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Sir Henry Head was born in Stoke Newington, London, on 4 August 1861, the eldest son of Henry Head, a Lloyd's insurance broker of Quaker origin. Head was educated at Grove House School, Tottenham, and then Charterhouse, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1880. He graduated BA in Natural Sciences in 1884, with first class honours. He spent the next two years at the German University in Prague under the direction of Ewald Hering, working on the physiology of respiration. Head returned to Cambridge to study physiology and anatomy, and went to University College Hospital in London for his clinical work. He qualified MB in 1890, and MD in 1892.

Head obtained junior positions at University College Hospital, the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Chest (later renamed the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Heart and Lungs), the National Hospital, Queen Square, and the County Mental Hospital, Rainhill, Liverpool. He published his MD thesis on `Disturbances of Sensation, with Especial Reference to the Pain of Visceral Diseases' in the neurological journal Brain, between 1893 and 1896. His thesis, based upon patients he had seen at University College Hospital and the National Hospital, established 'Head's Areas', the regions of increased cutaneous sensitivity associated with visceral diseases. In 1894 he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians. He was appointed registrar at the London Hospital in 1896, and was elected assistant physician four months later. He subsequently became physician, and then consulting physician to the Hospital. In 1897 he was awarded the Moxon Medal by the Royal College of Physicians, for his research into clinical medicine. Head became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1899. The following year he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1901 delivered the Goulstonian Lectures to the College.

In 1903 he made observations on the sensory changes following section and regeneration of the radial and external cutaneous nerves. He instructed that his own nerves of his left arm were cut and sutured for this experiment. An eminent surgeon of the London Hospital, James Sherren, carried out the operation. From the results Head elaborated the conceptions of protopathic and epicritic sensibility. He published the results in Brain in 1908. In the same year he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his work on neurology. He was also awarded the Marshall Medal of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society for his original research. He became editor of Brain from 1910-25, and also wrote a number of articles for Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt's A System of Medicine. In 1911 he delivered the Croonian Lectures at the Royal College of Physicians.

During the First World War, 1914-18, Head was civilian consultant to the Empire Hospital for Officers, Vincent Square, where officers suffering from wounds to the nervous system were sent. He and his colleague George Riddoch produced a series of papers on the effects of gross injuries to the spinal cord. This work was important in laying the foundations for the management of traumatic paraplegia, which Riddoch developed during the Second World War and led to the saving of many lives. After World War One the possibility of Head becoming the first professor of medicine at the London Hospital was discussed, although ultimately nothing came of the proposal. In 1919, at the first signs of Parkinson's disease, Head retired from London first to Dorset, where he was the neighbour of the poet and author Thomas Hardy, and then to Reading. Head himself was greatly interested in literature, particularly eighteenth century poetry and prose, and privately published a collection of his own verse and translations of German verses, in Destroyers and Other Verses (1919).

In 1920 he was president of the Section of Neurology at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association held at Cambridge, and in the same year was elected an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. The results of his self-experiments on sensation between 1903 and 1907, which were previously published in Brain, along with other articles by Head and five of his colleagues were published in Studies in Neurology (1920). In 1921 he delivered the Royal Society's Croonian Lecture. Head's last important publication was Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech. It appeared in two volumes in 1926, and was based on the examination of a large number of men suffering from gunshot wounds to the brain.

In 1927 he was knighted. His other honours include receiving honorary degrees from the universities of Edinburgh and Strasbourg. It has been said of Head that he ranked with the great English neurologists' and wasa teacher of infectious enthusiasm and vitality, who combined a scientific outlook with a vivid imagination' (Munk's Roll, 1955, p.422). His contribution to the medical profession included `important advances in respiratory regulation, sensory physiology and the analysis of the aphasias' (Breathnach, 1991, p.107).

Head married Ruth Mayhew in 1904. She became a respected author and wrote several books including two novels and an anthology of Thomas Hardy's writings. She died in 1939. Head died eighteen months later at Reading on 8 October 1940. He left the greater part of his fortune to the Royal Society, for the advancement of medicine.

Publications:
Destroyers, and Other Verses (London, 1919)
Studies in Neurology, Henry Head, with W.H.R. Rivers, J. Sherren, G. Holmes, T. Thompson, & G. Riddoch (London, 1920)
Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech (Cambridge, 1926)

William Heberden was born in London in August 1710, of an old Hampshire family. He was educated at St Saviour's Grammar School, Southwark, before being sent at an early age to St John's College, Cambridge, in 1724. He graduated BA in 1728, and then MA in 1732. He was elected Fellow of his College in April 1731 and began to study medicine, partly at Cambridge and partly in a London hospital. In 1734 he received a fellowship of his College. Between 1734 and 1738 he was Linacre Lecturer in Physic, and proceeded to MD in 1739. During the next decade he practiced medicine in the university, and gave an annual course of lectures on materia medica. Whilst at Cambridge he acquired a reputation as a good classical scholar, and was well versed in Hebrew. He contributed A Letter from Cleander to Alexias on Hippocrates and the State of Physic in Greece' to the collection called The Athenian Letters (1741). A specimen of his method of lecturing is preserved in his Antitheriaca: An Essay on Mithridatium and Theriaca (1745), which is a warning against superstitious polypharmacy and is charactised bylearning and good sense' (Munk's Roll, 1878, p.160).

In 1745 Heberden was admitted a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians, and was made Fellow in 1746. In 1748 he was persuaded to move to London by Sir Edward Hulse, physician to George III, and settled in Cecil Street where his practice began to thrive. Upon leaving Cambridge he donated his collected specimens, used to illustrate his lectures, to St John's College. In 1749 he was made Fellow of the Royal Society, and was made Gulstonian Lecturer and Censor at the Royal College of Physicians. In the following year he was nominated Harveian Orator at the College. He gave up his fellowship at St John's College in 1752 to a poorer scholar, and in the same year married Elizabeth Martin.

In 1760 he held the offices of Croonian Lecturer and Censor at the Royal College of Physicians. Heberden was held in high esteem by George III, and in 1761 upon Queen Charlotte's arrival in England was named her physician in ordinary. However Heberden chose to decline the post because, it is said, `he was apprehensive it might interfere with those connections of life that he had now formed' (ibid, p.163). In 1762 he was constituted an Elect of the College, an office in which he remained until 1781.

Heberden is considered one of the most eminent of English physicians of the eighteenth century, and was renowned for his charity and gentle manner. Samuel Johnson, lexicographer, literary biographer and one of Heberden's patients, spoke of him as Ultimus Romanorum, the last of our learned physicians', although it has been asserted that he was more thefirst of the moderns' (DNB, 1891, p.360). It has been said that he made `valuable contributions to the science of medicine', although he was not a prolific writer (ibid, p.359). He published several papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and in the Medical Transactions of the College of Physicians, a publication Heberden first promoted in 1763. His account of angina pectoris was the first description of this disease, whilst his paper on chickenpox was also original. Heberden was a patron of learning and printed, at his own expense, two editions of Euripides' plays, edited by Jeremiah Markland, the Greek scholar. He also published Conyers Middleton's Appendix to his Dissertation on the Servile Condition of Physicians among the Ancients. His interest in classical literature was further reflected in his election, in 1770, to Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

About 1770 he moved to Pall Mall, where he continued in practice. He was made honorary member of the Royal Society of Medicine in Paris in 1778. In 1783, after over thirty years continuous practice in London, he took partial retirement and resided during the summer months in a house he had bought at Datchet, near Windsor. He continued for some years to return to London to practice during the winter, eventually retiring from practice completely some years before his death. He began to compile in his seventies his Commentaries on the History and Cure of Diseases (1802), which his son William Heberden the younger published, in Latin and then in English, after his death. As an acute clinical observer he had always been in the habit of taking copious notes of his cases, and these formed the basis of this work. The Commentaries proved extremely popular, both in England and abroad, and passed through several editions.

Heberden's first wife died in 1754, just two years after their marriage; she left him one son, Thomas, who became Canon of Exeter. In 1760 he married Mary Wollaston and had eight children, of whom only two survived their father, one being the aforementioned William Heberden the younger, a reputed physician in his own right.

Heberden died on 17 May 1801 at the age of 90, at his house in Pall Mall. He was buried in the parish church at Windsor, where his family erected a monument to his memory.

Publications:
Antitheriaca: An Essay on Mithridatium and Theriaca (1745)
Commentarii de Morborum Historia et Curatione (London, 1802, 1807; Frankfurt, 1804; Leipzig, 1805, 1927; English translation ascribed to William Heberden junior, London, 1803, 1806)
Medical and non-medical papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and the Medical Transactions of the College of Physicians
Strictures upon the Discipline of the University of Cambridge addressed to the Senate, anonymous - attributed to Heberden by Halkett and Laing and Bowes (London, 1792)
An Introduction to the Study of Physic, with a prefatory essay by L. Crummer with a reprint of Heberden's Some Account of a Disorder of the Breast, Le Roy Crummer (New York, 1929)

Publications by others about Heberden:
William Heberden: Physician of the Age of Reason, Ernest Heberden (London, 1989)

Sir Jonathan Hutchinson was born at Selby, Yorkshire, on 23 July 1828, the son of Jonathan Hutchinson, a middleman in the flax trade and a member of the Society of Friends. Brought up as a Quaker, Hutchinson remained influenced by the doctrine of the Quakers throughout his life. He was educated at Selby and then apprenticed to the surgeon Caleb Williams of York in 1845. Between 1846 and 1850 Hutchinson attended both the York School of Medicine, where Williams lectured on materia medica and therapeutics, and the York County Hospital. Hutchinson went to London in 1849 to complete his medical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1850 he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries.

Disliking the thought of private practice, he began his medical career writing for the medical journals, and coaching pupils for examinations. From 1853 he wrote weekly hospital reports for the Medical Times and Gazette. He remained a prolific writer throughout his career. In the early 1850s he was also appointed as clinical assistant to the Liverpool Street Chest Hospital, assistant surgeon to the Metropolitan Free Hospital, and soon afterwards joined the staff of the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital and the Blackfriars Hospital for Skin Diseases. After marrying Jane Pynsent West in 1856, he began private practice in London. In 1859 he was appointed assistant surgeon to the London Hospital.

Hutchinson helped found the New Sydenham Society in 1859, after the dissolution of the original Sydenham Society. He was its secretary throughout its existence, until 1907, and was responsible for editing the many publications of the Society. He was appointed assistant surgeon to the Royal Lock Hospital, and full surgeon to the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, in 1862, and in the same year became lecturer on surgery at the London Hospital. Also in 1862 Hutchinson became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1863 he became full surgeon at the London Hospital and began to lecture in medical ophthalmology, as well as surgery. Due to his new posts he stopped writing his weekly reports for the Medical Times and Gazette. 1863 also saw the publication of his book on inherited syphilis, A Clinical Memoir on Certain Diseases of the Eye and Ear, Consequent on Inherited Syphilis.

Hutchinson became a leading authority on the subjects of ophthalmology, dermatology, neurology, and in particular syphilis, and has been described as `the greatest general practitioner in Europe' (DNB, 1927, p.279). He promulgated the view that syphilis is a specific fever like smallpox or measles. His skill lay in observation, and the accumulation and collation of clinical facts. However his deductions from them were not always convincing, such as his conclusion that leprosy was caused by the consumption of decaying fish. Even after the discovery of the lepra bacillus Hutchinson did not change his opinion, despite being in direct opposition to the rest of the medical profession.

In 1868 he helped to establish the pathological museum held in connection with the annual meetings of the British Medical Association (BMA). From 1869-70 Hutchinson edited the British Medical Journal. In 1874 he moved to larger premises at 15 Cavendish Square, next door to his famous medical colleague Sir Andrew Clark. He was President of the Section of Surgery of the BMA in 1876. In 1878 the first volume of his Illustrations of Clinical Surgery (1878-84) appeared, consisting of drawings, photographs, and diagrams illustrating diseases, symptoms, and injuries with full explanations. From 1879-95 he served on the council of the Royal College of Surgeons, and between 1879-83 was their Hunterian Professor of Surgery and Pathology. He served on the Royal Commission on Smallpox and Fever Cases in London Hospitals, in 1881. In 1882 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1883 he left the active service of the London Hospital, and became emeritus professor of surgery at the Hospital's medical school. The Hutchinson triennial prize essay was established to commemorate his services to the Hospital. Hutchinson became president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1889, and began the publication of his series Archives of Surgery (1889-1900), which was issued quarterly, and proved of interest to general practitioners, surgeons, physicians, and specialists. From 1890-96 he served on the Royal Commission on Vaccination. In 1891 he delivered the Hunterian Oration of the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1895 he published A Smaller Atlas of Illustrations of Clinical Surgery.

Over the years Hutchinson acquired a vast collection of specimens and watercolour drawings. He donated his collections and a large number of books and periodicals to the Medical Graduates' College and Polyclinic at 22 Chenies Street, founded in 1899. Hutchinson played a major part instigating the foundation of the College, and, along with others, gave courses of lectures and demonstrations, as well as free consultations for impoverished patients. These public consultations were popular and largely attended by general practitioners. He also assumed the editorship of the College's journal, The Polyclinic.

Hutchinson established an educational museum and library at his own expense at his country house in Haslemere, Surrey, which included an aviary and vivarium, where he spent much of his time with his childhood friend the eminent neurologist John Hughlings Jackson. Hutchinson gave lectures and demonstrations to the local community on scientific, literary and religious subjects at the weekends. Edward VII knew of him as `the surgeon who had a hospital for animals on his farm' (Plarr, 1930, p.590). Hutchinson established a similar museum in his native Selby, but this proved less popular.

In 1907 he moved to Gower Street, to be closer to the Graduates' College in Chenies Street. He was knighted in 1908 for his distinguished services to medicine. It is said that he refused an earlier offering of a peerage and had to be persuaded by friends to accept this knighthood. He received honorary degrees from the universities of Glasgow, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, Dublin, and Leeds, and was a corresponding member of the Societe de Chirurgie de Paris. At various times he held the presidency of several London medical societies, including the Royal Medical and Chirurgical, Pathological, Hunterian, Ophthalmological, Medical, and Neurological Societies.

Hutchinson had a large family, with six sons, four of who survived him, and four daughters. His wife died in 1886. Hutchinson died at his house in Haslemere, Surrey, on 26 June 1913. He was buried in Haslemere, with a tombstone that was inscribed on his orders, `A Man of Hope and Forward-Looking Mind'.

