A. Kirkpatrick Maxwell was born in Annan, Scotland, and studied drawing at evening classes run by Glasgow City Art School. He was asked to contribute some articles by a natural history lecturer at Glasgow University and built up a reputation as an illustrator. After the outbreak of war in 1914 he travelled to France to make over 1000 surgical illustrations of war wounds and diseases, many of which were published in the British Journal of Surgery. The original illustrations were kept at the Royal College of Surgeons of England but were destroyed during the Blitz. After the war, Maxwell worked as an ilustrator for University College and for the Cancer Research Institute, publishing his own articles on cancer. During the Second World War he was asked by Sir Cecil Wakeley to again sketch wounded servicemen.
The author of the diary, probably Joshua Naples, was a resurrectionist supplying bodies to anatomy teachers, and was active during 1811 and 1812.
Born, Lancaster, 1804; educated, Lancaster Grammar School; enlisted as a midshipman in the Royal Navy; became interested in surgery; returned to Lancaster and became indentured to a local surgeon, 1820; became interested in anatomy; entered the University of Edinburgh medical school, 1824; privately attended the lectures of Dr John Barclay; moved to London and became apprentice to John Abernethy, surgeon and philosopher and President of the Royal College of Surgeons, 1825; member, Royal College of Surgeons, 1826; Assistant Curator, Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1827 and commenced work cataloguing the collection; set up a private practice in Lincoln's Inn Fields; Lecturer on comparative anatomy, St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1829; met Georges Cuvier in 1830 and attended the 1831 debates between Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Paris; worked in the dissecting rooms and public galleries of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, 1831; published anatomical work on the cephalopod Nautilus; started the Zoological Magazine, 1833; worked on the fossil vertebrates brought back by Darwin on the Beagle; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1834; Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, 1836-1856; gave his first series of Hunterian Lectures to the public, 1837; awarded the Wollaston gold medal by the Geological Society, 1838; helped found the Royal Microscopical Society, 1839; identified the extinct moa of New Zealand from a bone fragment, 1839; refused a knighthood, 1842; examination of reptile-like fossil bones found in southern England led him to identify "a distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles" he named Dinosauria, 1842; developed his concept of homology and of a common structural plan for all vertebrates or 'archetype'; Joint Conservator of the Hunterian Museum with William Clift, 1842, and Conservator, 1849; elected to 'The Club', founded by Dr Johnson, 1845; member of the government commission for inquiring into the health of London, 1847, Smithfield and other meat markets, 1849; described the anatomy of the newly discovered (in 1847) species of ape, the gorilla, [1865]; engaged in a long running public debate with Thomas Henry Huxley on the evolution of humans from apes; member of the preliminary Committee of organisation for the Great Exhibition of 1851; Superintendent of the natural history collections at the British Museum, 1856; began researches on the collections, publishing many papers on specimens; prosector for the London Zoo, dissecting and preserving any zoo animals that died in captivity; taught natural history to Queen Victoria's children, 1860; reported on the first specimen of an unusual Jurassic bird fossil from Germany, Archaeopteryx lithographica, 1863; lectured on fossils at the Museum of Practical Geology; Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution, 1859-1861; taxonomic work included a number of important discoveries as he named and described a vast number of living and fossil vertebrates; campaigned to make the natural history departments of the British Museum into a separate museum, leading to the construction of a new building in South Kensington to house the new British Museum (Natural History), opened in 1881; [now the Natural History Museum;] knighted, 1884; died, Richmond, 1892.
