in 1885; and at King's College Hospital. He had a distinguished undergraduate career, qualifying for the gold medal in surgery at the BS examination in 1887 and at the MS examination in the following year. In the King's College medical faculty he won the gold medal and prize for botany, the junior scholarship, the second-year scholarship, the senior medical scholarship, the Warneford prize and the Leathes prize. He was appointed house surgeon to King's College Hospital in 1885 and three years later he became Sambrooke surgical registrar. He was elected assistant surgeon to the Hospital in 1889, having the good fortune to serve under Joseph Lister; became surgeon in 1898, and from 1902 to 1918 was Professor of Surgery at King's College in succession to William Watson Cheyne. He accepted a commission as major a la suite in the territorial service in 1912, and was gazetted colonel AMS in 1917, serving at first as surgeon to the 4th London General Hospital and later as consulting surgeon to the Eastern Command; for his services he was created CBE in 1919. He retired from surgical work on demobilisation in 1919, resigned his hospital appointments, and devoted himself during the rest of his life to philanthropic work. He acted as honorary medical director at Dr Barnardo's Homes from 1919 to 1926. He died in 1936.
Sir Herbert Taylor was born in 1775. While his family travelled on the continent he received private tuition and became a good linguist. Through an acquaintance with Lord Grenville, he obtained a job in the foreign office where his knowledge of languages was useful. Taylor met Prince Frederick, Duke of York (1763-1827), in 1793. He was given a commission as cornet in the 2nd dragoon guards, and promoted to Lieutenant, in 1974. He remained with the Duke of York as assistant secretary. He accompanied Lord Cornwallis to Ireland as his aide-de-camp, military secretary and private secretary, in 1798. He became private secretary to the Duke of York, from 1799-1805, receiving promotions to major, and lieutenant colonel. He became Private Secretary to the King in 1805, and then to Queen Charlotte after the establishment of the regency. He was knighted in 1819. He was made Colonel of the 83rd foot in 1823, and promoted to Lieutenant-General in 1825. He became deputy secretary of war in the War Office in 1827, and the King made him his principal aide-de-camp. The following year he became Adjutant-General of the Forces, and then later, Private Secretary to William IV. He retired in 1837 and died in 1839. Taylor had been a confidential friend of the Duke of York, and wrote the Memoirs of the last Illness and Decease of HRH the Duke of York (London, 1827).
Samuel Hall Wass was born in 1907. He was educated at University College Nottingham, and came to Guy's Hospital as a preclinical student in 1928. He qualified in 1934, became FRCS in 1935 and MS of London University in 1936. His appointment to the consulting staff was delayed because of the World War Two. He was a clinical assistant at St Mark's Hospital from 1937 to 1939, where he excellenced in diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the colon and rectum. Before his election to the consulting staff of Guy's Hospital in 1946, Wass had already served on the staff of the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children, St John's Hospital, Lewisham, and St Olave's Hospital, Bermondsey. He was also appointed Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons and lectured on odontoma and other affections of the jaw. He served on the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons for nine years between 1955 and 1964. He also examined in surgery for the University of London. He was appointed a governor of Guy's Hospital in 1964 and was elected Chairman of the Medical Committee and also of the School Council in 1966. He died in 1970.
William James Erasmus Wilson, generally known as Erasmus Wilson, was born in Marylebone, in 1809. He was educated at Dartford Grammar School and at Swanscombe in Kent. At the age of 16 he became a resident pupil with George Langstaff, Surgeon to the Cripplegate Dispensary, and began to attend the anatomical lectures given by John Abernethy at St Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1831 he became assistant to Jones Quain, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the newly formed University College, and was soon afterwards appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy. He lectured upon anatomy and physiology at Middlesex Hospital, in 1840 and became assistant editor of The Lancet. He was also Consulting Surgeon to the St Pancras Infirmary, and was elected FRS in 1845. At the Royal College of Surgeons Erasmus Wilson sat on the Council from 1870-1884, was Vice-President in 1879 and 1880, and President in 1881. In 1870, at an expense of £5,000, he founded the Chair of Dermatology, of which he was the occupant till 1878. He became particularly interested in the study of Egyptian antiquities, and in 1877 he paid the cost (about £10,000) of the transport of 'Cleopatra's Needle' to London. He was President of the Biblical Archaeological Society, served the office of Master of the Clothworkers' Company, and was President of the Medical Society of London in 1878 after he had given the Oration in 1876. He died in 1884.
William Prosser was born in c 1776. He was on the staff at the Monmouth Hospital in the early nineteenth century. He died in 1845. His grandson was Thomas Prosser FRCS (1820-1870), and his great grandson was Thomas Gilbert Prosser MRCS, from whom the papers came.
The title of this volume can be translated as Pharmacopoeia in use at Chester Hospital. Chester Hospital probably refers to Chester Royal Infirmary, founded in 1755, and known as Chester Infirmary until 1914.
'Archibald John Richardson, Draper, Hotiern, Doncaster.' is written at the front if the volume, in the same hand as the prescriptions. It may be the name of the author, or a note written by the author. No further biographical information is available.