Publications:
A Clinical Memoir on Certain Diseases of the Eye and Ear, Consequent on Inherited Syphilis (London, 1863)
A Descriptive Catalogue of the New Sydenham Society's Atlas of Portraits of Diseases of the Skin (London, 1869-75)
An Atlas of Illustrations of Pathology, Jonathan Hutchinson (ed.) (New Sydenham Society, London, 1877-1900)
Atlas of Skin Diseases, Jonathan Hutchinson (ed.) (New Sydenham Society, London, 1800s)
Illustrations of Clinical Surgery (2 Vols., London, 1878-88)
The Pedigree of Disease (1884)
Syphilis (London, 1887)
A Smaller Atlas of Illustrations of Clinical Surgery (1895)
Archives of Surgery (London, 1889-1900)
Atlas of Clinical Medicine, Surgery and Pathology, Jonathan Hutchinson (ed.) (New Sydenham Society, London, 1901-7)
Leprosy and Fish-Eating, A Statement of Facts and Explanations (1906)
A System of Syphilis; with an Introduction by Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, Sir D'Arcy Power, James Keogh Murphy & Sir Jonathan Hutchinson (London, 1908-10)
Retrospective Memoranda, by Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, and Subject Index and Index of Names compiled by Charles R. Hewitt (New Sydenham Society, London, 1911)
Neurological Fragments of J.H. Jackson; with Biographical Memoir by James Taylor, and including the Recollections of Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, and Charles Mercier, John Hughlings Jackson, James Taylor, Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, and Charles Arthur Mercier (London, 1925)

Publications by others about Hutchinson
The Life and Letters of Jonathan Hutchinson, Herbert Hutchinson (London, 1946)

Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, on 17 May 1749, the youngest son of Stephen Jenner, vicar at Berkeley. His father died when Jenner was five years old, and his eldest brother Stephen directed his education. From the age of eight he was sent to school at nearby Wotton-under-Edge, and then to Cirencester Grammar School. During his time at Cirencester Jenner developed an interest in natural history, collecting the fossils that were abundant in the area. In 1761 he was apprenticed to a surgeon, Daniel Ludlow of Sodbury, before, at the age of 21, enrolling as a resident house pupil of the great surgeon John Hunter, in London. Over the next two years he received his most important education, and began a lifelong friendship with Hunter. On Hunter's recommendation Jenner was employed to prepare some of the specimens brought back from James Cook's circumnavigation of the world in 1771. He went on to pursue his studies at St George's Hospital, London.

In 1773 he returned to Berkeley to set up practice, and soon became successful. In his spare time he made botanical and ornithological observations, continued to collect fossils, played the flute and violin, and wrote poetry. He made observations on the temperature of animals. Hunter encouraged him in this task, and upon his request Jenner sent him specimens of salmon-spawn, porpoises, cuckoos, and fossils.

Jenner helped establish a medical society in Rodborough, Gloucestershire, whose members met to read papers on medical subjects before dining together. Jenner contributed papers on angina pectoris, ophthalmia and valvular disease of the heart and commented on cowpox, which had already begun to concern him. He also belonged to a similar society which met in Alveston, near Bristol. In 1787 Jenner wrote a paper on the `Natural History of the Cuckoo', which was published in the Philosophical Transactions the following year. Some discrepancies exist in the text; due it is thought to the fact that Jenner had instructed his nephew to make the observations. The latter, upon being directed by Jenner to perform this task, gave his uncle an imaginary report. In 1788 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. It was in March of that year that Jenner married Catharine Kingscote.

Jenner's burgeoning practice forced him to give up surgery and midwifery. In 1792 he obtained his MD from the University of St Andrews. In 1793 he published `A Process for Preparing Pure Emetic Tartar by Recrystallisation' in the Transactions of the Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge.

In 1794 Jenner suffered severely from typhus fever. Upon his recovery he continued his investigations into the protective power of cowpox against smallpox, the commonest of diseases affecting all levels of society. He was at this time well aware of the widely held belief that diary maids who had contracted cowpox did not get smallpox. In May 1796 he vaccinated a young boy with lymph taken from vesicles of cowpox, which the boy accordingly developed. The boy was then inoculated with smallpox in July, which did not develop thus proving Jenner's argument. Jenner summarised his observations in a paper, `On the Cow-pox, the Original Paper', which was never printed. He stayed in London from April to July 1798 publicising his discovery in medical circles, however he failed to find any volunteers for vaccination. In June 1798 he published a fuller account, which became a medical classic, An Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a Disease Discovered in Some of the Western Counties of England, Particularly Gloucestershire, and Known by the Name of the Cow-pox. Interest did arise after Jenner's return to Berkeley, from a surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital, London, who was vaccinating patients with lymph given to him by Jenner, but Jenner was not keen to return to the capital.

Opposition to Jenner's discovery inevitably arose and, in reply to his critics, Jenner published Further Observations on the Variolae Vaccinae or Cow-pox (1799). He continued his work on vaccination in Berkeley and in Cheltenham, before returning to London in March 1799. From 1800 he lived in the capital for part of each year. The practice of vaccination slowly began to gain ground, though errors due to carelessness and ignorance did occur. Developments included discussion on the establishment of a vaccine institution, sending lymph throughout England and abroad, being presented to the King and then the Queen, and vaccinating the 85th regiment and then the British fleet. In 1800 he published A Continuation of Facts and Observations Relative to the Variolae Vaccinae or Cow-pox, and A Complete Statement of Facts and Observations Relative to the Cow-pock. During 1801 he received a number of congratulatory addresses and medals, including a medal from the medical officers of the British fleet, a ring from the Empress of Russia, and a service of plate from the gentry of Gloucestershire.

In 1802, on the advice of his friends, he petitioned Parliament for remuneration due to the time spent on his discovery preventing him acquiring his professional income. With the King's recommendation the petition went to a committee, which investigated the usefulness of the discovery and Jenner's right to claim to be the discoverer. It was proposed that he be granted £10,000. It has been said that whilst he sought just public reward for his services he showed `complete freedom from any wish to enrich himself unworthily when riches were in his power' (DNB, 1892, p.324). Jenner returned to Berkeley until February 1803, when he again visited London. He became involved with the Jennerian Institution, a society concerned with promoting vaccination to eradicate smallpox. In 1808, with government aid, this society became the National Vaccine Establishment.

Jenner took a house in Mayfair and set up practice as a physician, but success was not forthcoming and he returned to Berkeley. He became a member of the Medical and Chirurgical Society on its foundation in 1805, and subsequently presented to them a number of papers. With his professional practice so impeded by his work promoting vaccination he again applied to Parliament for aid in 1806. An inquiry set up by the Royal College of Physicians reported favourably on the advantages of vaccination and the merits of Jenner. The House of Commons consequently awarded him £20,000.

In 1811 he was seriously ill. Upon his recovery he returned to London, and noticed that a significant number of cases of smallpox after vaccination were occurring. He found that in these cases the severity of the illness was notably diminished by the previous vaccination. In 1813 the University of Oxford awarded him the degree of MD.

In April 1814 he visited London for the last time, and stayed three months. He met the Czar, his sister the Duchess of Oldenburg, and the King of Prussia. He then returned first to Cheltenham, where his wife died in 1815, and then to live in Berkeley. In 1820 Jenner had an apoplexy attack from which he completely recovered. In 1821 he was appointed Physician Extraordinary to King George IV and was made Mayor of Berkeley and Justice of the Peace. In 1822 he published A Letter to C.H. Parry, MD, on the Influence of Artificial Eruptions in Certain Diseases Incidental to the Human Body, and wrote Observations on the Migration of Birds (1823), which he read to the Royal Society on 23 November 1822.

On 26 January 1823 he had another attack of apoplexy and died, one son and one daughter survived him, the eldest son having died of tuberculosis at the age of 21. Jenner was buried on 3 February 1823 in the chancel of the parish church of Berkeley. A marble statue of Jenner was erected in the nave of Gloucester Cathedral, whilst a bronze statue was erected in Trafalgar Square in 1858, which was moved to Kensington Gardens in 1862. Jenner made an invaluable contribution to medicine, with innumerable lives being saved throughout the world by his discovery. Vaccination became compulsory in the United Kingdom in 1853, and spread throughout Europe during the nineteenth century. In 1967 the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched a worldwide vaccination programme; by 1979 the disease was eradicated.

Publications:
An Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a Disease Discovered in Some of the Western Counties of England, Particularly Gloucestershire, and Known by the Name of the Cow-pox (London, 1798)
Further Observations on the Variolae Vaccinae or Cow-pox (London, 1799)
A Continuation of Facts and Observations Relative to the Variolae Vaccinae or Cow-pox (1800)
A Complete Statement of Facts and Observations Relative to the Cow-pock, Thomas Paytherus, Edward Jenner, & William Woodville (London, 1800)
On the Origin of Vaccine Innoculation (London, 1801)
On the Varieties and Modifications of the Vaccine Pustule, Occasioned by an Herpetic State of the Skin (Cheltenham, 1806)
A Letter to C.H. Parry, MD, on the Influence of Artificial Eruptions in Certain Diseases Incidental to the Human Body (London, 1822)
Observations on the Migration of Birds (1823)

Publications by Others about Jenner:
The Life of Edward Jenner, John Baron (London, 1838)
Monument a Edward Jenner; Ou, Histoire Generale de la Vaccine a l'Occasion du Premier Centenaire de son Invention, Adolphe Pierre Burggraeve (Brussels, 1875)
Edward Jenner and the Discovery of Smallpox Vaccination, Louis Harry Roddis (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1930)
The Note-book of Edward Jenner in the Possession of the Royal College of Physicians of London, with an Introduction on Jenner's Work as a Naturalist by F. Dawtrey Drewitt, Frederick Dawtrey Drewitt (London, 1931)
Edward Jenner, Conqueror of Small Pox, Boswell Taylor (London, 1950)
A Bio-Bibliography of Edward Jenner, 1749-1823, William Richard LeFanu (London, 1951)
Dr Jenner of Berkeley, Dorothy Fisk (London, 1959)
Jenner and the Miracle of Vaccine, Edward F. Dolan, Jr. (New York, 1960)
Edward Jenner and Vaccination, Anthony John Harding Rains (London, 1974)
Edward Jenner's Cowpox Vaccine: The History of a Medical Myth, Peter Razzell (Firle, Sussex, 1980)
Letters of Edward Jenner and Other Documents Concerning the Early History of Vaccination, from the Henry Barton Jacobs Collection in the William H. Welch Medical Library, Genevieve Miller (ed.) (Baltimore, 1983)
Edward Jenner, Charles Bruce Perry ([Bristol] [1984?])
Edward Jenner, 1749-1823, Richard B. Fisher (London, 1991)
The Eradication of Smallpox: Edward Jenner and the First and Only Eradication of a Human Infectious Disease, Herve Bazin (San Diego, 2000)

John Latham was born on 29 December 1761, at Gawsworth, Cheshire, the eldest son of the Rev. John Latham, vicar of Siddington, Cheshire. Latham acquired his early education at Manchester Grammar School. In 1778 he entered Brasenose College, Oxford. He proceeded BA in 1782, and MA in 1784. Between 1782 and 1784 he studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. In 1784 he began to practice medicine in Manchester, where he was elected physician to the town's infirmary. In 1786 he resigned the office and returned to Oxford where he graduated MB in the same year. The following year he was appointed physician to the Radcliffe Infirmary and graduated MD in 1788.

In 1788 Latham moved to London and set up his home and practice in Bedford Row. His exertions on settling in the capital were excessive, and he consequently established a large, lucrative practice. He was admitted a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians in the same year, and became a fellow in 1789. It was also in 1789 that he was elected physician of the Middlesex Hospital and the Magdalen Hospital. From his election as fellow he played an active roll in the life of the College, for example acting as censor on several occasions between 1790 and 1807. In 1791 he published A Plan of a Charitable Institution to be Established on the Sea Coast. In 1792 Latham undertook to arrange the College library, the result proved so satisfactory that his colleagues voted him the sum of £100. In 1793 he resigned from the Middlesex and became physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital.

Latham gave several of the eponymous lectures of the Royal College of Physicians, including the Goulstonian Lectures in 1793, the Harveian Oration in 1794, and the Croonian Lectures in 1795. In 1795 he was appointed physician extraordinary to the Prince of Wales. The following year Latham published On Rheumatism and Gout, in which he detailed an elaborate treatment and argued that neither acute rheumatism nor gout were hereditary. In 1802 Latham retired from his position at St Bartholomew's.

In 1807, at the age of 46, Latham retired to the country, due to exhaustion brought on by his intense labour. It was believed that he was consumptive and that he might die. However away from his professional business he regained his health and eventually recovered. He returned to London and began a more moderate practice, based in Harley Street.

In 1811 Latham published Facts and Opinions concerning Diabetes, and authored many medical papers which were published in the Royal College of Physicians's Medical Transactions. His writings `show that the parts of physic in which he excelled were clinical observation and acquaintance with the materia medica' (DNB, 1892, p.166). Latham was President of the College from 1813-19. In 1816 he founded the Medical Benevolent Society. When the Prince of Wales ascended to the throne as George IV in 1820, Latham was reappointed physician extraordinary.

In 1829 Latham finally left London and retired to Bradwall Hall in Cheshire. He had married Mary Mere in 1874, and they had had three sons. Their second son Peter Mere Latham, born in 1789, also became a physician, whilst the first and third sons, John and Henry, were both poetical writers. Latham died on 20 April 1843 at the age of 81, after suffering from stones in the bladder.

Publications:
Diatribae duae encaemicae coram Collegio Regali Medicorum Londinensi, scilicet Oratio Harveiana et Praelectio Crooniana (London, 1795?)
On Rheumatism and Gout: A Letter Addressed to Sir George Baker (London, 1796)
The New Pharmacopoeia of the Royal College of Physicians (index by John Latham) (London, 1796, 7th edition; 1801 8th edition)
Facts and Opinions concerning Diabetes (London, 1811)

Peter Mere Latham was born in London on 1 July 1789, the second son of John Latham, physician. He was first educated at the free school of Sandbach, Cheshire, and then from 1797 at Macclesfield Grammar School. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1806. He graduated BA in 1810 and began his medical studies at St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Carey Street Public Dispensary under the tutelage of Thomas Bateman, dermatologist and physician. Whilst studying at the Dispensary he met the celebrated Richard Bright, physician, with whom he established a life-long friendship. He proceeded MA in 1813, and then MB in 1814. Latham took a house in Gower Street and in 1815 was appointed physician to the Middlesex Hospital. In 1816 he delivered a course of lectures on the practice of physic in London. He graduated MD in the same year.