Publications include: Memoir on the pearly nautilus (1832); The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle pt. 1. Fossil Mammalia: by Richard Owen (Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1840); Odontography 2 vol (London, 1840-45); Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Invertebrate Animals, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1843 ... From notes taken by W. W. Cooper (London, 1843-46); Report on the State of Lancaster (W. Clowes & Sons, London, 1845); A History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds (London, 1846); On the archetype and homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (London, 1848); A History of British Fossil Reptiles (Cassell & Co, London, 1849-84); Descriptive catalogue of the Osteological Series contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (London, 1853); On the classification and geographical distribution of the Mammalia (London, 1859); Palæontology, or a systematic summary of Extinct Animals and their geological relations (Edinburgh, 1860); Monograph of the Fossil Reptilia of the cretaceous and Purbeck Strata (1860); Memoir on the Megatherium; or, Giant Ground-Sloth of America (London, 1861); Description of the skeleton of an extinct gigantic Sloth, Mylodon Robustus (London, 1862); Inaugural Address .. on the opening of the New Philosophical Hall at Leeds (Leeds, 1862); On the extent and aims of a National Museum of Natural History (London, 1862); Memoir on the Gorilla (London, 1865); On the Anatomy of Vertebrates 3 vol (Longmans, Green & Co, London, 1866-68); Descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the Fossil Reptilia of South Africa in the collection of the British Museum (London, 1876); Researches on the fossil remains of the Extinct Mammals of Australia; with a notice of the extinct Marsupials of England 2 vol (London, 1877); Memoirs of the extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand (London, 1879); International Medical Congress. On the scientific status of medicine (J W Kolckmann, London, 1881); Experimental Physiology, its benefits to mankind (Longmans & Co, London, 1882).
Born Great Yarmouth, 1814; educated at a private school, Yarmouth; apprenticed to Charles Costerton, surgeon, in Yarmouth, 1830; entered as a student at St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1834; identified the parasite Trichina spiralis whilst studying at the hospital, 1835; clinical clerk to Dr Latham, 1835-1836; member, Royal College of Surgeons, 1836; sub-editor of the Medical Gazette, 1837-1842; Curator of the museum, 1837 and Demonstrator in morbid anatomy, 1839-1943, St Bartholomew's Hospital; Fellow, Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1843; Lecturer on general anatomy and physiology, 1843 and Warden of the College for students, 1843-1851, St Bartholomew's Hospital; prepared a catalogue of the anatomical museum of St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1846; prepared a catalogue of the pathological specimens in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1846-1849; Arris and Gale Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, 1847-1852; Assistant Surgeon, 1847-1861, St Bartholomew's Hospital; Fellow, Royal Society, 1851; Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1858; member of the Senate, University of London, 1860; lectured in physiology, 1859-1861, Surgeon, 1861-1871 and Lecturer on Surgery, 1865-1869, St Bartholomew's Hospital; member, 1865-1889, Vice-President, 1873, 1874, President, 1875, of the Council, Royal College of Surgeons; Serjeant-Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1867-1877; Consulting Surgeon, St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1869; President, Clinical Society, 1869; created Baronet, 1871; President, Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, 1875; representative of the Royal College of Surgeons at the General Medical Council, 1876-1881; Serjeant-Surgeon to Queen Victoria, 1877; Hunterian Orator, 1877; President, International Congress of Medicine, 1881; Bradshaw Lecturer, 1882; Vice-Chancellor, University of London, 1883-1895; Morton Lecturer, 1887; President, Pathological Society of London, 1887; died, London, 1899.
Publications include: Sketch of the Natural History of Yarmouth and its Neighbourhood, containing catalogues of the species of animals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, and plants, at present known with Charles J Paget (F Skill, Yarmouth, 1834); Report on the chief results obtained by the use of the Microscope, in the study of human anatomy and physiology (London, 1842); The Motives to Industry in the study of Medicine. An address (London, 1846); Records of Harvey, in extracts from the journals of the Royal Hospital of St Bartholomew William Harvey With notes by J Paget (London, 1846); A Descriptive Catalogue of the Anatomical Museum of St Bartholomews' Hospital [vol 1, 2] (London, 1846-1862); Hand-Book of Physiology By W S Kirkes assisted by J Paget (Taylor, Walton & Maberly; John Murray, London, 1848-); Lectures on the processes of Repair and Reproduction after Injuries (London, 1849); Lectures on Surgical Pathology, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (2 vol London, 1853); Sinus and Fistula -Ulcers -Tumours (innocent) -Contusions -Wounds (1860); On the importance of the study of Physiology, as a branch of education for all classes (1867); Clinical Lectures and Essays Edited by H Marsh (London, 1875); The Hunterian Oration delivered ... on the 13th of February, 1877 (London, 1877); The Contrast of Temperance with Abstinence [1879]; Theology and Science. An address (Rivingtons, London, 1881); Descriptive catalogue of the Pathological Specimens contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Supplement Second edition with G F Goodhart and A H G Doran (J & A Churchill, London, 1882); On some rare and new diseases; suggestions for the study of part of the natural history of disease. The Bradshawe Lecture, ... 1882 (London, 1883); The Morton Lecture on Cancer and Cancerous Diseases delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons (Longmans & Co, London, 1887); Studies of old Case-Books (Longmans & Co, London, 1891); Memoirs and Letters of Sir James Paget Edited by Stephen Paget (Longmans & Co, London, 1901); Three Selected Papers. I On the Relation between the Symmetry and Diseases of the Body, 1841. II On Disease of the Mammary Areola preceding Cancer of the Mammary Gland, 1874. III On a Form of Chronic Inflammation of Bones (Osteitis deformans), 1876 (London, New Sydenham Society, 1901); Selected Essays and Addresses Edited by Stephen Paget (Longmans & Co, London, 1902).