A card is pasted inside the back cover, which reads 'In affectioniate rememberance of Henry Motherby of Henshall, who died on the 26th December 1870, aged 41 years.' No further biographical information is available.
The name 'Pitt' is written on the inside of the front cover. No further biographical information is available.
William Robert Gibson was born in 1872. He received his medical education at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and was at one time assistant medical superintendent at St Saviour's Hospital, Dulwich. He practised for many years in Madras, India, where he was Chief Medical Officer to the Madras and South Mahratta Railway. He was a generous benefactor to the College and donated £38, 803 during 1954-1955. the Fellows Common Room was named the "John Cherry Gibson Room" on 14 Jul 1955, and on the same day the gift of his house in Ealing with its contents was reported to Council. He was awarded the Honorary Medal as an out-standing benefactor in 1956. He died in St Bartholomew's in 1959.
Ronald Francis Woolmer was born in 1908. He was educated at Rugby School; University College, Oxford; and St Thomas's Hospital where he attained B M, B Ch in 1932. He took up anaesthetics and became Senior Resident Anaesthetist at St Thomas's in 1934. He then became Resident Medical Officer and St Thomas's Home from 1936-1938 and then became Anaesthetic Registrar at Westminster Hospital in 1939. During World War Two, he served in the Royal Navy, attaining the rank of Surgeon Commander. After the War, Woolmer obtained an appointment as Senior Lecturer and then Reader in Anaesthetics in Bristol University. During this time he helped with the foundation of the South Western Society of Anaesthetics. He took over the Research Department of the Faculty of Anaesthetists in the Royal College of Surgeons in 1957, becoming Professor in 1959. He was founder and first President of the Biological Engineering Society, a Vice-President of the International Federation for Medical Electronics, and a founder member of the Anaesthetic Research group. He became the first medical man to deliver the Kelvin lecture to the Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1961. He published a book, The Conquest of Pain (1961), which was aimed at lay audiences, and was also awarded the Henry Hill Hickman medal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1962. He died in 1962.
John Kenworthy Walker, son of Sir William Walker (1753-1825) and Martha Kenworthy, obtained his MB (Edinburgh and London) in 1811, and his MD (Cantab) in 1820. He practised at Deanhead, near Huddersfield, and was Consulting Physician to the Huddersfield Infirmary. He published two articles in the Gentleman's Magazine, 'On the Primitive Language' in Volume 26, 1846, and 'On Roman Inscriptions in Britain' in Volume 37, 1852. Walker's last entry in the Medical Directory (provincial) was in 1873.
George Kerr Grimmer studied his BA in New Brunswick, Canada in 1887, and his MB, CM at Edinburgh in 1892. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh in 1900. He was a Junior Demonstrator of Anatomy and an Assistant Demonstrator of Practical Physiology, at Edinburgh University. He was a member of the Edinburgh Medical and Chirurgical Society. He was Clinical Assistant in the Ear and Throat department of the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh, and the Medical Officer for the Health Service at Queensferry. He died in 1942.
Richard Wheeler Haines obtained his MB BS in 1929, and also became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in the same year. During his career Haines was Assistant Anatomist at the University of Cape Town; a lecturer in Anatomy at University College, Cardiff; a Fellow of the Zoological Society; a member of the Anatomical Society; a lecturer and Department Director at the Anatomy Department of St Thomas' Hospital; Professor of Anatomy at the University of Baghdad; Professor of Anatomy at the University of Lagos Medical College in Nigeria; and Professor of Anatomy at the University of Makerere, Kampala, Uganda.
Antonio Scarpa was born in Lorenzaga di Motta di Livenza, in 1752. He studied medicine at Padua, obtaining his doctorate in 1770. He was offered a chair in anatomy and theoretical surgery at the University of Modena, in 1772. He was appointed Professor of Human Anatomy at the University of Pavia, in 1783. He was also appointed director of the surgical clinic, in 1787. He held both chairs until 1804. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) invited Scarpa to return to teaching surgery, in 1805, giving him a present of a box of silver and ivory surgical instruments. He eventually resigned from the teaching of surgery in 1813, but continued as dean of the faculty and director of medical studies and the anatomical laboratories. Scarpa founded the subject of orthopaedic surgery, first described the anatomy of the clubbed foot accurately and wrote a classic account of hernia. He recognised that atherosclerosis was a disease of the arteries and reported causalgia in 1832. He was also one of the first to give an accurate account of the nerve supply to the heart as well as the anatomy of the membranous labyrinth with its afferent nerves. He also introduced the concept of arteriosclerosis. He died in 1832 and his head was preserved. It is still in the museum of the History of the University [of Pavia?], but it is not known where Scarpa's body was buried.
It was previously thought that the volumes were written by Christopher Lloyd, Professor of History at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. This was due to letters inserted into the volumes from Christopher Lloyd to Jessie Dobson (Curator of the Hunterian Museum), in approximately 1960. However, Christopher Lloyd appears to be an academic rather than a medically qualified surgeon, and therefore was unlikely to be Sugeon Captain at Haslar Royal Naval Hospital in 1932.