Latham was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1818, and delivered the College's Goulstonian Lectures the following year. In 1820 he was a censor for the College, and held that office again in 1833 and 1837. In March 1823 he and Peter Mark Roget, fellow physician and savant, were asked by the government to undertake the investigation of an epidemic disorder then rife in the Millbank Penitentiary. They found the epidemic to be scurvy and dysentery, which they concluded was due to an insufficient diet. Consequently they recommended for the prisoners at least one solid meal a day, better bread, and 3lbs of meat every fortnight. Latham subsequently published An Account of the Disease lately prevalent at the General Penitentiary (1825).

In 1824 Latham resigned from the Middlesex Hospital and was appointed physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1827 he delivered the Royal College of Physician's Lumleian Lectures. Latham published his Essays on some Diseases of the Heart' in the Medical Gazette (1828). In them he maintained that administering mercury until it produced salivation was essential for the cure of pericarditis. Latham's particular interest in heart diseases had been encouraged by the recent invention of the stethoscope by the French physician Laennec. In 1836 Latham was elected joint lecturer on medicine, with fellow physician Dr (later Sir) George Burrows, at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School. It has been said of Latham thathis clinical teaching was excellent' (DNB, 1892, p.167). It was also in 1836 that he published Lectures on Subjects connected with Clinical Medicine, of which the first six are on methods of study and observation, the next six on auscultation and percussion, and two more on phthisis.

In 1837 he was appointed physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria, an office which he retained until his death. Latham never acquired a large private practice. In 1839 he delivered the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians, which he subsequently published. In 1841 he resigned from St Bartholomew's Hospital due to frequent attacks of asthma, from which he had suffered from an early age. Latham published Lectures on Clinical Medicine, comprising Diseases of the Heart in 1845. This was described as `a work of great originality, full of careful observation, and containing a discussion of all parts of the subject' (ibid). It has also been said of his work that

`although most remedies Latham advocated have proved ineffective, his descriptions of the clinical symptoms and physical findings in his patients remain interesting and instructive' (Fye, 1989, p.610).

In 1865 he relinquished his small practice and left London to settle in Torquay. He was married twice, firstly to Diana Clarissa Chetwynd Stapleton in 1824, who had died the following year, and then to Grace Mary Chambers, with whom he had four children all of whom survived him. He died in Torquay on 20 July 1875, at the age of 86.

Publications:
An Account of the Disease lately prevalent at the General Penitentiary (London, 1825)
Lectures on Subjects connected with Clinical Medicine (London, 1836)
Oratio ex Harveii instituto habita..., MDCCCXXXIX (London, 1839?)
Lectures on Subjects connected with Clinical Medicine, comprising Diseases of the Heart (London, 1845-46, 2nd ed.)
Collected Works, with Memoir by Sir Thomas Watson, Robert Martin (ed.) (London, 1876-78)
Aphorisms from Latham; edited by W.B. Bean, William Bennett Bean (ed.) (Iowa, 1962)

Thomas Lawrence was born on 25 May 1711 in Westminster, London, the second son of Captain Thomas Lawrence. He was educated first in Dublin, after his father was posted to Ireland in 1715. His mother died in 1724 and his father brought the family to live with his widowed sister in Southampton, who looked after the children. Lawrence continued his education at school in Southampton. In October 1727 he was admitted a commoner to Trinity College, Oxford. He graduated BA in 1730, MA in 1733, and then chose medicine as his profession. He moved to London and attended the anatomical lectures of the physician Frank Nicholls and the practice at St Thomas' Hospital. He graduated BM in 1736, and MD at Oxford in 1740.

Lawrence became anatomy reader in the University of Oxford upon Nicholls' resignation. He remained in this office for several years although he resided in London where he also delivered lectures in anatomy. He took the house previously occupied by Nicholls, in Lincoln's Inn Field. Lawrence became a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1743, and a fellow the following year. He was also Goulstonian Lecturer at the College in 1744. In the same year he married Frances Chauncey, daughter of a physician at Derby, and moved to Essex Street, off the Strand. He was a censor at the College five times between 1746 and 1759, and became registrar in 1747, a position he held for almost 20 years until 1766. In 1748 he delivered the Harveian Oration.

In 1750 Lawrence stopped lecturing, in the face of the overwhelming success of the lectures of the Scottish surgeon William Hunter, and instead devoted himself entirely to general practice. In 1751 he delivered the Royal College of Physicians' Croonian Lectures, and was appointed Lumleian Lecturer in 1755. The following year he published Hydrops: Disputatio Medica, which took the form of an imaginary conversation between the great physicians Baldwin Hamey, Sir George Ent, and William Harvey. Lawrence was named an elect of the College in 1759, and was made consiliarius (adviser to the president) in 1760, 1761, and 1763. He wrote a biography of Harvey, which was prefixed to the College's publication on the works of Harvey, Guilielmi Harveii Opera Omnia a Collegio Medicorum (1766). Lawrence was awarded £100 for his services.

Lawrence became president of the College in 1767. He was elected upon the resignation of Sir William Browne, after the famous siege of the College. A group of licentiates had forced their way into a Comitia meeting in June 1767, in an attempt to obtain a dispensation from the College, causing Browne to dissolve the Comitia. The licentiates were protesting against the College policy that only graduates from Oxford and Cambridge could become fellows. Ultimately it was not until 1834 that the fellowship was thrown open to graduates of other universities, although in 1771 Lawrence did accept four such candidates for fellowship. Lawrence was made president in September 1767, and was re-elected every year for the following seven years.

Despite his elevated position within the College, he never really attained great success as a physician. It has been said of him that he was

`an elegant scholar, a good anatomist, and a sound practitioner; but in his endeavour to attain to eminence it was his misfortune to fail' (Munk's Roll, p.151).

His failure has been put down to personal traits, namely a vacant countenance and a convulsive tic. He was an intimate friend of the lexicographer Samuel Johnson, a fellow sufferer of the latter affliction, who considered him `"one of the best men whom I have known"' (ibid, p.152). Johnson had a very high opinion of his friend, which was a testimony to the latter's prowess as a scholar. Lawrence often submitted his Latin for Johnson's correction, and it is believed that Johnson did the same to him. Johnson was also one of Lawrence's patients. Much about their relationship is discernible through Johnson's letters to Lawrence.

Lawrence's wife died in 1780 and he never really recovered from the bereavement. He and his wife had had six sons and three daughters. Soon after his wife's death he lost his hearing. In 1780 he had privately printed his biography of his friend and patron Frank Nicholls. In 1782 Lawrence was struck with paralysis. He resigned from his position as elect at the Royal College of Physicians, and retired with his family to Canterbury. In 1783 he began to suffer from angina pectoris. He died on 6 June 1783, at the age of 72. He was buried in the church of St Margaret, Canterbury. His two surviving children erected a memorial tablet in Canterbury Cathedral.

Publications:
Oratio Harvaeana (London, 1748)
Hydrops: Disputatio Medica (London, 1756)
Praelectiones Medicae Duodecim de Calvariae et Capitis Morbis (Croonian Lectures) (London, 1757)
De Natura Musculorum Praelectiones Tres in Theatro Collegii Medicorum Londinensium Habitae (London, 1759)
Guilielmi Harveii Opera Omnia a Collegio Medicorum, Mark Akenside (ed.) (London, 1766) collected edition of Harvey's works, with prefixed biography by Thomas Lawrence
Franci Nichollsii, MD, Vita, cum Conjecturis Eiusdem de Natura et Usu Partium Humani Corporis Similarium (London, 1780)

Unknown

Robert Lee was born in Melrose, Roxburghshire, in 1793, the second son of John Lee. He was educated in the Scottish Border town of Galashiels, under the Rev. Robert Balmer, the profound theologian. Lee entered Edinburgh University in 1806. Initially intended for the church he changed his mind and chose to pursue a career in medicine. He graduated MD in 1814, and became a member of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons. He was appointed physician's clerk at the Royal Infirmary to Dr James Hamilton, physician and professor of midwifery.

In 1817 Lee moved to London and took charge of an epileptic patient, the son of the Honorable William Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne). On relinquishing this appointment he spent the winter of 1821-22 in Paris, furthering his medical education through the study of anatomy. He remained abroad for the following year, employed as domestic physician to a family of high rank. He traveled with them through the South of France and Northern Italy. On his return to England he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London, in March 1823, and began to practice as an obstetric physician.

He suffered a severe illness at this time. When he recovered he obtained a medical appointment with the East India Company. However, before leaving for Calcutta, he received the offer of appointment as domestic physician to Prince Woronzow, then governor-general of the Crimea and the Russian provinces around the Black Sea. He left for Odessa in October 1824. In 1825 he traveled with the Prince and his family to the Crimea, where he was presented to Czar Alexander a few days before the Czar's sudden death from epidemic fever. Lee later published an account of the Czar's final days, Last Days of Alexander and the First Days of Nicholas (1854), in order to counteract rumours that the Czar had died a suspicious death.

Lee returned to England with Prince Woronzow in 1826, and again began to practice as an obstetrician in London. In 1827 he was elected physician to the British Lying-in Hospital, and began to lecture on midwifery. In 1829 he also became lecturer on midwifery in the Webb Street School of Anatomy and Medicine. He had taught himself shorthand and this enabled him to make full notes of every lecture he attended and the cases he treated, making it possible for him to preserve written histories of the important cases of puerperal and uterine disease he came across after these appointments.

From his settling in London in 1827, Lee devoted much time and effort to investigations into the pathology of the diseases of women, puerperal fever, and in prolonged dissections of the ganglia and nerves of the uterus. He contributed to the Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine (1833-35), writing entries on 'Abortion', 'Diseases of the Ovaries', 'Puerperal Fevers', 'Pathology of the Uterus and its Appendages', and 'Diseases of the Veins'. He also wrote numerous papers. Many were published in the Transactions of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, whilst others he read before the Royal Society. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1830. Despite Lee's proliferation of papers the Society never awarded him a medal and even suppressed some of his articles. This was due, it is said, to `differences of opinion as to the value of his discoveries' (DNB, 1892, p.373).

He became secretary to the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, 1830-35. In 1834 he obtained, through the interest of Lord Melbourne, the appointment of Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow. However he resigned after his introductory address and returned to London. In 1835 he was appointed lecturer on midwifery and the diseases of women at St George's Hospital, an appointment he held for thirty years. Lee was admitted a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1841.

In 1842 he published what some consider his most valuable contribution, Clinical Midwifery (2nd ed. 1848), which contained 545 cases of difficult labour. His subsequent work, Three Hundred Consultations in Midwifery (1864) was also deemed to be important (ibid). However, others consider that it was his remarkable' dissections of the nerves of the heart and uterus thatentitle him to a place in the foremost rank of anatomists and physiologists of his time and country' (Munk's Roll, 1878, p.268).

Lee's relationship with the Royal Society did not improve in the 1840s. It was owing in part to his dissension that the president, the Marquis of Northampton, and the secretary, Dr Peter Mark Roget, resigned in 1849. Lee's version of his treatment by the Royal Society can be found in his Memoirs on the Ganglia and Nerves of the Uterus (London, 1849). Although it was recognized that Lee could be somewhat dictatorial in manner and intolerant of those in slightest opposition to his views, his honesty of purpose in all he did was never doubted' (ibid). Furthermore, he was undoubtedlyan indomitable worker, and made numerous discoveries of permanent value' (DNB, p.373)

He delivered several of the eponymous lectures of the Royal College of Physicians, namely the Lumleian Lectures in 1856-57, the Croonian Lectures in 1862, and the Harveian Oration in 1864, the last time the lecture was delivered in Latin. He resigned his lecturership at St George's Hospital in 1866, but continued in practice.

Lee worked indefatigably until 1875 when he retired from practice at the age of 82. He moved from his home in Savile Row to Surbiton Hill, Surrey, and died there on 6 February 1877. He was buried at Kensal Green.

Publications:
On the Structure of the Human Placenta, and its Connection with the Uterus (London, 1832) Researches on the Pathology and Treatment of the Diseases of Women (London, 1833)
Pathological Observations on the Diseases of the Uterus, with Coloured Engravings from Original Drawings by Joseph Perry, Representing the Most Important Organic Diseases of the Uterus (London, 2 parts 1840; 1849)
The Anatomy of the Nerves of the Uterus (London, 1841)
Clinical Midwifery, with the Histories of the Four Hundred Cases of Difficult Labour (London, 1842; 2nd edition 1848)
On the Ganglia and Other Nervous Structures of the Uterus (London, 1842)
Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery, delivered in the Theatre of St George's Hospital (London, 1844)
Memoirs on the Ganglia and Nerves of the Uterus (London, 1849)
Memoir on the Ganglia and Nerves of the Heart (London, 1851)
Clinical Reports of Ovarian and Uterine Diseases, with Commentaries (London, 1853)
The Last Days of Alexander, and the First Days of Nicholas, Emperors of Russia (London, 1854)
Treatise on the Employment of the Speculum in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Uterine Diseases (London, 1858)
Engravings of the Ganglia and Nerves of the Uterus and Heart (London, 1858)
Three Hundred Consultations in Midwifery (London, 1864)
History of the Discoveries of the Circulation of the Blood, of the Ganglia and Nerves, and of the Action of the Heart (London, 1865)
A Treatise on Hysteria (London, 1871)
Entries in Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine (London, 1833-35), ed. by Sir John Forbes, John Conolly, & Alexander Tweedie

Publications about Lee:
Extracts from the Diary of Dr Robert Lee, FRS, 1821-22 (London, 1897, privately printed - posthumously)

William Macmichael was born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire on 30 November 1783, the son of William Macmichael, a banker of Bridgnorth. He was educated at Bridgnorth Grammar School and then entered Christchurch, Oxford, in 1800 on a scholarship. He proceeded BA in 1805, MA in 1807, and MB in 1808. He spent the next three years continuing his medical studies in Edinburgh and then at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. In 1811 he was elected to one of the Radcliffe traveling fellowships, and traveled for several years, visiting Greece, Russia, the Danubian principalities (now Romania), Bulgaria, Turkey and Palestine. In 1812 whilst in Thermopylae, Greece, he contracted malaria. He suffered intermittently from fevers for the next two years. In 1814, less than two years after Napolean Bonaparte's defeat, Macmichael visited Moscow, which he found to be in ruins. He was employed for a short time as physician to the Marquis of Londonderry, Charles William Vane, whilst he was ambassador at Vienna. Macmichael returned from his travels, having received the news that his bankers had failed and that most of his money was lost. He graduated MD at Oxford in 1816.