Born, Langport, Somerset, 1815; educated by his father; gained an interest in microscopes early in life; at sixteen gave a course of lectures to the pupils of his school; apprenticed to a surgeon at Langport, and moved to London as apprentice to his brother Edwin; student at the London Hospital Medical College, and at Kings College; Royal Microscopical Society was founded in 1839 as the Microscopical Society of London in the house of Edward Quekett; qualified, 1840; won a three year Studentship in Human and Comparative Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons; lectured on histology; Secretary, Microscopical Society, 1841-1860; Assistant Conservator of the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1843; Demonstrator of Minute Anatomy, 1844-1852; his collection of 2,500 microscopical preparations purchased by the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1846; Professor in Histology at the Royal College of Surgeons, 1852; gave some instruction to Prince Albert on the use of his microscope; Conservator of the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1856; Fellow of the Linnean Society, 1857; Fellow and President of the Royal Society, 1860; died Pangbourne, Berkshire, 1861; Quekett Microscopic Club was named in his honour, 1865.
Publications: A Practical Treatise on the Use of the Microscope (London, 1848); Descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the Histological Series contained in the Museum of the Royal College, etc. Vol. 1. Elementary tissues of vegetables and animals [By J T Duckett] (London, 1850); Lectures on Histology ... Elementary Tissues of Plants and Animals ... Illustrated by woodcuts 2 vol (London, 1852-54); Lectures of Histology Vol 11 structure of the skeleton of plants and invertebrate animals (Bailliere 1854).
Born, 1816; educated, Preparatory School, Pentonville, private school, Greenwich; apprenticed to Joseph Henry Green, Surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital, 1833; Member, 1838 and Fellow, 1844, Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1838; Senior Assistant Surgeon, King's College Hospital, 1840-1847; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1845; Lecturer in Pathology, King's College Hospital, 1847; Officer of Health to the City of London, 1848-1855; Chief Medical Officer of Health to the General Board of Health, 1855-1876; built up a state medical department for public health and developed the vaccination system, and was particularly concerned with eradicating the smallpox virus; influential in bringing about the Sanitary Act, 1866 and Public Health Act, 1875; Surgeon, St Thomas's Hospital; member, Privy Council, 1858-1876; member of Council, 1868-1880, Vice-President, 1876-1878 and President, 1878-1879, Royal College of Surgeons of England; President, Royal Society, 1879-1880; knighted, 1887; died, 1904.
Publications include: A Physiological Essay on the Thymus Gland (London, 1845); General Pathology, as conducive to the establishment of rational principles for the diagnosis and treatment of disease (London, 1850); Report on the Sanitary Condition of the City of London, for the year 1853-4 (London, 1854); Report on the last two Cholera-epidemics of London, as affected by the consumption of impure water (Stationery Office, London, 1856); Inflammation in T Holmes A System of Surgery, ... in treatises by various authors, vol 1 (1860); English Sanitary Institutions, reviewed in their course of development, and in some of their political and social relations (Cassell & Co, London, 1890).