It is possible that the volume is the work of Jack Leonard Sagar Coulter, Lloyd's co-editor on the Medicine and the Navy 1200-1900 series. Coulter was a Surgeon Captain and Surgeon Commander in the Royal Navy. However, according to the Medical Directories, Coulter was still at Bristol General Hospital in 1932. It is also possible that John Joyce Keevil, editor of earlier volumes in the Medicine and the Navy series, was the author of the volumes.
Joseph Henry Green was born in London, in 1791. He was educated at Ramsgate, at Hammersmith, and then for three years in Berlin and Hanover. He was apprenticed to his uncle, the surgeon Henry Cline, in 1800 and acted as Cline's anatomical prosector and gave regular demonstrations on practical anatomy. He began to practise in 1816, when he was formally appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy at St Thomas's Hospital. He was elected Lecturer on Anatomy and Physiology jointly with Astley Cooper in 1818, and became Surgeon to St Thomas's Hospital in 1820. He then undertook the Lectureship on Surgery and Pathology in the United Schools of St Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals, again conjointly with Astley Cooper. He gave a series of lectures on comparative anatomy as Hunterian Professor at the College of Surgeons, in which he dealt for the first time in England with the whole of the animal sub-kingdoms, from 1824-1828. He was elected FRS in 1825, and was appointed Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy, a position he held until 1852. When King's College (London) was founded in 1830 Green was nominated Professor of Surgery and held the post until 1886. He continued in office as Surgeon to St Thomas's Hospital, resigning in 1853. He became a Member of the Court of Examiners in 1840. He was elected President in 1849 and again in 1858, having given the Hunterian Oration in 1840 and 1847. He became President of the General Medical Council in 1860. He died in 1863.
William Clift was born in 1775. He was apprenticed to John Hunter in 1792 and had sole charge of his museum after his death. He made copies of many of Hunter's manuscripts before the destruction of the originals by his brother-in-law Sir Everard Home. Clift was then conservator of the Hunterian Museum after the collection was transferred to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1800. He continued in this role for nearly 50 years compiling an osteological catalogue of the museum and researching the collections.
Richard Owen was born in 1804. He studied at the University of Edinburgh Medical School from 1824. He moved to London and became apprenticed to John Abernethy, in 1825. He was made Assistant Curator to the Hunterian Museum, in 1826. Owen engaged in private practice; lectured in comparative anatomy; worked with the collections in the museum; founded various societies; and made discoveries such as the identification of a sub-order of Saurian reptiles which he named Dinosauria. He became Joint Conservator of the Hunterian Museum with William Clift in 1842. Owen worked on the natural history collections of the British Museum, and campaigned for them to form a separate museum, which was opened in 1881 (now the Natural History Museum). He was knighted in 1884, and died in 1892.
Sir William MacCormac was born in Belfast in 1836. He was educated at the Belfast Royal Academical Institution and afterwards studied at Dublin and Paris. He entered Queen's College, Belfast, in 1851, as a student of engineering, and gained scholarships in engineering during his first and second years. He then studied the arts and graduated B.A. at the Queen's University in 1855, and M.A. in 1858. He won the senior scholarship in natural philosophy in 1856 and was admitted M.D. in the following year. The honorary degree of M.Ch. was conferred upon him in 1879, and the D.Sc. in 1882 with the Gold Medal of the University. The honorary degrees of M.D. and M.Ch. were also bestowed upon him by the University of Dublin in 1900. After graduation he studied surgery in Berlin, where he made lasting friendships with Langenbeck, Billroth, and von Esmarch. He practised in Belfast from 1864-1870 becoming successively Surgeon, Lecturer on Clinical Surgery, and Consulting Surgeon to the Belfast General Hospital. In the Franco-German War in 1870 he undertook hospital duties at Metz. He was given the rare distinction of an ad eundem Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in 1871 and was elected Assistant Surgeon to St. Thomas's Hospital, which had just moved to the new buildings on the Albert Embankment. He became full Surgeon in 1873 and lectured on surgery for twenty years. He was elected Consulting Surgeon to the hospital and Emeritus Lecturer on Clinical Surgery after resigning his active posts in 1893. He was knioghted in 1881. He was President of the Medical Society of London in 1880, and of the Metropolitan Branch of the British Medical Association in 1890. He was Surgeon to the French, Italian, Queen Charlotte's, and the British Lying-in Hospitals, and was an Examiner in Surgery at the University of London and for Her Majesty's Naval, Military, and Indian Medical Services. He was created a baronet in 1897, was appointed Surgeon-in-Ordinary to the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII, and was decorated K.C.V.O. in 1898, in recognition of services rendered to the Prince when he injured his knee. At the Royal College of Surgeons MacCormac was elected a Member of the Council in 1883, and of the Court of Examiners in 1887. He served as President from 1896-1900, being specially re-elected on the last occasion that he might occupy the Chair at the centenary of the College. He delivered the Bradshaw Lecture in 1893, and was Hunterian Orator in 1899. He was created K.C.B. in 1901, and was gazetted Hon. Serjeant Surgeon to King Edward VII. He died in 1901. MacCormac was the best decorated practising surgeon of his generation. He was, in addition to the honours already mentioned, an Hon. Member of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg ; an Hon. Fellow or Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, Paris, Brussels, Munich, and Rome; a Commander of the Legion of Honour; of the Orders of Dannebrog of Denmark, of the Crown of Italy, and of Takovo of Serbia; of the Crown of Prussia, St. Iago of Portugal, North Star of Sweden, Ritter-Kreuz of Bavaria, Merit of Spain, and the Medjidie.