He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1817, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians the following year. He returned to Europe in 1817-18 before settling to practice in London. In 1819 he published an account of his travels illustrated by his own drawings, A Journey from Moscow to Constantinople in the Years 1817, 1818. He became closely involved with the Royal College of Physicians, where he was appointed censor in 1820. In 1822 he was elected physician to the Middlesex Hospital. In the same year he published his first medical work, A New View of the Infection of Scarlet Fever: Illustrated by Remarks on other Contagious Disorders. Having realised that second attacks of the scarlet fever were rare, he advocated if one child in a family developed the disease it was wise to let the other children contract it.

From 1824-29 he was registrar at the College, serving during the College's move from its premises in Warwick Lane, to Pall Mall East, in 1825. During this time Macmichael anonymously published the biographical work The Gold-Headed Cane (1827), which tells of the adventures of the physician's cane carried by John Radcliffe, Richard Mead, Anthony Askew, William Pitcairn and Matthew Baillie in turn. It gives both good biographies of the owners and information on the condition of medicine in 18th century England.

In 1829 Macmichael was appointed physician extraordinary to the King, George IV. The following year he published a small volume entitled The Lives of British Physicians (1830), again anonymously. This work consisted of eighteen biographies by himself and others, of such eminent physicians as Thomas Linacre, John Caius, and William Harvey. It has been said that the work was of `the same merit of style as the Gold-Headed Cane; they contain much information, and are never dry' (DNB, 1893, p.230). It was also in 1830 that Macmichael became librarian to the King, and in 1831 physician in ordinary to the new King, William IV. He had treated the King for gout before he succeeded to the throne, and the King gave Macmichael his own gold-headed cane, as free from gout he no longer needed it. He was indebted to his patron Sir Henry Halford for these appointments, but despite this powerful patronage Macmichael never acquired a large practice.

In 1831 he resigned from the Middlesex Hospital. He was censor again for the Royal College of Physicians in 1832. The following year Macmichael was appointed as Inspector General of Lunatic Asylums, one of four commissioners whose job it was to license and inspect London's madhouses. Macmichael carried out this duty until 1835. The following year, at the College, he was made Consiliarius (adviser or counsellor to the President).

In 1837 he suffered an attack of paralysis. Compelled to withdraw from professional life, he retired to Maida Hill. He had married Mary Jane Freer in 1827 and they had one daughter. Macmichael died on 10 January 1839 at the age of 55.

Publications:
A Journey from Moscow to Constantinople in the Years 1817, 1818 (London, 1819)
A New View of the Infection of Scarlet Fever: Illustrated by Remarks on other Contagious Disorders (London, 1822)
A Brief Sketch of the Progress of Opinion upon the Subject of Contagion, with some Remarks on Quarantine (London, 1825)
The Gold-Headed Cane (London, 1827; 2nd ed. 1828; 3rd ed. by Munk with additions, 1884)
Lives of British Physicians (London, 1830)
Is the Cholera Spasmodica of India a Contagious Disease? The Question Considered in a Letter to Sir Henry Halford, Bart, MD (London, 1831)
Some Remarks on Dropsy, with a Narrative of the Last Illness of the Duke of York, read at the Royal College of Physicians, May 25, 1835 (London, 1835)

Various

Thomas Marwood was physician to James I. Dr William Munk, who made an exhaustive study of the manuscript doubted the authorship of Dr Marwood, and rather favoured the suggestion that 'the volume is really neither more nor less than the daily entry book of a leading and fashionable Apothecary in London, containing the copies in extenso of the prescriptions he compounded for the physicians who patronised and the persons who employed him. He may even have been 'Apothecary to the Person.' As such he would have been in immediate attendance on the king, as glysters and cupping had to be employed. Or lastly, the report of the illness and of the post-mortem examination may have been merely copied by the writer of the volume from the notes of one of the many physicians who were present throughout. It is clear that the author of the report was a medical man, and one thoroughly conversant with the habits of the king and the king and the whole course of his illness'.

William George Maton was born, 1774; educated at Salisbury's Free Grammar School; Queen's College, Oxford, 1790-1797; medical studies at Westminster Hospital, 1779-[1801]; Fellow of the College of Surgeons, 1802; Goulstonian lecturer in 1803, Censor 1804, 1813, and 1824; Treasurer, 1814-1820; Harveian orator, 1815; Physician to the Westminster Hospital, 1800-1808; Physician-Extraordinary to Queen Charlotte, 1816; Physician-in-Ordinary to the Duchess of Kent and to the infant Princess Victoria, 1820; died, 1835.

Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne was born on 28 September 1573 in Geneva, the son of Louis Turquet de Mayerne, a protestant French historian. Theodore Beza, John Calvin's successor, was Mayerne's godfather and namesake. After being educated in Geneva Mayerne went to the University of Heidelberg, where he studied for several years. Physic was his chosen profession and he went to Montpelier to pursue his medical studies. He proceeded MB in 1596, and MD in 1597.

Mayerne then moved to Paris where he lectured on anatomy and pharmacy. He had become greatly interested in chemistry, and in his medical practice made considerable use of chemical remedies. His support of this then recent innovation brought him into favour with Lazarus Riverius, first physician to Henry IV of France, who then procured Mayerne an appointment as one of the King's physicians in 1600. However Mayerne's support equally antagonised the Faculty of Paris, who would accept no dissent from Galen. In 1603 Mayerne, in conjunction with Quercetanus, was attacked by the Faculty in print, in Apologia pro Medicina Hippocratis et Galeni, contra Mayernium et Quercetanum. Mayerne responded with an apologetic answer, and his only medical publication, Apologia in qua videre est, inviolatis Hippocratis et Galeni legibus, Remedia Chemice praeparata tuto usurpari posse. Rupel. 1603. In this he demonstrated that chemical remedies were not only in accordance with the principles but also with the practice of Hippocrates and Galen.

Despite another interdict from the Galenists Mayerne remained in favour with the King, who appointed him to attend the Duke de Rohan in his embassies to the courts of Germany and Italy. Although he continued to rise in the King's esteem, Mayerne failed to secure the advantages the King offered because he refused to renounce his protestant beliefs and conform to the Church of Rome. Whilst the King would still have appointed him first physician, the Queen intervened to prevent it. Mayerne continued as physician in ordinary to the King until 1606, when he sold his place to a French physician.

It is thought that it was in the early part of 1606 that Mayerne came to England, on the invitation of an English nobleman he had treated in Paris. He was appointed physician to James I's Queen, Anne of Denmark, and was incorporated at Oxford on his Montpelier degree on 8 April 1606. It is thought that he spent the next few years in France, until the assassination of Henry IV on 14 May 1610 when he returned again to England. This was upon the request of James I, made via letters patent under the Great Seal. On his arrival the King appointed him first physician to himself and the Queen, and from this point until his death Dr Mayerne appears to have been considered one of the first physicians in the kingdom' (Munk's Roll, 1878, p.165). His practice soon thrived; he even had French patients cross the Channel to consult him. His patients included Sir Robert Cecil and Prince Henry, about whose demise by typhoid fever he wrote a detailed state paper. This document remainsa valuable monument of the medicine of the time' (DNB, 1894, p.151).

In 1616 Mayerne was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. The following year he was influential in obtaining a charter for the Society of Apothecaries, separating them from the Grocers, and was later the chief founder of the Company of Distillers. In 1618 he wrote the dedication of the first Pharmacopoeia Londinensis to the King. At about this time Mayerne revisited France. He was however in England again in 1624 when he was knighted at Theobalds. In the same year he wrote a collection of prescriptions and methods of practice for his colleagues, explaining that he would again be absent from his duties for a time. It has been said about this undertaking that

`certain prudential rules for their conduct are prefixed, which show the man of sense and liberal sentiments, but might, perhaps, be thought somewhat assuming and officious, considering the persons to whom they were addressed' (Munk's Roll, p.166).

In 1625 Mayerne returned for a short time to Switzerland, to his house in Aubonne, where a few years earlier he had taken the title Baron Aubonne.

On the accession of Charles I in 1625, Mayerne was appointed first physician to the King and Queen. During his reign Mayerne rose still higher in reputation and authority. His leisure time was spent conducting chemical and physical experiments, which he had begun in Paris. He introduced calomel into medical practice and invented the mercurial lotion known as the black-wash (lotio nigra). He experimented on pigments, and consequently did much to advance the art of enameling. He mixed paints and varnishes for artists, and cosmetics for the ladies at Court. It has been said of him that he was

`an innovator and a man of new ideas, and for that reason was perhaps over-anxious to prove his respect for what had long been generally received' (DNB, p.152).

Mayerne is ultimately famous for his copious case notes, the detail of which was extraordinary for his time.

It is thought that he remained in London, at his house in St Martin's Lane, during the Civil War, attending patients. On Charles I's execution in 1649, he was made nominal first physician to Charles II. In the same year he retired to Chelsea.

Mayerne was twice married, first to Marguerite de Boetslaer, by whom he had three children. His wife died in 1628. In 1630 he married Elizabeth Joachimi, by whom he had five children, of whom just one daughter survived him. Mayerne died at Chelsea on 22 March 1654/5. His body was interred in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, with the bodies of his mother, first wife, and five of his children. A monument was erected in his memory, with an inscription written by his godson, Sir Theodore des Vaux.

In 1690 Vaux published Praxis Medica, which contained a series of Mayerne's medical notes. In 1701 Joseph Browne published Mayernii Opera Medica, complectantia Consilia, Epistolas et Observationes, Pharmacopoeiam, variasque Medicamentorum formulas. Lond., which contains Mayerne's long counsels written in reply to letters. These offer some illumination of the duties of a fashionable physician in the early 17th century.

Publications:
Sommaire Description de la France, Allemange, Italie et Espagne (1592)
Apologia in qua videre est, inviolatis Hippocratis et Galeni legibus, Remedia Chemice praeparata tuto usurpari posse. Rupel. 1603

Publications by others about Mayerne:
Praxis Medica, Sir Theodore des Vaux (ed) (London, 1690)
Mayernii Opera Medica, complectantia Consilia, Epistolas et Observationes, Pharmacopoeiam, variasque Medicamentorum formulas. Lond. 1701 Joseph Browne (ed.)
`Rubens and Mayerne', Charles Davis (MA Thesis) (North Carolina, 1967)
Turquet de Mayerne as Baroque Physician: The Art of Medical Portraiture, Brian Nance (Amsterdam, 2001)

Richard Mead was born in Stepney, Middlesex, on 11 August 1673, the eleventh child of the Rev. Matthew Mead, a celebrated non-conformist minister. Mead was educated at home until he was ten, where he learnt Latin from his resident tutor the non-conformist minister John Nesbitt. From 1683 to 1689 he attended a private school run by Thomas Singleton, previously master of Eton College. Mead entered at the University of Utrecht in 1689 and studied under the instruction of Johann Georg Graevius, classical scholar and critic, acquiring an extensive knowledge of classical literature and antiquities. In 1692 he entered at the University of Leyden where he remained for three years as a student of medicine. Whilst there he attended the lectures of the botanist Paul Hermann and Archibald Pitcairne, Professor of Physic, and became acquainted with his fellow student Herman Boerhaave, with whom he remained friends throughout his life. In 1695 he traveled to Italy, visiting Turin, where it is said that he rediscovered the Tabula Isiaca, and Florence, before graduating MD from the University of Padua on 16 August 1695. He proceeded to Rome and Naples before returning to England in the summer of 1696.

In the autumn of 1696 Mead settled in the house in which he had been born, and began to practice in Stepney, despite not having the required license of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1702 he published A Mechanical Account of Poisons, which was later republished with many additions in 1743. The work was influenced by the teachings of Hermann and Pitcairne. The book was well received and established Mead's reputation, although it has been said that the `rules of treatment laid down are sounder than the argument' (DNB, 1894, p.182). An abstract appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1703, and in the same year he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. It was also in 1703 that Mead communicated to the Royal Society an account of Giovan Cosimo Bonomo's discovery of the acarus scabiei, the mite that causes scabies. The following year Mead published a treatise on the influence of the sun and moon upon human bodies, based on Newtonian mechanics, De Imperio Solis ac Lunae in Corpora Humana et Morbis inde Oriundis (1704).

In May 1703 Mead was elected physician to St Thomas's Hospital and moved to Crutched Friars, in the eastern part of the City of London. In 1705 he was elected as a member of the council of the Royal Society. He was re-elected in 1707, and served until his death. In December 1707 he was made MD at Oxford, and in June 1708 was admitted a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians.

In 1711 he was elected lecturer in anatomy for four years to the Barber-Surgeons. It was also in 1711 that he moved to Austin Friars where he was often visited by John Radcliffe, the eminent physician, who it is said `admired his learning, was pleased by his deference, and gave him much help and countenance' (ibid). His practice soon became large and in 1714 he moved to the house of the recently deceased Radcliffe, in Bloomsbury Square. He took over much of Radcliffe's practice and became the chief physician of the day. Mead attended Queen Anne in the days before her death in 1714, but his reputation was enhanced at the Court of Prince George, especially when he attended the Princess of Wales in 1717 and she recovered. In January 1715 he resigned from the staff of St Thomas's Hospital, whereupon the authorities expressed their gratitude and he was elected a governor of the hospital.

In 1716 Mead was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and was censor in 1716, 1719, and 1724. He was vice-president of the Royal Society in 1717. When in 1719 there was great concern about a possible outbreak of plague, Mead was asked by the Government to produce a statement concerning its prevention. Accordingly he published A Short Discourse Concerning Pestilential Contagion and the Methods to be Used to Prevent It (1720). Seven editions appeared within a year, whilst an eighth was published with large additions in 1722, and a ninth in 1744. The book was lucid, interesting and intellectually accessible to all, and did much to allay public alarm. It recommended the practical need to isolate in proper places the sick, over the methods of general quarantine and fumigation. In 1721 Mead superintended the inoculation of seven condemned criminals, all of whom recovered, and the practice of inoculation at the time was established.