Born, Dorchester, Dorset, 1853; educated at the school of William Barnes, 1860-1864; Merchant Taylor's School, London, 1864-1871; medical student, London Hospital, 1871-1875; Member, 1875, Fellow, 1878, Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1875; House Surgeon, London Hospital; Resident Medical Officer, Royal National Hospital for Scrofula, Margate, 1876; private practice in Derbyshire, 1877-1879; Assistant Surgeon, London Hospital, 1879; Demonstrator of Anatomy, London Hospital Medical School, 1881-1884; continued his research into scrofula and began his researches on the anatomy of the abdomen; Surgeon and Lecturer on Anatomy, London Hospital, 1884-1898; Hunterian Professor of Anatomy, 1885; Lecturer on Surgery, London Hospital Medical School, 1894-1897; Consulting Surgeon, British Forces in South Africa, 1899-1900; Surgeon Extraordinary, 1900; Knighted, 1901; operated on the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, 1902; created baronet, 1902; President, War Office Medical Board, 1914-1918; died, 1923.
Publications include: The Dress of the period, in its relations to health (Allman & Son, London, [1882]); Scrofula and its gland diseases (Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1882); Surgical Applied Anatomy (1883); Intestinal Obstructions (1884); The anatomy of the intestinal canal and peritoneum in man (H K Lewis, London, 1885); The Influence of Dress on health (Cassell & Co, London, [1886]); A German-English Dictionary of Medical Terms with Hugo Lang (J & A Churchill, London, 1890); A Manual of Operative Surgery (Cassell & Co, London, 1891); The Student's Handbook of Surgical Operations (Cassell & Co, London, 1892); The Abdominal Viscera (1893); A System of Surgery Editor 2 vol (Cassell & Co, London, 1895, 96); Perityphlitis and its varieties (Macmillan & Co, London, 1897); Intestinal Obstruction. Its varieties with their pathology, diagnosis, and treatment New and revised edition (Cassell & Co, London, 1899); The Tale of a Field Hospital [following the Ladysmith Relif Column in the South African War] (Cassell and Co, London, 1900); Alcohol: a poison (Church of England Temperance Society, Westminster, [1905]); Highways and Byways in Dorset (Macmillan & Co, London, 1906); The Cradle of the Deep: an account of a voyage to the West Indies (Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1908); The Influence of Enforced Dogmatism in Medicine [Birmingham, 1914]; The Elephant Man, and other reminiscences (Cassell & Co, London, 1923).
Elizabeth Isham was born in Braunston, Northamptonshire, in c 1558. She lived in Warden, Bedfordshire and married Henry Cave. She died in c 1630.
No biographical information is currently known for Thomas Sendall, fl 1659.
The old Black Jack Public House in Portugal Street was located near to the old King's College Hospital. Some surgeons signed their names in a signature book at the Black Jack when they became members of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The signatures in the volumes range from being neat and clear, to almost illegible. This is perhaps a consequence of their location in a public house.
The Black Jack was demolished in c 1902. A watercolour painting showing the interior and exterior of the Black Jack, by J P Emslie and J I Wilson, was sold in the early 1920s in the sale of the Gardener Collection. (see Tract 1881, 14 for Sale Catalogue).
Richard Radford Robinson was born in 1806. He was the eldest son of Henry Robinson of East Dulwich. He practised in south London and was Surgeon to the London Dispensary, a Member of the Court of Examiners of the Apothecaries' Company, and President of the South London Medical Society. His essay Fractures of Ribs, Sternum and Pelvis won the Jacksonian Prize in 1831, and his dissertation Formation, Constituents and Extraction of Urinary Calculi won the honorarium in 1833. He died in London in 1854.
John Falconer was a student of anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1852-1853. The Medical Directories for 1852 and 1853 list Falconer as one of the students of anatomy. As the Directory was published at the beginning of each year, it is likely that Falconer began his studentship in Jun or Jul 1851 and finished it in 1853. The candidates for the studentship had to be members of the College and be under the age of 26. Assuming that Falconer began his studentship in 1851 at the age of 26, the earliest date he could have been born is 1825. The students were paid one hundred pounds per year and their duties included the study of anatomy, physiology and related areas, and service in the Museum. Falconer doesn't specify in his manuscript notes which hospital he was related to. Currently there is no further information on John Falconer after he completed his studentship.
William Clift was born in Cornwall in 1775, and was educated locally. He became an apprentice anatomical assistant to the celebrated surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793) in 1792. He was appointed conservator of the Hunterian Museum after Hunter's death. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1823, and was a member of the Society for Animal Chemistry. He died in 1849.