No biographical material was available at the time of compilation.
William Maiden was born in Strood, Kent in 1768. He was apprenticed to Joseph Coventry Lowdell for £100 in 1783. He received his medical education at St Thomas's Hospital and qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1790. At St Thomas's he was a pupil of Sir Astley Cooper. Maiden travelled to Paris where he continued his medical studies in c 1790. He returned in 1792 and succeeded the practice of Mr English at Stratford in Essex. Maiden was the surgeon who treated Mr Thomas Tipple, a gentleman who had received a severe chest injury through being impaled by the shaft of a chaise, in 1812. Mr Tipple recovered and lived for a further 10 years. Maiden published the details of the case due to the disbelief from the medical profession that a patient could survive such an injury. After Mr Tipple's death, his widow requested the body to be examined. The post-mortem was carried out by Sir William Blizard, William Clift, Harkness, and J W K Parkinson. The anterior wall of the chest of Mr Tipple and the shaft itself were presented to the Royal College of Surgeons Museum by William Maiden in 1823. They were destroyed by enemy action in May 1941. He died in 1845.
Alexander John Gaspard Marcet was born in Geneva in 1770. He attended Edinburgh University in 1794 and graduated Doctor of Medicine in 1797. He settled in London, and was admitted a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1799. He was also appointed Physician to the City dispensary in 1799. He was appointed Physician to Guy's Hospital in 1804. He was placed in charge of a temporary military hospital at Portsmouth in 1809, after which he returned to London and Guy's Hospital. Upon the death of his father-in-law he came into an ample fortune and began to withdraw from practice and devote himself to science and literature. He resigned his post at Guy's in 1819, and returned to Geneva, being appointed a member of the Representative Council, and an honorary Professor of Chemistry. He gave a course of lectures on Chemistry with Dr de la Rive, in 1820. He returned to England in 1821, and died in 1822. He was a fellow of the Royal and Geographical Societies, and an original promoter of the Medico-Chirurgical Society.
Douglas Wilson, of Bearsden, Glasgow, studied medicine at Glasgow University, finishing MB ChB in 1911. In this year he also registered with the General Medical Council. While living in Glasgow, Wilson was Honorary Surgeon at the Surgical Wards and Throat and Nose Department at the West Infirmary, Glasgow; Honorary Surgeon of the Gynaecological Wards at the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow; and Honorary Surgeon of the Indoor Department at the Glasgow Royal Maternity and Women's Hospital. At some point before 1921 Wilson relocated to Wanganui, New Zealand, where he worked in Wanganui Hospital.
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 Demonstrater 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.
No biogrpahical information relating to Johannes Mulaimus was available at the time of compilation.
H Frantz made drawings of specimens of congenital dislocation of the hip, at the Musee Dupuytren, Paris. These were reproduced as illustrations in Sir Thomas Fairbank's article "Congenital Dislocation of the Hip", published in the British Journal of Surgery, volume 17, 1929-1930. No other biographical information about Frantz is available.
Sir (Harold Arthur) Thomas Fairbank was an Orthopaedic Surgeon at King's College Hospital. He was President of the British Orthopaedic Association in 1929 when he delivered the lecture on which the above mentioned article is based.
Walter Dickson was a student of medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1841. Currently no other biographical information is available.
Maurice Henry King was born in Hatton, Ceylon, in 1927. He was educated at Cambridge and St Thomas's Hospital, where he was a Bristowe Medalist in pathology in 1951, and a house physician in 1952. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London in 1971 and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1993. He spent 20 years as a doctor in Africa, in Northern Rhodesia, Uganda, Zambia and Kenya, spending five years in each. He started in Africa as a pathologist in 1957, and then moved into public health in 1963. He then began to write books to be used by health workers in the developing world. One of these was Primary Surgery (two volumes) which has been widely acclaimed as a standard work. He was a Medical Officer with the World Health Organisation working in Indonesia, from 1972-1977. He worked for the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) on projects to assemple appropriate technologies in district hospitals, and was based in Kenya, from 1979-1984. King is currently an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Leeds, and is concerned with demographic entrapment.
Homer Tyrrell Lane was born in America, in 1876. He had experience as an educator at the George Junior Republic. He became Superintendent of the Little Commonwealth, in Evershot, Dorset, England, from 1913-1918. It was a co-educational community run for children and young people, often categorised as delinquents. He was interested in offenders and expressive forms of education, and also worked as a psychotherapist. He pioneered what later became known as 'group therapy' and 'shared responsibility'. He died in 1925.
Henry Bird was educated at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He practised at Cinderford, East Dean, Gloucestershire; the Vicarage, Christow, Exeter; and at Wattisfield, Suffolk. He retired at Wattisfield, but later moved to Oldham. He died in 1892.