In 1720 Mead again moved home and practice, this time to Great Ormond Street, where his house occupied the site of the present Hospital for Sick Children. He wrote prescriptions for apothecaries at a given hour at coffee houses in the City, usually Batson's, whilst he frequented for social purposes Rawthmell's coffee house in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. He saw patients at his home and made many journeys into the countryside. Most fashionable people consulted him; among his more famous patients were Sir Robert Walpole, statesman, Sir Isaac Newton, the natural philosopher, and Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. His income is believed to have reached, and sometimes exceeded, £6,000. This was despite his often seeing poor patients without a fee and giving money and medical advice to those who were in need of both.

Mead had a large circle of friends, however his closest were Richard Bentley, scholar and critic, and John Freind, physician and politician. It was at Mead's instance that Bentley revised the Theriaca of Nicander of Colophon. The copy of Nicander's work edited by Jean de Gorraeus, given by Mead to Bentley, contains the latter's notes and a prefixed Latin epistle to the physician, and is preserved in the British Library. Mead and Freind's friendship was even closer. Despite Mead being a zealous Whig and Freind a Tory, they shared many opinions and tastes. In September 1716 Mead wrote, in reply to a request from Freind, a letter on the treatment of smallpox, and Freind's De Purgantibus in Secunda Variolarum Confluentium Febre Adhibendis Epistola (1719) is addressed to Mead. When Freind was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1722, suspected of complicity in Bishop Atterbury's Plot, Mead visited him and ultimately procured from Walpole an order for his release. Freind went on to publish his History of Physick from the Time of Galen, in a Discourse written to Dr Mead (1725-26).

In October 1723 Mead delivered the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians, the subject of which, the defence of the position of physicians in Greece and in Rome as wealthy and honoured members of ancient society, excited some controversy. In 1724 he edited William Cowper's Myotomia Reformata, which was considered the best general account of the anatomy of the human muscular system of the time. Mead had attended George I during his reign, and on the accession of George II in 1727 was appointed physician in ordinary.

Mead corresponded with the principle members of Europe's literati, and numerous dedications were addressed to him. He facilitated many literary projects; between 1722 and 1733 he provided the means necessary for a complete edition of Jacques-Auguste de Thou's History in seven volumes, and in 1729 urged Samuel Jebb, physician and scholar, to edit the works of the philosopher Roger Bacon, which appeared in 1733. In 1744 Mead, over 70 years old, was chosen as President of the Royal College of Physicians, but he declined the position. He later presented to the College a marble bust of William Harvey, physician and discoverer of the circulation of the blood. In 1745 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

In 1749 Mead published Medica Sacra, a commentary on diseases suffered by biblical figures. Mead's last publication came in 1751; Monita et Praecepta Medica was a summary of his practical experience. The value of the book is undermined however by the fact that Mead had not kept copious notes of his cases. It has been said of Mead that he was `a universal reader, but not a perfect observer in all directions' (ibid, p.185). Ultimately however

he brought learning, careful reasoning, and kindly sympathy to the bedside of his patients, and very many sick men must have been the better for his visits' (ibid).

He was incredibly generous and distributed his wealth widely and wisely throughout his life, indeed `his charity and his hospitality were unbounded' (Munk's Roll, 1878, p.42). He was instrumental in persuading the wealthy philanthropist Thomas Guy to bequeath his fortune to founding the hospital subsequently consecrated in his name.

Mead was also a patron of fine arts and a great collector, and was particularly interested in statuary, coins and gems, as well as books, manuscripts and drawings. It is said that he `excelled all the nobility of his age and country in the encouragement which he afforded to the fine arts, and to the study of antiquities' (ibid, p.43). Mead's vast collection included 10,000 volumes, many of which were rare and ancient Oriental, Greek and Latin manuscripts. It was housed in a purpose built gallery in his house in Great Ormond Street, and Mead ensured it was accessible to all. The posthumous sale of Mead's collection realised over £16,000.

Mead married twice. He married his first wife Ruth, daughter of John Marsh, a merchant in London, in July 1699. They had eight children, four of whom, three daughters and one son, survived their mother who died in February 1719/20. In 1724 Mead married Anne, daughter of Sir Rowland Alston of Odell, Bedfordshire. Mead died on 16 February 1754, at his house in Great Ormond Street, after a few days illness. He was buried in Temple Church and a monument to his memory was erected in Westminster Abbey. Mead's friend and patient Samuel Johnson, lexicographer and literary biographer, said of him that he `lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man' (DNB, p.185). In acknowledgement of his interest in botany, a flowering plant was named after him, Dodecatheon Meadia. His gold-headed cane, given to him by John Radcliffe, is preserved at the Royal College of Physicians. The best collected editions of his works were posthumously published, The Medical Works of Dr Richard Mead (1762) and The Medical Works of Richard Mead, MD (1765).

Publications:
A Mechanical Account of Poisons in Several Essays (London, 1702)
De Imperio Solis ac Lunae in Corpore Humano, et Morbis inde Oriundis (London, 1704)
A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to Prevent It (London, 1720)
Oratio Anniversaria Harvaeiana; Accessit Dissertatio de Nummis Quibusdam a Smyrnaeis in Medicorum Honorem Percussis (London, 1724)
A Discourse on the Plague (London, 1744)
De Variolis et Morbillis. Accessit Rhazis de Iisdem Morbis Tractatus (London, 1747)
Medica Sacra: Sive de Morbis Insignioribus qui in Bibliis Memorantur Commentarius (London, 1749)
Monita et Praecepta Medica (London, 1751)
Bibliotheca Meadiana; Sive, Catalogus Librorum R. Mead (London, 1754)

Publications by others about Mead:
'Dr Richard Mead (1673-1754): A Biographical Study', Arnold Zuckerman (PhD thesis, Urbanan, Illinois, 1965)
In the Sunshine of Life: A Biography of Dr Richard Mead, 1673-1754, Richard H. Meade (Philadelphia, 1974)
The Gold-Headed Cane, William Macmichael (London, 1827)

Born, 1875; educated at Llandovery College and at the University of Edinburgh; graduated MB, 1899 and MD, 1903; member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 1903; postgraduate study in Vienna and Berlin; held resident posts at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and in London at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, the Brompton Hospital, and the Western Fever Hospital of the Metropolitan Asylums Board; diploma in public health, 1905; demonstrator and lecturer in public health at University College, London, 1907; deputy medical officer of health of the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington, London, 1907; part-time officer, London County Council, 1909; full-time assistant medical officer, London County Council, 1911-1924, working in schools in the East End of London; prepared and implemented schemes for the control of tuberculosis and venereal diseases in London; Director of Hospitals and Medical services for the joint council of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John of Jerusalem, 1924, he also remained as London County Council part-time staff as a consultant on the tuberculosis and venereal diseases schemes; returned to full-time work for the London County Council, as County Medical Officer of Health, 1926-1939; returned to Caernarvonshire, where he acted as Inspector of hospitals and convalescent homes in north Wales for the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John of Jerusalem; returned to London and undertook work on variouis committees, 1945; died, 1949.

Born, 1771; education, the free grammar school, Marlborough and a school in Old Burlington Street, London; medical education mainly under his paternal uncle, also Samuel Merriman, a distinguished obstetrician; qualified, 1800; member of the Society of Apothecaries, 1800; initially practised as an apothecary but began to specialise in midwifery; from 1808 he was physician accoucheur, consulting physician accoucheur, and vice-president at the Westminster Dispensary; employed by the board of St George's, Hanover Square, to attend all difficult births in the parish, 1808; physician accoucheur to the Middlesex and Westminster lying-in hospitals, 1809; lectured on obstetrics at the Middlesex Hospital, 1810-; taught at St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1820-1821; died, 1852.

Publications: Synopsis of the Various Kinds of Difficult Parturition (1814)

Gavin Milroy was born in 1805, in Edinburgh, the son of a silversmith. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, before entering the city's university to study medicine. He qualified licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1824, and graduated MD from the university in 1828. He was a founder member of the Hunterian Society of Edinburgh.

Rather than enter into practice, Milroy enlisted as a medical officer in the Government Packet Service to the West Indies and the Mediterranean. On his return he was attracted to medical journalism, and from 1844-47 was co-editor of the Medico-Chirurgical Review. Milroy's detailed commentary on a French report on `Plague and Quarantine' was published in the Review in October 1846. In the article he advocated the abolition of quarantine, and the dependence on sanitary measures alone for protection from foreign diseases. Milroy was consequently acknowledged as an expert on epidemiology and was employed on several Government commissions of inspection and enquiry. From 1849-50 he acted as a superintendent medical inspector of the General Board of Health. Milroy was a member of the Medical and Chirurgical Society, and played an active role in establishing the Epidemiological Society of London in 1850.

In 1852 he went to Jamaica for the Colonial Office, to investigate a cholera epidemic. He presented to the authorities a report which charted the origin and progress of the epidemic, gave details of the social conditions of the natives, and made recommendations for sanitary measures. In 1853 he was elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. For the next two years, 1853-55, he was again medical inspector for the General Board of Health. From 1855-56, during the Crimean War, he served on the Sanitary Commission inspecting the British troops in the field. The reports, written by Milroy and his colleague John Sutherland, from the Board of Health, did influence subsequent reforms, although at the time the Army Medical Department had insufficient authority to institute the necessary changes.

In 1858 Milroy was honorary secretary of a committee appointed by the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science to enquire into the question of quarantine worldwide. As secretary Milroy assimilated and digested the results, and communicated them to the Board of Trade. The committee's findings were incorporated into three parliamentary papers, 1860-61. The papers contained information not only on the laws and practice of quarantine, but also on the appearance and prevalence of the diseases for which quarantine was being imposed throughout the world. Milroy was secretary of the Epidemiological Society, 1862-64, and then its president, 1864-66.

Milroy was a member of the committee of the Royal College of Physicians, appointed at the request of the Colonial Office in 1862, to examine the spread of leprosy. The committee's report of 1867 included an appendix by Milroy giving suggestions, entitled Notes respecting the Leprosy of Scripture'. Other contributions to medical literature included the article onPlague' in Sir John Russell Reynold's System of Medicine (1866-79), many articles for The Lancet, and many other anonymous articles in various medical journals. It has been said of Milroy that he was `a modest, unassuming man, of sound judgment, and considerable intellectual powers' (DNB, 1894, p.23). In 1871 Milroy was awarded a civil list pension of £100 a year by the Government.

In later years he lived at Richmond, Surrey. His wife Sophia (nee Chapman) died about three years before her husband. Milroy died at Richmond on 11 January 1886, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. He bequeathed to the College £2,000 to found the Milroy Lectureship on state medicine and public health, and accompanied the bequest with a memorandum of suggestions.

Publications:
Quarantine and the Plague, being a Summary of the Report on these Subjects recently addressed to the Royal Academy of Medicine in Paris, with Introductory Observations, Extracts from Parliamentary Correspondence, and Notes (London, 1846)
Abstract of Regulations in Force in Foreign Countries respecting Quarantine (Parliamentary Papers no.568, 25 August 1860); Abstracts of Information concerning the Laws of Quarantine (Parliamentary Papers no.568-1, 21 August 1860); Papers relating to Quarantine (Parliamentary Papers no.544, 6 August 1861)

Sir Alexander Morison was born on 1 May 1779 at Anchorfield, near Edinburgh. He was educated at the city's high school, and then proceeded to the University of Edinburgh where he spent five years. He studied medicine under the eminent surgeon Alexander Wood, who was at the time head of the surgical profession in Edinburgh. He graduated MD on 12 September 1799. His thesis was entitled `De Hydrocephalo Phrenitico', and he continued to take a special interest in cerebral and mental diseases throughout his life.

Morison became a licentiate of the Edinburgh College of Physicians in 1800, and a fellow in 1801. He practiced medicine in Edinburgh for a time before, in 1808, moving to London. In the same year he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Morison devoted his attention particularly to insanity. He was appointed inspecting physician of lunatic asylums in the county of Surrey in 1810. For many years he gave an annual course of lectures on mental diseases and became recognised as an expert in this field.

In 1826 he published Outlines of Lectures on Mental Diseases, and two years later, Cases of Mental Disease, with Practical Observations on the Medical Treatment (1828). In 1835 he became physician to the Bethlehem Hospital. He was also physician to Princess Charlotte and to Prince Leopold. He was knighted in 1838.

In 1840 Morison published The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases. His publications were brief but were illustrated with a large series of portraits of lunatics. He was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1841.

Morison died in Edinburgh on 14 March 1866, aged 86, and was buried at Currie.

Publications:
Outlines of Lectures on Mental Diseases (London, 1826)
Cases of Mental Disease, with Practical Observations on the Medical Treatment (London and Edinburgh, 1828)
The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases (London, 1840)

William Munk was born on 24 September 1816 at Battle, Sussex, the eldest son of William Munk, an ironmonger originally from Devon. He was educated at University College London, and subsequently at the University of Leyden, where he graduated MD in 1837 at the early age of 21.

Munk began practice in London in September 1837. His first appointment was as demonstrator of morbid anatomy at St Thomas's Hospital. This was followed by a number of honorary appointments at the Eastern, Tower Hamlets, and Queen Adelaide's Dispensaries. In 1853 he was elected physician to the Smallpox Hospital, and the following year became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. For many years he was physician to the Royal Infirmary for Asthma, Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, and consulting physician to the Royal Hospital for Incurables.

Munk is best known however as an historian. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and, in 1857, was appointed Harveian Librarian of the Royal College of Physicians, serving in this office for over forty years until his death. In 1857 he wrote a biography of a former president of the College, A Memoir of the Life and Writings of John Ayrton Paris', published in the Medical Times and Gazette. In 1861 the first edition, in two volumes, of the Roll of the Royal College of Physicians (Munk's Roll) was published. In this Munk provided a biographical record of the fellows and licentiates of the College, from its foundation in 1518 to the end of the 18th century. He subsequently published a second edition, in three volumes, which was brought to 1825, the date when the College moved from Warwick Lane to Pall Mall East. Originally Munk's Roll was not intended for publication and consequently lacks detailed referencing and methodical presentation, however,it serves an essential purpose in providing historians and biographers with an invaluable and copious fund of information' (Munk's Roll, 1955, p.76).