Francis Trevelyan Buckland was born in Oxford in 1826. He was the son of William Buckland the geologist, who was Canon of Christ Church. Buckland was educated at Winchester, Christ Church, and St Georges Hospital, London. He became house-surgeon at St Georges in 1852, as was assistant surgeon for the 2nd Life Guards from 1854-1863. During this period he discovered Hunter's coffin, just before the closing of the vaults at St Martins Church. He began to research zoology, and in 1856 he became a regular writer on natural history for the newly established Field, particularly on the subject of fish. In 1866 he started Land and Water on similar lines. In 1867 he was appointed Government Inspector of Fisheries. He died in 1880.
Benjamin Allen was born in Somerset in 1663. He was educated at St Pauls School and then Queen's College, Cambridge. He established a medical practice in Braintree, Essex in c 1688. He was a friend of John Ray (1627-1705), an eminent naturalist in Essex. Allen's first paper On the Manner of Generation of Eels was published by the Royal Society in 1698. He eventually published several naturalist and scientific papers. He died in 1738.
Alexander Peter Buchan was born in Sheffield, in 1764. His father was the physician, Dr William Buchan (1729-1805). Alexander was educated at the High School of Edinburgh and Edinburgh University. He then went to London and attended lectures by William and John Hunter, and Dr George Fordyce. He was admitted a Licentiate of the College of Physicians in 1802, and was physician to the Westminster Hospital from 1813-1818 and 1820-1824. He also wrote, translated and edited various medical books. He died in 1824.
John Ellis was born in Ireland in c 1710. He was a merchant in London until 1764, when he became an agent for West Florida, and subsequently for Dominica in 1770. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and published his An Essay towards the Natural History of the Corallines in 1755. He was awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society in 1768, for his research in this area. He published various other works on aspects of natural history, including descriptions of the coffee-tree, the mangostan and the breadfruit. Linnaeus named a group of boraginaceous plants 'Ellisia' in his honour. He died in 1776.
John Eric Erichsen was born in Copenhagen in 1818. He was educated at the Mansion House School, Hammersmith, and studied medicine at University College London, and in Paris. On his return to London he served as House Surgeon at University College Hospital. He was elected Secretary of the Physiological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1844, and received the Fothergillian Gold Medal of the Royal Humane Society in 1845, for An Essay on Asphyxia. Erichsen was appointed Assistant Surgeon to University College Hospital in 1848 and became full Surgeon to the hospital at the age of 32. He was President of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society from 1879-1881, and also in 1881, the President of the Surgical Section at the meeting in London of the International Medical Congress. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1876. In 1877 he was appointed the first Inspector under the Vivisection Act, and in the same year he was appointed Surgeon Extraordinary to the Queen. He became President of the Council of University College in 1887, an office he held until his death. He was created a baronet in 1895, and died in 1896.
Rowland Morris Fawcett studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, obtaining his MD in 1825. He became a Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh in 1924 and a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1926. He practised in Cambridge, at Trumpington Street and then Scroope Terrace. He became Justice of the Peace for the borough and Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Cambridge. Fawcett retired from practice in 1884. His last entry in the medical directory is for 1890.
Currently no information is known concerning the author and the hand of the manuscript has not been identified. In addition, the full details of Mr Arden, the lecturer, are also unknown.
Robert Rutson James was born in 1881. He was educated at Winchester College and St George's Hospital. He held resident posts at St George's, Moorfields, and at the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. He became ophthalmic registrar at St George's in 1909 and assistant ophthalmic surgeon after a few months, a post he held for seventeen years, becoming ophthalmic surgeon only in 1926 and retiring in 1931. He was ophthalmic surgeon to the West Ham, now Queen Mary's, Hospital during 1911-1918. He retired from private practice in 1935 and settled at Woodbridge, Suffolk in 1939. James was secretary of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom during 1918-1921, he later served on its Council, and became an honorary member in 1936. He was also editor of the British Journal of Ophthalmology. He died in 1959.
Aristophanes was born in c 445 BC. He was a Greek comic dramatist and was also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy. The Wasps was written in 422 BC. He died in c 386 BC.
The author of the translation is not known.