The West London Medico-Chirurgical Society was formed in 1882 on the proposal of Charles Robert Bell Keetley (FRCS). The Society was formed at the West London Hospital in 1882, attended by approximately 50 medical men. The first meeting of the society was on 6 Oct 1882, with the inaugural address given by Dr Hart Vinen, the first President. The purpose of the Society was the cultivation and promotion of the science and practice of medicine, for the use, advantage and association of medical men of the district of west London. The Society announced an annual lecture in 1884, to be called the Cavendish Lecture, after the natural philosopher, Henry Cavendish (1731-1810). Distinquished men of the day were invited to give the lecture, mostly on clinical subjects related to medicine and surgery, with occasional lectures on related subjects. Also in 1884 the Society resolved to publish their Proceedings. In 1896, this became the West London Medical Journal, edited by Mr Percy Dunn, and was published on a quarterly basis. The Society proposed the formation of a library in 1885, where the Proceedings of the Society could be accessed by all members. The Society contained Honorary members and Members. The affairs of the Society were carried out by a governing body of thirty three members, including a President, six honorary vice-Presidents, a Treasurer, two Secretaries, an editor of the Journal, an Editorial Secretary, a Librarian and twelve other Members.
Westminster Hospital was established in 1719 as an infirmary for the poor and sick, expanding in 1721 and 1735. It was named Westminster Hospital from 1760, and moved to a new site at Broad Sanctuary in 1834, where it remained until 1939. For the first hundred years, the physicians acted more as consultants, attending chiefly on Wednesdays when the admissions were made. The Resident Apothecary and his pupil had the most contact with patients. Surgical cases were generally bladder stones or bone diseases.
Sir William Blizard was born at Barn Elms, Surrey in 1743. He was apprenticed to a surgeon at Mortlake, and studied at the London Hospital. He attended the lectures of Sir Percival Pott at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He was appointed surgeon to the London Hospital in 1780 and in 1785 founded the London Hospital Medical School together with Dr MacLaurin. Blizard lectured at the Medical School on Anatomy, Physiology and Surgery, and improved the London Hospital. He attached importance to the observance of ceremony, for which he was often mocked. Blizard was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1787, and was Master of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1814, and President in 1822. Blizard had a considerable practice, and attended Batson's Coffee House in Cornhill to await consultations. He died in 1836.
The name Samuel Helbert Israel [?] is inscribed at the top of the title page, possibly indicating the author of the lecture notes. P I and R V Wallis in Eighteenth Century Medics (1988), list a Samuel H Israel as a surgeon in London in the 18th and 19th centuries. He was apprenticed to Thomas Blizard (Sir William Blizard's nephew and also a surgeon at the London Hospital) in 1802.
Thomas Wallace (1680-1763) was a physician practising in Whatfield, Suffolk. He is listed as a medic in P J and R V Wallis, Eighteenth Century Medics (1988).
Ward names are indicated in the volume, and research conducted by E Muirhead Little in 1928, for an article in the British Medical Journal, shows that the wards are in St Thomas's Hospital, London.
"Mr Eyles" cannot be specifically identified, but he is possibly either Albert Eyles, born in 1740, and an apothecary in Cirencester, Gloucestershire; or John Eyles, an apprentice surgeon in 1769. Both these men are listed in Wallis and Wallis, Eighteenth Century Medics (1988).
Dr Joseph Adams, who wrote the original manuscript from which this version was copied, was a pupil of John Hunter. He lived at Hatton Garden, Holborn, and published Life of John Hunter in 1817. Joseph Adams was a corresponding member of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in London, and the author of Observations on Morbid Poisons. He died before 1823.
Thomas Keate was born in 1745. He studied as a pupil at St George's Hospital, London, and then became an assistant to John Gunning, surgeon to the Hospital. In 1792, the position of surgeon became available to succeed Charles Hawkins, which was sharply contested by Keate and Everard Home. Keate was elected as surgeon. In 1793 he succeeded John Hunter as surgeon-general to the Army, he was an examiner at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1800, and Master of the College in 1802, 1809, and 1818. As a surgeon he was the first to tie the subclavian artery for aneurysm. However, his reputation at St George's Hospital for not being punctual and being negligent in his duties, caused him to resign his post in 1813. Keate was surgeon to the Prince of Wales (later George IV), and also surgeon to the Chelsea Hospital, where he died in 1821. Keate published Cases of Hydrocele and Hernia (London, 1788), and several controversial papers such as Observations on the Fifth Report of the Commissioners of Medical Enquiry (London, 1808).
Charles Dagge Seager was born in 1779. He was educated at Warminster Grammar School. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1801, and was one of the 300 founding members. He practised for many years in Cheltenham, c 1810; he appears also to have practised or resided in Guernsey. He retired to Clifton, c 1840. He became a Fellow of the College in 1843. Seager made a careful transcript of John Hunter's Lectures on Surgery, c 1800, originally taken down and arranged into aphorisms by John Hunter's friend, Charles Brandon Trye.
No biographical information was available at the time of compilation.