In the medical world he was a leading authority of his day on smallpox, and was called in to consult Prince Arthur, later Duke of Connaught, when the Prince had smallpox in 1867. Munk's plea for the increased use of narcotics and analgesics for relieving pain in incurable diseases also attracted much attention. He published a number of papers in medical journals such as The Lancet and in the St Bartholomew's Hospital Reports. A further contribution to medical literature was his book Euthanasia, or Medical Treatment in aid of an Easy Death, in 1887. The book was

`an earnest and learned plea for the recognition of the duty which physicians owe their patients not to end life but to render its passing in hopeless cases more easy' (The Lancet, 1898, p.1818).

Munk also produced an edition of The Gold-Headed Cane (1884) by William Macmichael, Registrar of the Royal College of Physicians. The book tells of the adventures of a physician's cane carried by several eminent physicians, and gives both good biographies of the owners and information on the condition of medicine in 18th century England. Munk became vice-president of the College in 1889, and also served as senior censor.

In 1893 he retired from the Smallpox Hospital, although he remained consulting physician to the Royal Hospital for Incurables until his death. In 1895 he wrote a biography of Sir Henry Halford, the longest serving president of the College, entitled The Life of Sir Henry Halford, for which the College voted him £100.

Munk married Emma Luke in 1849, and they had two sons and three daughters. Munk died at Finsbury Square London, on 20 December 1898, after suffering for many years from glycosuria

Publications:
The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1518-1800 [Munk's Roll, vols. 1-3] (2nd ed., London, 1878) (continued as Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London)
A Brief Account of the Circumstances Leading to and Attending the Reintombment of the Remains of Dr William Harvey in the Church of Hempstead in Essex, October 1883 (London, 1883)
The Gold-headed Cane, William MacMichael (William Munk, ed.) (London, 1884)
Euthanasia: Or, Medical Treatment in Aid of an Easy Death (London, 1887)
The Life of Sir Henry Halford (London, 1895)
Marvodia [An Account of the Last Illness of James I and of the Post-Mortem Examination of his Body; with some Notes on the Marwoods and their Descendants]

Charles Murchison was born on 26 July 1830 in Jamaica, the son of the Hon. Alexander Murchison, physician. At the age of three Murchison returned with his family to Scotland and settled in Elgin, where he was educated. He entered the University of Aberdeen in 1845 as a student of arts, and two years later began to study medicine at Edinburgh University. He distinguished himself in surgery, botany, and midwifery, gaining a large number of prizes. In 1850 he passed the examination for membership of the Royal College of Surgeons, at little over twenty years old. In the same year he became house surgeon to James Syme, professor of surgery at Edinburgh University. In 1851 Murchison graduated MD, with his thesis on the structure of tumours, which won him a gold medal.

Murchison became physician to the British embassy at Turin, Italy, before returning to Edinburgh in 1852, where he served for a short time as resident physician in the city's Royal Infirmary. He continued his medical studies at Dublin and Paris before, in 1853, entering the Bengal Medical Service of the East India Company. Shortly after reaching India he was made professor of chemistry at the Medical College of Calcutta. In 1854 he served on an expedition to Burma, and the following year his two papers on the `Climate and Diseases of Burmah' were published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal (January and April 1855). In the autumn of 1855 Murchison left the service and moved to London.

Settling in London he became physician to the Westminster General Dispensary, and shortly afterwards lecturer on botany and curator of the museum at St Mary's Hospital. He also became a member of the Royal College of Physicians, and of the Pathological Society, in 1855. Throughout his career he contributed 143 papers and reports to the Transactions of the society. In 1856 he was appointed assistant physician to both the London Fever Hospital and King's College Hospital. In 1859 he was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

He resigned from King's College Hospital in 1860 and was appointed assistant physician and lecturer on pathology at the Middlesex Hospital. In 1861 he was made full physician at the London Fever Hospital, and became a specialist on fevers. From 1861-69 he edited the hospital's Annual Reports. Murchison's most important contribution to medical science was A Treatise on the Continued Fevers of Great Britain (1862). The work was subsequently translated into German and French, and came to be regarded as the leading authority on the subject. In 1866 he was promoted to the position of full physician at the Middlesex Hospital, and in the same year became a fellow of the Royal Society. Another area of interest to Murchison was liver disease, and in 1868 he published his Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Liver, Jaundice and Abdominal Dropsy.

In 1870 he retired from the London Fever Hospital, and was presented with a testimonial by public subscription. In the same year he received an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh. The following year he resigned from the Middlesex Hospital in order to become physician and lecturer on medicine at St Thomas's Hospital, both of these appointments he held until his death. He gained a high reputation as a clinical teacher. He was considered brilliant, although dogmatic in his approach, and was a keen controversialist. His consulting practice grew, and he became known for his `accuracy and prompt decision' (DNB, 1894, p.317). He was also an extremely prolific writer, submitting over 300 papers to various medical journals.

In 1873 he traced the origin of an epidemic of typhoid fever to a polluted supply of milk. Afterwards grateful residents of West London presented him with a testimonial. He gave the Croonian Lectures to the Royal College of Physicians in the same year, on the subject of liver disease. In 1875 he was an examiner in medicine to the University of London. For two years, from 1877 to his death, Murchison was president of the Pathological Society. He was appointed physician-in-ordinary to the Duke and Duchess of Connaught at the beginning of 1879.

Murchison died suddenly of heart disease at the age of 48, on 23 April 1879, whilst seeing patients in his consulting room. He was buried at Norwood cemetery. Murchison had married Clara Elizabeth Bickersteth in 1859, and they had had nine children, his wife and six of his children survived him. In his memory was founded the Murchison Scholarship, awarded in alternate years by the Royal College of Physicians and Edinburgh University. A marble portrait bust of Murchison was also placed in St Thomas's Hospital.

Publications:
A Clinical Treatise on Diseases of the Liver, Friedrich Theodor Frerichs, translated by Charles Murchison (London, 1860-61)
A Treatise on the Continued Fevers of Great Britain (London, 1862; 2nd ed. 1873; 3rd ed. 1884) (German translation, 1867; French translation of part, 1878)
Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Liver, Jaundice, and Abdominal Dropsy (London, 1868; 2nd ed. incl. Functional Derangements of the Liver, 1877; 3rd ed. 1885) (French translation, 1878)
Paleontological Memoirs and Notes; with a Biographical Sketch, compiled and edited by Charles Murchison, Hugh Falconer (ed. Charles Murchison) (London, 1868)
Three Rare Forms of Disease of the Liver, Characterised by the Deposit of Nuclear Tissue (London, 1869)
On Functional Derangements of the Liver (London, 1874)

Alan David Nunes Nabarro was born in Cricklewood on 10 November 1914. He was diagnosed with diabetes in 1921, and was one of the first diabetics in the UK to be treated with insulin from 1923. As a child, and throughout his life, Alan took an active interest in his condition, corresponding with his doctor and diabetes specialists around the world, collecting literature on the subject, creating suitable recipe and diet sheets, and later becoming an active member of the British Diabetic Association, writing and speaking about diabetes, and working to improve the lives of diabetics globally. He was also involved in charity work, particularly youth work with the Victoria Boys Club in Norwood. In 1968, Alan received an OBE in recognition of his various charitable work. On 21 March 1944, Alan married Vera Ruth Kadish, with whom he had two children, Eve and Daniel. Alan worked at his father's firm of solicitors, Nabarro Nathanson, from about 1933 to 1975, at which time he was a senior partner. In February 1977 he sufferred a stroke and died on 22 March 1977. The Alan Nabarro Medal is named in his honour and is awarded by Diabetes UK to people who have lived with diabetes for 50 years.

Born, 1824; educated at Wakefield School; Trinity College, Oxford, 1844; medical school in Kinnerton Street attached to St George's Hospital, London; licentiate, 1850, and Fellow, 1855, of the Royal College of Physicians; MA and MB, 1851; MD, 1857; worked at morbid anatomy and was Curator of the Museum, St George's Hospital; assistant physician, 1857; full physician, 1866; resigned from St George's, 1876; returned to active practice and Consulting Physician for St George's Hospital, 1877; died, 1905.

John Noel O'Reilly was born on 15 December 1904, in Oxford, where his father was a civil servant. He was educated at the City of Oxford School and then in 1923 entered Jesus College, Oxford, as a mathematics exhibitioner, where he was a keen athlete. After becoming interested in natural sciences he chose to study medicine. He studied at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London, where he had a distinguished academic career. He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1929, and qualified BM BCh in 1930.

O'Reilly became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1932, and qualified MD from Oxford in 1936. He obtained a Medical Research Council travelling fellowship and went to Vienna, Heidelberg, and Munich to study tuberculosis in children. After returning to England he held registrar posts at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, before becoming consultant paediatrician to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the East End of London in 1934.

During the Second World War he was found to be unfit for service in the Armed Forces, due to having undergone gastrectomy. He became medical superintendent and physician of an Army hospital, from 1940-43.

In 1943 he was appointed consultant paediatrician to St Helier Hospital, Carshalton, where he remained for 25 years. He was responsible for starting one of the earliest premature baby units in the United Kingdom. His hard work and high standards enabled the paediatric unit of the hospital to thrive, amongst an underprivileged population that had recently been re-housed from London's East End. He was an inspiration to many junior staff, and it has been said that he `inspired confidence in his excellent medical skills and related well to children' (Munk's Roll, 1994, p.400).

He simultaneously held appointments as paediatrician at several hospitals, including the Croydon General Hospital, whose staff he joined in 1946. In 1966 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

He married Doreen Daly, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at St Helier's Hospital, in 1955. After retirement they travelled extensively and learnt Spanish, to add interest to their travels. O'Reilly suffered with diabetes towards the end of his life, and died at the age of 84 on 10 October 1989.

Sir James Paget was born on 11 January 1814 at Great Yarmouth, the son of Samuel Paget, brewer and ship owner, and one time mayor of Great Yarmouth. Paget was the eighth of seventeenth children, nine of which survived childhood, and brother of the eminent physician Sir George Paget. His early education was at a local private school. However his father ran into financial difficulties after the short boom of the post-Napoleonic War years, and Paget could not follow his elder brothers' route through Charterhouse and on to university. In 1830 he was instead apprenticed for five years to Charles Costerton, surgeon in Great Yarmouth. During his apprenticeship Paget wrote and published with one of his brothers a book on the natural history of the town.

In 1834 Paget became a student at St Bartholomew's Hospital (St Bart's), London, and took lodgings in the capital. The following year, whilst undertaking some dissection work, he noticed white specks in the muscles of his subject. On inspection through a microscope he found them to be cysts containing worms. Professor Richard Owen later confirmed his observations, and the parasite became known as Trichina spiralis. From 1835-36 Paget was appointed clinical clerk, under the physician Peter Mere Latham, because he could not afford the fee demanded by the surgeons of the hospital for the office of "dresser". Consequently he did not become a house surgeon. In 1836, at the age of twenty-two, Paget became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

He made a short study tour to Paris before settling in London, where he supported himself by teaching and writing. From 1837-42 he was sub-editor of the Medical Gazette, and also wrote for the Medical Quarterly Review. In 1837 he was also appointed curator of St Bart's Museum, and in 1839 was made demonstrator of morbid anatomy. In 1841 he was elected surgeon to the Finsbury Dispensary. At St Bart's he was promoted to the position of lecturer on general anatomy and physiology in 1843, and in the same year became one of the original fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons. Also in 1843 he was elected warden of St Bart's new college for students, which in addition to a salary included accommodation within the college. In 1844 he finally married his fiancé Lydia North, after an eight-year engagement.

In 1846 Paget compiled a catalogue of St Bart's Museum, the style and content of which laid the foundation of his reputation. He also prepared a catalogue of the pathological specimens housed in the Hunterian Museum, which appeared between 1846 and 1849. In 1847 he was appointed an assistant surgeon at St Bart's, after a severe contest. There was some opposition to his appointment on the grounds that he had not been a dresser or a house surgeon, and so did not hold the qualifications traditionally thought necessary for the post. From 1847-52 he was Arris and Gale Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons. The subsequent publication of these lectures, in his Lectures on Surgical Pathology (1853), gave a great impulse to the study of pathology, which had been waning for some time. In 1851 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society. In the same year he resigned from his post as warden at St Bart's, although he remained assistant surgeon and lecturer. Consequently he found he had the time to set up a consultant practice. He moved to Henrietta Street, to a house large enough to accommodate his growing family and practice.

In 1858, whilst still only an assistant surgeon, he was appointed surgeon-extraordinary to the Queen. He was surgeon to the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, and attended the Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexandra, during a long illness. Also in 1858 Paget moved to a larger property in Harewood Place, just off Oxford Street. In 1859 he resigned from his appointment as lecturer in physiology at St Bart's, owing to his burgeoning private practice. At the time his was the largest surgical practice in London. In 1860 he was appointed a member of the Senate of the University of London. He became full surgeon at St Bart's in 1861, and from 1865-69 lectured on surgery at the medical school. From 1865-89 he was a member of the council of the Royal College of Surgeons. From 1867-77 he held the post of Serjeant-Surgeon-Extraordinary. In 1869 he was made president of the Clinical Society.

Paget held great authority amongst his contemporaries, and it has been said that he was a surgeon who

`advanced his art by showing how pathology might be applied successfully to elucidate clinical problems, when as yet there was no science of bacteriology' (DNB, 1901, p.241).

He made great use of the microscope to determine the true nature of morbid growths. He was widely respected as a teacher, due to his eloquence and his ability to grasp the principles of his subject, and to discuss them briefly and clearly. His name is ultimately associated with a chronic eczematous condition of the nipple, which related to breast cancer, and with a chronic inflammation of bones, which was named Osteitis deformans.

Paget resigned as surgeon at St Bart's in 1871 and was immediately appointed a consulting surgeon of the hospital. In the same year he was created a baronet. He was vice president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1873 and 1874, and president in 1875. In the same year he was elected president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. He had made numerous contributions to medical literature throughout his career and this continued after his retirement from the hospital. He wrote articles on various topics, including cancer, syphilis and typhoid, as well as surgical conditions. In 1875 he published a collection of his papers entitled Clinical Lectures and Essays. He was the Royal College of Surgeons representative at the General Medical Council from 1876-81, and was the Hunterian orator at the college in 1877. In 1877 he was also made Serjeant-Surgeon to Queen Victoria.