The American College of Surgeons was initiated in 1913 by Chicago Surgeon, Franklin Martin, following a series of successful clinical congresses attended by American surgeons in 1911 (Philedelphia) and 1912 (New York). The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational association of surgeons that aims to improve the quality of care for the surgical patient by setting high standards for surgical education and practice.
George Cuthbert Adeney was born in 1879. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St Thomas' Hospital, where he was house physician and clinical assistant in the throat department. He obtained MRCS in 1903, and FRCS in 1911. During World War One he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps with the rank of Major. He became medical officer for the Ministry of Health in c 1928. Subsequently he was regional medical officer for the Ministry at Norwich. He was also a member of the Medical Society for Individual (Alderian) Psychology. He died in 1958.
Abul-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas al-Zahravi, known in the West as Albucasis or Abulcasis, was born in 936. He was an Andalusian physician, surgeon, chemist and scientist. He is considered the father of modern surgery and is famous for his original breakthroughs in surgery, his invention of several surgical instruments, and for the Kitab al-Tasrif, a thirty volume encyclopedia of medical practices. He died in 1013.
John Channing was born in London, in c 1703. He was apprenticed to his father, also John Channing, an apothecary, in 1718. He purchased premises in Essex Street, off the Strand, and maintained an apothecary shop until his death in 1775. He was accomplished in translating and editing Arabic texts, and translated the Al-Zahravi surgical volumes into Latin. They were published in 1778.
John Thomas Arlidge was born in Chatham, Kent, in 1822. He was an apprenticed to a general practitioner in Rochdale, and then studied at Kings College London, where he graduated in 1846. Also in 1846 he was elected as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. He worked as Physician at the West of London Hospital and Chelsea, Brompton and Belgravia Dispensary; Physician at the Surrey and Farringdon General Dispensary, and Resident Medical Superintendant at St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics. He published his paper On the state of lunacy and the legal provision for the insane, with observations on the construction and organization of asylums. in 1859. Arlidge was appointed a consultant physician to the North Staffordshire Infirmary in 1862, and was the first person to look systematically at life-expectancy in the pottery industry. He made important investigations into the disease known as potter's phthisis and the effects of lead poisoning. Arlidge published Hygiene, Diseases and Mortality of Occupations in 1892, which became his chief work. He was then appointed a member of the Royal Commission in 1893 on conditions of employment in the Potteries. He was elected Mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1878. He died in 1899.
Bernhard Albinus was born in Dessau in 1653. The original family name was Weiss, but was Latinised to Albinus in c 1656. He was educated by a private tutor and then attended public school. He entered the University of Leiden in 1675 and got his degree (MD) in 1676. He was awarded a PhD, by the University of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder in 1681 and became Professor of Medicine there. He was also appointed court physician to the Elector of Brandenburg, Freidrich Wilhelm, and lived in Berlin. He became Professor of Theoretical and Practical Medicine at the University of Leiden from 1702 until his death in 1721.
Bernhard Siegfried Albinus was born in 1697. He was the son of Bernhard Albinus (1653-1721), Professor of Medicine at the University of Leiden. He was educated in Leiden and briefly in Paris and became Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in Leiden in 1721. He published an edition of the complete works of Vesalius in 1725, and the artist Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759), engraved the plates. Albinus and Wandelaar worked together for over 30 years, and their best-known work was the Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani, published in 1747. Albinus remained at the University of Leiden until his death in 1770.
Edward Percy Argyle was born in 1875. He qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (London) in 1901 and saw service with the Army Veterinary Department in South Africa during the Boer War. On his return to England he was commissioned in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. During World War One he served in France and Egypt, and served in the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915. He was awarded the DSO and Croix de Guerre in 1917. After the war he served in India. He became the Commandant of the Royal Army Veterinary School in 1929. He died in 1935.
Samuel Dodd Clippingdale received his medical education at the University of Aberdeen and at the London Hospital, where he was Surgical Scholar and House Physician. He was Surgeon to the Kensington Dispensary and Children's Hospital, and Police Surgeon for Kensington. He was elected President of the West London Medico-Chirurgical Society and Vice-President of the Section of Balneology and Climatology of the Royal Society of Medicine. He died in 1925.