William Hunter was born in Long Calderwood, Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1718. Intended for the church, he attended the University of Glasgow from 1731-1736 where he was exposed to the philosophical teachings of Francis Hutcheson which turned him against the rigid dogmas of Presbyterian theology. An acquaintance with the physician William Cullen (1710-1790) interested him in the medical profession, and he studied with Cullen for three years. Eager to widen his experience, he went to London in 1741 where he worked as an assistant to William Smellie MD (1697-1763) and then from 1741-1742 with James Douglas, both of whom fostered his interest in obstetrics and gynaecology. Between 1741-1749 he was tutor to William George Douglas. In 1750 he was awarded an MD by the University of Glasgow. In 1749 he was appointed as a surgeon at Middlesex Hospital, England, before transferring for a brief time to the British Lying-in Hospital. He was particularly interested in obstetrics and in 1762 was called to attend Queen Charlotte on the birth of her first child. Two years later, he was appointed as Physician Extraordinary to Queen Charlotte and rapidly became the most sought after physician in London. His research, embodied in his Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774) and his practical example, including the establishment of specialist training for both physicians and midwives, did much to establish obstetrics as a respectable branch of medicine for the first time, though he took a perverse pleasure in continuing to describe himself as a despised 'man-midwife'. He died in 1783.
William Cooke was born in Wem, near Shrewsbury, in c 1785. At age 13 he was apprenticed to Mr Gwynne, a general practitioner in Wem. He came to London in 1802 and studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital under John Abernethy. Cooke passed his MRCS Eng in 1806, settling to practice in Plaistow, and later moving to the City of London. He received his MD from St Andrews in 1822. Cooke was a founding member of the Hunterian Society, in 1818. He translated Morgagni's De Sedibus (1761), in 1822, which was re-titled On the Treatment and Causes of Diseases Investigated by Anatomy, Translated, Abridged and Elucidated by Copious Notes. He died in 1873.
John Abernethy was born in Coleman Street, London, in 1764. He was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar school, and at the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to Charles Blicke, surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. Abernethy remained at Bart's for the rest of his career, being appointed assistant surgeon in 1787, and promted to full surgeon in 1815. During the 1790s Abernethy published several papers on a variety of anatomical topics. On the strength of these contributions he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1796. Between 1814 and 1817 he served as Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons. Abernethy also offered private lectures in anatomy in a house in Bartholomew Close, near to the hospital. The governors of Bart's then built a lecture theatre within the hospital to accommodate his classes. In 1824 Thomas Wakley, editor of the newly established journal The Lancet, published Abernethy's lectures without his permission. Abernethy sought an injunction but was unsuccessful, and remained resentful about the incident. Abernethy had himself attended the lectures of John Hunter, with whom he was also personally acquainted, and after Hunter's death he professed himself to be the spokesman for Hunter's physiological and pathological views. He died in 1831.
Henry Cline was born in London in 1750. he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School. He was apprenticed to Thomas Smith, surgeon to St Thomas's Hospital, London, and during his apprenticeship he lectured for Joseph Else, lecturer on anatomy at the hospital. Cline obtained his diploma from Surgeon's Hall in 1774, and in the same year attended a course of John Hunter's lectures. Cline became a surgeon to St Thomas's in 1784. He was elected a member of the court of assistants of the Surgeons' Company in 1796. He became an examiner at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1810, and in 1812 resigned his appointments at St Thomas's. He was succeeded as surgeon by his son Henry (d 1820). He became master of the College of Surgeons in 1815, and in 1816 delivered the Hunterian oration, which was never published. He gave the oration again in 1824. In 1823 Cline was President of the College, the title having been changed from that of Master in 1821. He died in 1827.
Sir Astley Paston Cooper was born in Brooke Hall, Norfolk, in 1768. He was educated at home. He was articled to his uncle, William Cooper, senior surgeon at Guy's Hospital in London, in 1784. He lived in the house of Henry Cline, surgeon at nearby St Thomas's Hospital, whom he became apprenticed to instead. He became Cline's anatomy demonstrator in 1789, and he shared the lectures on anatomy and surgery with Cline, in 1791. He attended lectures by Desault and Chopart in Paris, in 1792. Cooper taught at St Thomas's and worked in dissections and lectured in anatomy and surgery, during the 1790s. A compilation of notes based on his lectures was published in 1820 titled Outlines of Lectures on Surgery, which went through many editions. From 1793 until 1796 Cooper was also lecturer in anatomy at the Company of Surgeons (after 1800 the Royal College of Surgeons). In 1800 his uncle, William Cooper, resigned as surgeon to Guy's Hospital and Cooper was elected to the post. He was elected professor of comparative anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1813-1815. He became a member of the court of examiners of the college in 1822, and he served as president twice, in 1827 and 1836. He was also a vice-president of the Royal Society, to whose fellowship he had been elected in 1802, and won the society's Copley medal. He was a member of the Physical Society at Guy's. the Medico-Chirurgical Society, and the Pow-Wow, a medical dining club started by John Hunter. He was created a baronet in 1821. He died in 1840.
William Clift was born in Cornwall in 1775, and was educated locally. He became an apprentice anatomical assistant to the celebrated surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793) in 1792. He was appointed conservator of the Hunterian Museum after Hunter's death. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1823, and was a member of the Society for Animal Chemistry. He died in 1849.