In 1881 Paget was president of the International Congress of Medicine at the meeting held in London. In 1883 he became Vice-Chancellor of the University of London, a post he retained until 1895. In 1887 he was president of the Pathological Society of London. Amongst his many distinctions he was awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Bonn and Wurzberg.

Lady Paget died in 1895. Paget began to deteriorate soon afterwards, never really recovering from the blow caused by his wife's death. He died at his house in Regent's Park, where he had moved on his retirement, on 30 December 1899. He was buried at Finchley cemetery, after a funeral service at Westminster Abbey. The Pagets' four sons and two daughters survived both parents, their son Francis became Bishop of Oxford, whilst Stephen followed in his father's path and became himself a distinguished surgeon.

Publications:
A Sketch of the Natural History of Great Yarmouth and its Neighbourhood, containing Catalogues of the Species of Animals, Birds, Reptiles, Fish, Insects and Plants, at present known, James & Charles Paget (Yarmouth, 1834)
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pathological Specimens contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (Vol. I 1846; Vol. II 1847; Vol. III 1848; Vols. IV & V 1849; 2nd ed. 1882-85)
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Anatomical Museum of St Bartholomew's Hospital (Vol. I 1847; Vol. II, 1852)
Handbook of Physiology: assisted by J. Paget, William Senhouse, Sir James Paget (London, 1848)
Lectures on Surgical Pathology (London, 1853; 2nd ed. 1863; 3rd ed. 1870; 4th ed. 1876)
Clinical Lectures and Essays, Howard Marsh (ed.) (London, 1875, transl. into French, 1877)
The Hunterian Oration (London, 1877)
On Some Rare and New Diseases (London, 1883)
Studies of Old Case Books (London, 1891)
John Hunter, Man of Science and Surgeon, 1728-93; with an Introduction by Sir James Paget, Stephen Paget (London, 1897)
Memoirs and Letters of Sir James Paget, ed. by Stephen Paget (London, 1901) Posthumously published
Selected Essays and Addresses, edited by S. Paget, Sir James Paget, Stephen Paget (ed.) (London, 1902)

Publications by others about Paget:
Sir James Paget: The Rise of Clinical Surgery, Shirley Roberts (London, 1989)

Baldwin Hamey the younger was born, 1600; University of Leiden as a student of philosophy, 1617-; spent some time studying in Oxford; apprenticed to his father, 1622-1623; returned to Leiden, 1625-1626; MD, 1626; incorporated DM at Oxford, 1630; Fellow of the College of Physicians of London, 1634; eight times censor from 1640 to 1654; registrar, 1646 and 1650-1654; Treasurer, 1664-1666. Practised in London, 1627-1666; died, 1676.

Baptised, 1785; Tancred studentship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 1803-1808; Physician at the Westminster Hospital, 1808-1813; Physician to the Penzance Dispensary, 1813-1817; returned to London to set up in practice, 1817; began a series of lectures in materia medica at Great Windmill Street School of Medicine, [1817]; lectured in materia medica for the Royal College of Physicians, 1819-1826; President of the Royal College of Physicians, 1844-1856; died, 1856.

Richard Lower was born, 1631; education, Westminster School; Christ Church, Oxford, 1651-1665; had established an active medical practice in Oxford; established himself as an important medical researcher; relocated to London to establish a medical practice, 1666; maintained his research activities for several years after arriving in London but devoted himself increasingly to clinical medicine; Fellow of the College of Physicians, 1675; Royal Physician, 1675; died, 1691.

Possibly Joseph Phelan, MD Glasgow 1785, LRCP 1786, naval surgeon.

Andrew Plowden was servant to Mistress Honore Henslow.

Born, 1869; educated at Marlborough School; studied medicine at University College, Bristol and St Mary's Hospital; qualified, 1893; Assistant Physician at Great Ormond Street, 1900; Assistant Physician, in charge of the children's wards, at University College Hospital, 1903; full Physician at UCH, 1910; full Physician at Great Ormond Street, 1919; First World War captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps; Bradshaw lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians, 1924; Lettsomian lecturer at the Medical Society of London, 1927; President of the British Paediatric Association, 1931; Long Fox Lecturer at Bristol, 1934; retired from his hospital appointments, 1934; died, 1943.

Born, 1707; education: St Andrews; St Leonard's College, 1722; Edinburgh University, 1727; studied medicine in Leiden, graduating MD, 1730; completed his medical studies in Paris; medical practice in Edinburgh; joint Professor of Pneumatics (metaphysics) and Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh University; Physician to the Earl of Stair; Physician to the Army in Flanders, 1742; Physician-General to the Duke of Cumberland, 1744-1748; resigned his professorship in Edinburgh, 1744; settled in London and continued in medical practice, 1748; Physician-in-Ordinary to the Duke of Cumberland, 1749; Council member of the Royal Society, 1753; LRCP, 1758; FRCP, 1763; speciali gratia, Physician to the Queen, 1761; President of the Royal Society, 1772-1778; baronet, 1766; gazetted Physician-in-Ordinary to the king, 1774; died, 1782.

Publications:
Observations on the Nature and Cure of Hospital and Jayl Fevers (1750)

Observations on the Diseases of the Army (1752)

Mabel Lieda Ramsay was born in the late 1880s, the second child of a Naval officer. She spent her childhood in Britain and the Caribbean, eventually settling in Plymouth, Devon. The majority of her medical education took place in Scotland. She qualified MD Ed 1912; MBChB 1906; FRCS Ed 1921; MRCOG 1929. Her speciality was obstetrics and gynaecology. She died in 1954.

Born, 1745; education: Beverley Grammar School; Lincoln College, Oxford, 1763-; Trinity College, Cambridge; further study at Edinburgh, graduated MB at Cambridge, 1768; MD, 1773; practised at Guildford, Surrey; moved to London, 1772; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), 1774; RCP censor, 1774, 1778, 1782, 1784, 1787, and 1792; RCP registrar, 1781-1783; Goulstonian Lecturer, 1775; Harveian Orator, 1776; Physician to the Middlesex Hospital, 1773-1777; Physician to St Thomas's Hospital, 1777-1783; Physician-Extraordinary to King George III, 1788; Physician-in-Ordinary, 1806; died, 1811.

Born, 1828; apprenticed to Henry Hudson, a surgeon at Somerby, c 1838; Anderson's University, Glasgow, 1847 but left before completing his training due to illness; after a period of convalescence he became assistant to Thomas Browne, of Saffron Walden in Essex; assistant to Edward Dudley Hudson, surgeon at Littlebury; partner of Robert Willis of Barnes, Surrey, 1849; physician to the Blenheim Street Dispensary; Lecturer on Forensic Medicine at the Grosvenor Place School of Medicine, 1854; admitted MA and MD by St Andrews University, 1854; Physician to the Royal Infirmary for Diseases of the Chest, and to the Metropolitan, Marylebone, and Margaret Street dispensaries, 1856; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London, 1865; held several posts at the Grosvenor Place school, lecturing on public hygiene and physiology before becoming Dean of the school, -1863; best-known for his research into anaesthetics and for his involvement in public health and the sanitary movement; died, 1896.

Born, 1862; educated at Maclaren's School at Summerfield, Oxford, and at Marlborough College; medical student at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, 1881-1883; St John's College, Cambridge, 1883-; Demonstrator in Pathology at Cambridge, 1887; House Physician at St Bartholomew's; Demonstrator in Anatomy at St Bartholomew's; Curator of the museum at St George's Hospital, London, 1890; MD, 1891; Assistant Physician to St George's, 1893; Physician to St George's, 1898-[1918]; staff of the Victoria Hospital for Children, London; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1894; Consulting Physician to the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital at Pretoria, South Africa, 1901; served on advisory committees set up by the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Royal Naval Service to improve the conditions of its officers; examiner for the service's entrance and promotion examinations in medicine; consulting physician to the Royal Navy, with the temporary rank of surgeon rear-admiral, First World War; representative of the medical department of the Admiralty on the medical board of the flying corps, and he became Physician to the Central Flying Hospital at Mount Vernon, Hampstead, London, 1917-1919; Consulting Physician to St George's Hospital, 1918; Consulting Physician to the Ventnor Hospital for Consumption on the Isle of Wight, 1922; Consulting Physician to the King Edward VII Sanatorium at Midhurst, 1923; Physician-in-Ordinary to King George V, 1923; President of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1918-1920; President of the Royal College of Physicians, 1922-1926; President of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland, 1925 and 1929; President of the Medical Society of London, 1926-1927; Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge, 1925; retired, 1932; died, 1944.

George Rossdale was Member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1926 and subsequently became Senior Physician at St Mary's Plaistow and St Bartholomew's.

Born, 1751; educated University of Edinburgh; surgeon's mate on one of the East India Company's ships, 1766; assistant surgeon on the Company's Madras establishment; General Hospital at Madras; practised botany in his spare time; full surgeon, 1780; stationed at Samulcotta, 1781; naturalist in the Madras Presidency, 1790; Superintendent, Royal Botanic Garden in Calcutta, 1793-1813; returned to England, 1813; died, 1815.

George Fordyce was born, 1736; educated, University of Aberdeen; apprenticed to study medicine under his uncle, Dr John Fordyce; Edinburgh University, 1754-1758; MD, 1758; studied anatomy under the famous anatomist Bernhard Siegfried Albinus in Leiden, 1759; returned to England, 1759; lectured on chemistry in London, 1759-; lectured on materia medica and the practice of physic, 1764-; licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, 1765; Physician to St Thomas' Hospital, 1770; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1778; died, 1802.

William Saunders was born in Banff, Scotland in 1743. He graduated MD Edinburgh in 1765 and then came to live in London where he gained LRCP in 1769 and was elected physician at Guy's Hospital in 1770. He became FRCP in 1790 and held various College positions including Censor, Goulstonian lecturer (1792) and Harveian orator (1796). He became Physician Extraordinary to the Prince Regent in 1807. Saunders died at Enfield, Middlesex in 1817. [Source - Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians vol II p399].

Catharine Sedley was the daughter of John Savage, Earl of Rivers, and was probably born in the late 1630s, or early 1640s.

She married Sir Charles Sedley, wit, dramatic author, and Member of Parliament for New Romney, on 23 February 1656/7 at St Giles-in-the-Fields. Her husband, favoured at the court of Charles II, gained a reputation as a patron of literature in the Restoration period, and was the Lisideius of the poet John Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668). His lewd, drunken behaviour brought him notoriety which rivaled his literary reputation. There are several references to Sedley's antics in Samuel Pepys's Diary.

Sir Charles and Lady Sedley had one daughter, Catharine, born in 1657. She became the favourite mistress of James, Duke of York, afterwards James II, who created her Countess of Dorchester.

Lady Sedley was eventually locked up in a madhouse, or confined in a convent, many years before she died (Guthrie, 1913, p.12; Boswell, 1929, p.1058). She is thought to have died in 1705.

Francis Sibson was born on 21 May 1814 at Cross Canonby, Cumberland (now Cumbria). He spent most of his childhood in Edinburgh, after his parents moved there in 1819. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to John Lizars, surgeon and anatomist. He received his diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (LRCS) in 1831. He treated cholera patients during the 1831-32 epidemic, at Leith, Newhaven and Edinburgh. He then entered general practice for a short time at Cockermouth, Cumberland, before resuming his medical studies at Guy's and St Thomas's Hospitals in London. As part of his studies he spent some time, in 1833, in the pathology department of Guy's, where he became a friend and pupil of the curator Thomas Hodgkin, physician and philanthropist. Sibson qualified licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries (LSA) in 1835, and became resident surgeon and apothecary to the Nottingham General Hospital.

He published a number of papers on the physiology and pathology of respiration, which attracted attention to him and increased his reputation. His first paper, `A Flexible Stethoscope', was published in the Medical Gazette (1840). In 1843 he joined the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association (later the British Medical Association). In 1848 he left his position at Nottingham General Hospital and returned to London. He graduated MB and MD from London in the same year, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1849. It was also in 1849 that he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians. Sibson took a house in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, and built up a successful private practice. During the winter of 1849-50 he gave a course of demonstrations on visceral anatomy. He also lectured on medicine at Lane's School, which adjoined St George's Hospital.

Upon the foundation of St Mary's Hospital in 1851 he was appointed one of its first physicians. Sibson subsequently lectured on medicine at the hospital's medical school. He delivered the Goulstonian Lectures at the Royal College of Physicians in 1854, where he had been elected a fellow the previous year. He authored the illustrated Medical Anatomy, which he published in sections (1855-69). This highly merited work was the result of enormous labour and research. He also contributed chapters on pericarditis and endocarditis to Sir John Russell Reynolds' System of Medicine (1866-79).

Sibson's main interest was in trying to envisage the viscera both in a healthy and diseased state. His idea of 'medical anatomy' was to teach the topographical anatomy of the healthy viscera on the dead body, in order that the pathology student was always familiar with the position and movement of the organs. It has been said that he was `a man of continuous industry, and his numerous papers contain elaborate series of observations' (DNB, 1897, p.187).

Sibson helped to carry into effect the new constitution of the British Medical Association (BMA) in 1856, and was an active member until his death. In 1861, and from 1864-66, he was chosen by the Metropolitan Counties Branch as a member of the General Council of the BMA. In 1865 Sibson was elected to the senate of London University, in which he opposed the admission of women to degrees. He also held the position of examiner in medicine. From 1866-69 Sibson served as president of the BMA's Council and on retirement from this office became vice-president of the Association for life. He was awarded the honorary degrees of MD by Dublin University in 1867, and LLD by Durham University in 1870.

In 1870 he delivered the Croonian Lectures at the Royal College of Physicians. The following year he retired from the active staff of St Mary's and became consulting physician. In 1873 at the BMA's annual meeting he presided over the Section of Medicine. The following year he proposed that a portion of the Association's funds be available for scientific research. In 1874 he delivered the College's Lumleian Lectures and held the office of censor, in the same year, and then curator of the museum. His last contribution to medical literature was his Harveian Lectures on Bright's Disease in relation to the heart and the arteries, in 1875.

Sibson married Sarah Mary Ouvry in 1858. He was a keen Alpine climber and died suddenly whilst on holiday at Geneva, on 7 September 1876. His Collected Works (1881) were posthumously published, by William Miller Ord.