Anne Home Hunter was born in Greenlaw, Berwickshire, in 1742. She was a poet, and the wife of John Hunter, the surgeon and anatomist. She died in 1821.
Sir Richard Owen was born in Lancaster in 1804. He was educated at Lancaster grammar school, the University of Edinburgh, and St Bartholomew's Hospital. He was a comparative anatomist, a palaeontologist, conservator of the Hunterian Museum, and superintendent of the Natural History collections of the British Museum. He died in 1892.
John Howship was born in 1781. He became assistant surgeon at the St George's Infirmary, London and a lecturer at the school of the St George's Hospital. He moved to the Charing Cross Hospital as Assistant Surgeon, in 1834, and was promoted to chief surgeon in 1836 after his predecessor, Thomas Pettigrew was dismissed after being found guilty of demanding and obtaining £500 from Mr Howship for the assistant surgeon position. Howship gave the Hunterian Lecture at the College of Surgeons in 1833. He died in 1841.
William White Cooper was born in Holt, Wiltshire, in 1816. He studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital from 1834, and became a private pupil of surgeon Edward Stanley. Cooper took notes of Sir Richard Owen's lectures on comparative anatomy given at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in 1838-1839. Owen was impressed and awarded Cooper a prize. The notes were later published as Lectures in the Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Invertebrate Animals (1843). Cooper received the MRCS in 1838, and the FRCS in 1845. He was one of the original staff of the North London Eye Institution. Subsequently he became Ophthalmic Surgeon to St Mary's Hospital Paddington. He was appointed Surgeon-Oculist in Ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1859. He died in 1886, before his imminent knighthood.
Thomas Wormald was born in Pentonville, in 1802. He was educated at Batley Grammar School in Yorkshire, and afterwards by the Rev W Heald, Vicar of Bristol. He was apprenticed to John Abernethy in 1818. He visited schools in Paris and saw the surgical practice of Dupuytren, Roux, Larrey, Cloquet, Cruveithier, and Velpeau. He became House Surgeon to William Lawrence in 1824. He became Demonstrator of Anatomy in 1826, and held the post for fifteen years. He was elected Assistant Surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1838, and spent the next 23 years teaching in the out-patient department. He became full Surgeon in 1861, and was obliged to resign under the age rule in 1867, when he was elected Consulting Surgeon. He was Consulting Surgeon to the Foundling Hospital from 1843-1864, where his kindness to the children was so highly appreciated that he received the special thanks of the Court of Management and was complimented by being elected a Governor. At the Royal College of Surgeons he was a Member of Council from 1840-1867; Hunterian Orator in 1857; a Member of the Court of Examiners from1858-1868; Chairman of the Midwifery Board in 1864; Vice-President in 1863 and 1864; and was elected President in 1865. He died in 1873.
Sir Everard Home was born in Hull, Yorkshire, in 1756. He was educated at Westminster School, and became a surgical pupil of his brother-in-law John Hunter (1728-1793), surgeon at St George's Hospital, London. Home qualified through the Company of Surgeons in 1778 and was appointed assistant surgeon in the new naval hospital at Plymouth. In 1779 he went to Jamaica as staff surgeon with the army, but on returning to England in 1784 he rejoined Hunter at St George's as assistant. He was elected FRS in 1787, and in the same year he became assistant surgeon at St George's Hospital. In 1790-1791 Home read lectures for Hunter and in the following year he succeeded Hunter as lecturer in anatomy. Home joined the army in Flanders in 1793, but returned just before Hunter's sudden death in 1793. He then became surgeon at St George's Hospital and was also joint executor of Hunter's will with Matthew Baillie, Hunter's nephew. In 1793-1794 they saw Hunter's important work, On the Blood, Inflammation and Gun-Shot Wounds, through the press and in 1794 Home approached Pitt's government to secure the purchase for the nation of Hunter's large collection of anatomical and pathological specimens. After protracted negotiations the collection was purchased for £15,000 in 1799 and presented to the College of Surgeons. In 1806 the collection was moved from Hunter's gallery in Castle Street to form the Hunterian Museum at the new site of the college in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Home was chief curator and William Clift, who had worked with Hunter since 1792, was retained as resident conservator. Clift also had charge of Hunter's numerous folios, drawings, and accounts of anatomical and pathological investigations, which were essential for a clear understanding of the collection. In the years following Hunter's death Home built up a large surgical practice and published more than one hundred papers of varying quality, some very good, mainly in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The society awarded him its Copley medal in 1807. He gave the Croonian lectures fifteen times between 1794 and 1826. As Hunter's brother-in-law and executor he had great influence at the Royal College of Surgeons where he was elected to the court of assistants in 1801, an examiner in 1809, master in 1813 and 1821, and its first president in 1822. Having, with Matthew Baillie, endowed the Hunterian oration, he was the first Hunterian orator in 1814, and again in 1822. He became Keeper and a trustee of the Hunterian Museum in 1817 and was Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the college from 1804 to 1813, and again in 1821. His Lectures on Comparative Anatomy were published in 1814 with a volume of plates from drawings by Clift. A further volume of lectures followed in 1823 accompanied by microscopical and anatomical drawings by Bauer and Clift. Two more volumes appeared in 1828. This work, although lacking in structure, is an important record of Hunter's investigations, especially the last two volumes. Home drew heavily on Hunter's work in the papers and books which he published after Hunter's death. Before the collection was presented to the Company of Surgeons in 1799 Home arranged for Clift to convey to his own house Hunter's folio volumes and fasciculi of manuscripts containing descriptions of the preparations and investigations connected with them. He promised to catalogue the collection, refusing help, but, despite repeated requests, only a synopsis appeared in 1818. B C Brodie says that Home was busily using Hunter's papers in preparing his own contributions for the Royal Society. Home himself later stated that he had published all of value in Hunter's papers and that his one hundred articles in Philosophical Transactions formed a catalogue raisonée of the Hunterian Museum. Home destroyed most of Hunter's papers in 1823. After his death in 1832, a parliamentary committee was set up to enquire into the details of this act of vandalism. Clift told this committee in 1834 that Home had used Hunter's papers extensively and had claimed that Hunter, when he was dying, had ordered him to destroy his papers. Yet Home, who was not present at Hunter's death, had kept the papers for thirty years. Clift also declared that he had often transcribed parts of Hunter's original work and drawings into papers which appeared under Home's name. Home produced a few of Hunter's papers which he had not destroyed and Clift had copied about half of the descriptions of preparations in the collection, consequently enough of Hunter's work survives to suggest that Home had often published Hunter's observations as his own. Although the full extent of Home's plagiarism cannot be determined, there is little doubt that it was considerable and this seriously damaged his reputation.
Sir Richard Owen was born in Lancaster, in 1804. He was educated at Lancaster Grammar School and then enlisted as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. He became interested in surgery He returned to Lancaster and became indentured to a local surgeon, in 1820. He entered the University of Edinburgh medical school, in 1824 and privately attended the lectures of Dr John Barclay. He moved to London and became apprentice to John Abernethy, surgeon, philosopher and President of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1825. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1826. He became Assistant Curator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in 1827, and commenced work cataloguing the collection. He set up a private practice in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He became lecturer on comparative anatomy at St Bartholomew's Hospital, in 1829. He met Georges Cuvier in 1830 and attended the 1831 debates between Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, in Paris. He worked in the dissecting rooms and public galleries of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in 1831. He published anatomical work on the cephalopod Nautilus, and started the Zoological Magazine, in 1833. He worked on the fossil vertebrates brought back by Darwin on the Beagle. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1834; Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, in 1836-1856; and gave his first series of Hunterian Lectures to the public, in 1837. He was awarded the Wollaston gold medal by the Geological Society, in 1838; helped found the Royal Microscopical Society, in 1839; and identified the extinct moa of New Zealand from a bone fragment, 1839. He refused a knighthood in 1842. He examined reptile-like fossil bones found in southern England which led him to identify "a distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles" he named Dinosauria, in 1842. He developed his concept of homology and of a common structural plan for all vertebrates or 'archetype'. He became Joint Conservator of the Hunterian Museum with William Clift, in 1842, and Conservator, in 1849. He was elected to 'The Club', founded by Dr Johnson, in 1845. He was a member of the government commission for inquiring into the health of London, in 1847, including Smithfield and other meat markets, in 1849. He described the anatomy of the newly discovered (in 1847) species of ape, the gorilla, [1865]. He engaged in a long running public debate with Thomas Henry Huxley on the evolution of humans from apes. He was a member of the preliminary Committee of organisation for the Great Exhibition of 1851. He was Superintendent of the natural history collections at the British Museum, in 1856, and began researches on the collections, publishing many papers on specimens. He was prosector for the London Zoo, dissecting and preserving any zoo animals that died in captivity. He taught natural history to Queen Victoria's children, in 1860. He reported on the first specimen of an unusual Jurassic bird fossil from Germany, Archaeopteryx lithographica, in 1863. He lectured on fossils at the Museum of Practical Geology, and he was Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution, during 1859-1861. His taxonomic work included a number of important discoveries, as he named and described a vast number of living and fossil vertebrates. He campaigned to make the natural history departments of the British Museum into a separate museum, leading to the construction of a new building in South Kensington to house the new British Museum (Natural History), opened in 1881; [now the Natural History Museum]. He was knighted in 1884. He died in Richmond in 1892.
William Heberden was born in Southwark, London, in 1710. He was educated at the local grammar school. He transferred to St John's College, Cambridge, in 1724, and became a Fellow in 1730. He practised as a physician in Cambridge for several years, delivering a series of lectures on Materia Medica, for 10 years. He was admitted as a Candidate of the College of Physicians, in 1745 and a Fellow in 1746. He settled in London in 1748, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1749. He was also nominated Gulstonian Lecturer in 1749; Harveian orator in 1750; and Croonian lecturer in 1760. He was censor in 1749, 1755, and 1760; Consiliarius in 1762; and was constituted an Elect in 1762, which he resigned in 1781. He died in 1801.