Publications:
Medical Anatomy, or, Illustrations of the Relevant Position and Movements of the Internal Organs (London, 1869)
The Nomenclature of Diseases, drawn up by a Joint Committee appointed by the Royal College of Physicians, Francis Sibson (ed.) (London, 1869)
Collected Works of Francis Sibson, W.M. Ord (ed.) (London, 1881)

Sir Edward Henry Sieveking was born in Bishopsgate, London, on 24 August 1816, the eldest son of Edward Henry Sieveking, a merchant from Hamburg who had moved to London in 1809. His father had returned to Germany and served in the Hanseatic Legion during the War of Liberation, 1813-14. Sieveking's early education took place in England. From 1830 he was educated in Germany, in Ratzeburg and Berlin. In 1837 he entered the University of Berlin where he studied anatomy and physiology, the latter under the celebrated physiologist Johannes Peter Muller. In 1838 he undertook surgical work at Bonn. He then returned to England where he took up his medical studies at University College, London, for two years, and then at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated MD in 1841.

Sieveking spent a further year abroad in 1842, visiting the hospitals of Paris, Vienna, Wurzburg, and Berlin. He then settled and began to practice in the English colony in Hamburg. Whilst there he was associated with founding a children's hospital, with his aunt Miss Emilia Sieveking, philanthropist and pioneer of nursing. During this time he published A Treatise on Ventilation (1846). In 1847 he returned to London and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians. He began to practice in London, first in Brook Street and then in Bentinck Street. He took an active part in advocating nursing the sick poor, and produced his first English publication, The Training Institutions for Nurses and the Workhouses (1849).

In 1851 Sieveking became assistant physician at St Mary's Hospital, and so one of its original staff. He lectured on materia medica at the Hospital's medical school for the next sixteen years. In 1852 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Two years later he co-authored A Manual of Pathological Anatomy (1854; 2nd edition, 1875), with Charles Handfield Jones, his colleague at St Mary's. The publication was illustrated with reproductions of Sieveking's watercolours. In 1855 Sieveking assisted John Lumsden Propert in founding Epsom College, a school for the sons of medical men, and was its first honorary secretary. From 1855 until 1860 he edited the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review. He also contributed to many other medical periodicals, especially on the subjects of nervous diseases, climatology, and nursing. In 1857 he moved to Manchester Square, London, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In 1858 Sieveking invented an aesthesiometer, an instrument for testing the sensation on the skin. In the same year he published his most important work, On Epilepsy and Epileptiform Seizures, their Causes, Pathology, and Treatment (2nd edition, 1861). He was a supporter of the reforms of the Royal College of Physicians of that year, which gave powers, such as the election of the president, formerly enjoyed by the eight elect of the College, to the whole body of fellows. In 1861 he was elected president of the Harveian Society, a reflection of his status and reputation within the medical world.

In 1863 he was appointed physician in ordinary to the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. The following year he was appointed physician to the London Lock Hospital and the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic. It was also in 1864 that he founded, with the scientist Sir David Brewster and the physician Charles Murchison, the Edinburgh University Club in London. He was promoted to full physician of St Mary's in 1866, after sixteen years in the out-patient wards. In the same year he delivered the Croonian Lectures at the Royal College of Physicians. Sieveking held a number of prominent positions within the College including that of censor, several times between 1869 and 1881, and in 1877 was Harveian Orator.

In 1873 Sieveking became physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria. He was also a member of the council of the British Medical Association, representing for eight years the Metropolitan Counties Branch. In 1876 he delivered the Address in Medicine at the annual meeting in Sheffield. He was largely responsible for the creation of the Association's medal for distinguished merit, established in 1877. In 1884 he received an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh, on its tercentenary. Two years later Sieveking was knighted. He retired from the active staff of St Mary's in 1887, and became consulting physician. The following year he was elected vice-president of the Royal College of Physicians, and president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. Also in 1888 Queen Victoria made him physician in ordinary. The following year he retired from the London Lock Hospital.

In 1895 Sieveking became president of the British Balneological and Climatological Society. He was made Knight of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, in 1896. Edward VII, after his accession to the throne, made Sieveking his physician extraordinary in 1902.

He had married, in 1849, Jane daughter of John Ray, J.P. They had five sons and three daughters. Sieveking died at his house in Manchester Square on 24 February 1904, aged 87. He was buried in the family grave at Abney Park cemetery, Stoke Newington.

Publications:
A Treatise on Ventilation (1846)
The Training Institutions for Nurses and the Workhouses (1849)
A Manual of Pathological Anatomy, Carl Rokitansky (vol. ii, London, 1849) translated by Sieveking
A Manual of the Nervous Diseases of Man, Moritz Heinrich Romberg (2 vols., London, 1853) translated by Sieveking
British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review (editor, from 1855)
On Epilepsy and Epileptiform Seizures, their Causes, Pathology, and Treatment (London, 1858; 2nd ed. 1861)
A Manual of Pathological Anatomy, with Charles Handfield Jones (London, 1854; 2nd ed. 1875)
The Medical Adviser in Life Assurance (London, 1874; 2nd ed. 1882)
The Harveian Oration (London, 1877)

An account of the life and work of R.W. Innes Smith (1872 - 1933) is given in H.T. Swan, 'R.W. Innes Smith: a man to study', in 'Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh' vol.22 (1992), pp.224-37.

John Snow was born on 15 March 1813 in York, the eldest son of William Snow, farmer. He was educated locally at a private school, until the age of fourteen when he was apprenticed to William Hardcastle, a surgeon in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In Newcastle he worked as one of three surgeon apothecaries at the Lying-In Hospital, where he was also secretary. He also held an appointment as mining doctor at the Killingworth Colliery. This work brought him into contact with George and Robert Stephenson, who in 1827 were listed as patients of his practice. Throughout the Cholera epidemic of 1831-32 he attended victims at the colliery. During his apprenticeship, 1827-1833, he became a vegetarian and teetotaler.

Between 1833 and 1836 he was an assistant in practice, first in Burnopfield, Durham, and then in Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire. During this time he often returned to York and was much involved in the temperance movement. In 1836 Snow decided to further his medical education in London. He undertook the journey on foot, walking via Liverpool, Wales and Bath. In October 1836 he became a student at the Hunterian School of Medicine, Great Windmill Street, where his initial research in medicine began, the subject being the toxicity of arsenic. In October 1837 he began to attend the medical practice at the Westminster Hospital. He was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 2 May 1838, and in October of that year he became a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries.

Snow set up practice in his new home at 54 Frith Street from 1838. To further his medical knowledge Snow regularly attended the meetings of the Westminster Medical Society (later the Medical Society of London), having joined as a student member in 1837. He presented the results of his research on a number of diverse scientific problems at the Society's meetings, and subsequently published articles on them in the medical journals, throughout the late 1830s and early 1840s. The two dominant themes were toxicology and respiratory physiology. His first published paper, Arsenic as a Preservative of Dead Bodies', appeared in The Lancet in 1838. However, his most well known paper was published in 1842, On Asphyxia, and on the Resuscitation of Still-born Children. Other topics included the danger of candles incorporating arsenic, postscarlatinal anasarca, and haemorrhagic smallpox. By the end of this phase of his career,the name of John Snow was quite well known to anyone who read the English Medical Press' (Shephard, 1995, p.44).

He graduated MD from London University on 20 December 1844, having graduated MB in November 1843. At this time, after the immense pressure of hard work, he had a breakdown and it is thought suffered an attack of tuberculosis (Fraser, 1968, p.504). His health was further affected during the following year when he suffered from renal disease. It was in 1845 that he was appointed lecturer on forensic medicine at the Aldergate Street School of Medicine, a position he held until 1849 when the school closed.

In 1846 Snow became interested in the properties of ether, which had been newly adopted in America as an anaesthetizing agent. His work in anesthesia had begun during his earlier investigation into asphyxia of the newborn. Snow made great improvements in the method of administering the drug, and obtained permission to demonstrate his results in the dental out-patient room at St George's Hospital. This proved so successful that he won the confidence of Robert Liston, the eminent surgeon, and so the ether practice of London came entirely into his hands. Despite having practically introduced the scientific use of ether into English surgery, he had `so well balanced a mind that he appreciated the value of other anaesthetizing agents, more particularly chloroform' (DNB, 1898, p.208). It was this drug that he famously administered to Queen Victoria during the birth of Prince Leopold, 7 April 1853, and again, a few years later, during the birth of Princess Beatrice, 14 April 1857.

Snow is famous for his scientific insight which led to the theory that cholera is communicated by means of a contaminated water supply. His essay On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, was first published in 1849. The second edition, in 1855, included a more elaborate investigation into the effect of the water supply on certain districts of South London during the 1854 epidemic. Ultimately then Snow became

`widely recognised as one of the founding fathers of epidemiology as well as a leading figure in the initial development of anaesthetics in Britain' (Galbraith, 2002, p.1).

During the intervening years between the two editions of his publications on cholera, Snow was admitted as a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and was a founder member of council of the Epidemiological Society of London, in 1850. In 1852 the Medical Society of London selected him orator for the following year. It was also in 1853 that he moved home and practice to 18 Sackville Street. He was a member of the Royal Medical Chirurgical Society and the Pathological Society, and was President, in 1854 of the Physiological Society, the Medical Society of London in 1855, and in 1857 of the Epidemiological Society.

Snow died unmarried, at the age of 45, on 16 June 1858. The direct cause of death was a stroke, however the autopsy revealed his health for many years had been undermined by the earlier attacks of tuberculosis. He was engaged on his work, Chloroform and Other Anaesthetics, at the time of his death. This was edited and published posthumously by his friend and fellow physician Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson. Snow was buried at Brompton Cemetery, where his colleagues and friends erected a monument in his memory.

Publications:
`On Distortions of the Chest and Spine in Children from Enlargement of the Abdomen', London Medical Gazette, 1841, 28, pp.112-116
On the Inhalation of the Vapour of Ether in Surgical Operations (London, 1847)
A Letter to the Right Honorable Lord Campbell, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, on the Clause Respecting Chloroform in the Proposed Prevention of Offences Bill (London, 1851)
On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (London, 1849, 2nd ed. 1855) - translated into German, Quedlinburg, 1856
On Chloroform and Other Anaesthetics, John Snow, edited with a memoir, Benjamin Ward Richardson (London, 1858)
On Narcotism by the Inhalation of Vapours, John Snow, with an introductory essay by Richard H. Ellis (London, 1991)
Death from Amylene (date & place of publication unknown)

Publications by others about Snow:
Memoir by B.W. Richardson in On Chloroform and Other Anaesthetics, John Snow, edited by Benjamin Ward Richardson (London, 1858)
Dr John Snow (1813-1858): His Early Years: An Account of the Family of Dr John Snow and his Early Life, Dr Nicol Spence Galbraith (London, 2002)

Born, 1860; educated University College, London (UCL), 1879-1886; Assistant Obstetric Physician, UCL, 1887; Professor of Obstetric Medicine, UCL, 1893-1925; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1899; died, 1941.

Born, 1871; education: Market Harborough Grammar School; Wycliffe College, Stonehouse; Firth College, Sheffield; Guy's Hospital; University of Heidelberg. Physician St George's Hospital, 1904-1913; Dean of the Medical School; Physician to Victoria Hospital for Children; London Chest Hospital; Demonstrator of Physiology, Guy's Hospital, 1898-1904; Captain, Royal Army Medical Corps; left London for Scotland where he conducted Duff House, Banff clinic, 1913-1922; Honorary Medical Advisor to Ministry of Food, 1917-1918; Senior Physician, Ruthin Castle Clinic, 1922-1944; High Sheriff for County of Denbigh, 1945-1946; Consulting Physician; died, 1949.

Born, 1813; Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow, 1826-1828; Medical Faculty, University of Glasgow, 1830-1838; further studies at Paris and Berlin; practised in London, 1839-1883; assistant physician to the Middlesex Hospital, 1850; Physician, 1855; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1855; Physician to the St Pancras Royal General Dispensary; died, 1883.

Born, 1 April 1876, Clifton, Bristol; educated at Clifton School, before entering Bristol University and then the Bristol Royal Infirmary to study medicine. He graduated in 1900, and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians; immediately after graduating Stock joined the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC); posted to South Africa, where he was appointed Regimental Medical Officer with the 8th Hussars; South Africa, 1902-1914, holding various medical posts including Medical Officer of Health of Johannesburg, where he was responsible for the underground sanitation of the gold mines; Director of Medical Services of the Union of South Africa, 1913; organised the medical services for the force invading German South-West Africa, 1914; introduced compulsory anti-typhoid inoculations for the entire force; towards the end of the Southwest African campaign Stock reorganised medical services for the South African contingent in Europe; recalled to German East Africa in 1917, where there were high casualties from disease, and reorganised the medical services there.

He returned to Europe in 1918, and served in France as Officer Commanding a General Hospital, and as Medical Adviser on Native Labour; member of the Inter-Allied Sanitary Conference 1917-18; received the CB and CBE, and was mentioned in dispatches; admitted to the honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh; joined the newly formed Ministry of Health, 1920; between the two World Wars, Stock undertook epidemiological work, investigating outbreaks of plague, cholera, typhus, malaria and other diseases; his main interest was in port sanitation and international quarantine conventions, becoming a leading world expert on the subject; represented South Africa at the twice-yearly meetings in Paris of the Office Internationale d'Hygiene Publique; in Britain he became a Deputy Senior Medical Officer, Ministry of Health, 1935; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1937; Senior Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health, 1940; retired, 1941, but rejoined as a temporary Medical Officer; chaired the preliminary committee in London, which resulted in the new International Sanitary Conventions of 1944 reflecting the hygiene implications of air travel; During the Second World War Stock was made responsible for the health of people in air-raid shelters in London, helping, for example, to eradicate a species of mosquito (culex molestus), in London Underground wastewater; chaired wartime Committee on Louse Infestation; retired from the Ministry of Health at the end of the war; awarded the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise by the French Government for his services to the Free French forces; became a part-time consultant to the World Health Organisation (WHO), serving as chairman of the Quarantine Commission of their Interim Commission; accompanied the Director General of WHO on an extensive tour of tropical Africa; finally retired to Ramsbury, Wiltshire, although he continued to act as a consultant to WHO; chaired its Committee on Quarantine and occasionally undertook missions to West Africa; in Ramsbury he played a prominent role in the affairs of the village, and was affectionately known to the inhabitants as "Colonel Stock"; died 95 days before his 100th birthday, on 27 December 1975.