No biographical information is currently known about Samuel Holland. He attended lectures in Edinburgh in 1740, from the evidence of these notes of lectures by Charles Alston, and also the notes of lectures by Alexander Munro, Primus, held at the Wellcome Library.
Charles Alston was born at Eddlewood, Lanarkshire in 1685. He was educated in Glasgow, and after his father's death, the Duchess of Hamilton became his patron. He studied in Leiden under the Dutch physician Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738), in 1715. He also met Dr Alexander Monro, primus (1697-1767). On his return to Scotland, Alston was appointed lecturer in Botany and Materia Medica in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He also became the King's Botanist and Keeper of the Garden at Holyrood. He held both of these posts until his death in 1760.
It is probable that W Downes is William Downes, who became a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1822, and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1823. William Downes practised in Handsworth in Staffordshire.
William Cullen was born in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, in 1710. He was educated at Glasgow University before moving to London. He became a surgeon on a merchant ship travelling to the West Indies, in 1729. He returned to London in 1730, and assisted an apothecary, before returning to Scotland in c 1732. He went on to study under Alexander Monro, primus, at Edinburgh Medical School in 1734-1736. He began to practice as a surgeon in Hamilton, in 1736. William Hunter was his resident pupil from 1737-1740. Cullen graduated from Glasgow in 1740. He was appointed Professor of Medicine at Glasgow University, in 1751, and Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh Medical School, in 1756. Cullen was President of Edinburgh College of Physicians from 1773-1775, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, in 1777. He died in 1790.
Francis Graham Crookshank was born in 1873. He was educated at University College London and qualified in 1894. He worked in resident appointments at University College Hospital, the Brompton Hospital, and the Northampton County Asylum. After this he began general practice at Barnes. During World War One he served in France as medical director of the English Military Hospital at Caen, and later as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. After the war he worked at the London Hospital, the Prince of Wales General Hospital, St Marks Hospital and the French Hospital. At this time he became interested in the psychological and philosophical aspects of medicine, and contributed to standard works on psychology and psycho-analysis. He helped to form a medical group that became known as the Medical Society of Individual Psychology. He became Bradshaw lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians, in 1926. He died in 1933.
George Langstaff was born in Richmond, Yorkshire, in c 1780. He studied medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He travelled to the East and West Indies and became a naturalist and zoologist, collecting specimens which would become his museum. He became Surgeon to the workhouse of St Giles's Cripplegate where he had abundant opportunities of studying both pathology and practical anatomy. He became a Fellow of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society, in 1814. He published the catalogue of his museum, Catalogue of the Preparations illustrative of normal, abnormal, and morbid structure, human and comparative, constituting the Anatomical Museum of George Langstaff in 1842. Part of the collection was bought by the Hunterian Museum, and the remainder bought by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He died in 1846.
Edward Victor Hugo was born in 1865. He was educated at Foyle College, Londonderry and at St Bartholomew's Hospital, qualifying in 1889 and winning honours and a gold medal at the London MB, BS examination in 1890. He also took honours at the MD examination in 1892 and was commissioned a Surgeon-Lieutenant in the Indian Medical Service in 1892. He served in the Waziristan expedition on the North-West frontier in 1894-1895, winning the medal with clasp, and was promoted Surgeon-Captain in 1895. He was at the relief of Chitral in 1895, again winning the medal with clasp, and was mentioned in dispatches for his services in the defence and relief of Chakdara also on the North-West frontier in 1897-1898. He was promoted Major in 1904, came to England and took the Fellowship in 1906, and was elected Professor of Surgery at King Edward's Medical College, Lahore, in 1908. On the outbreak of World War One he reverted to military duties, having been promoted Lieutenant-Colonel in 1912. He was present at the Dardanelles landing in 1915 as senior medical officer in the hospital ship GASCON. He was posted to the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force as a consulting surgeon, was mentioned in dispatches, and was created CMG in 1917. After the war he resumed the chair of surgery at Lahore until his retirement in 1922. He died in Richmond, in 1951.
Edward Charles Hulme was born in London, in 1821. He was educated in London, where he was so severely burned by a squib which he was carrying in his pocket that he was an invalid for two years. After further instruction from a tutor he was apprenticed to an apothecary at Totnes, his father having bought property at Stoke Gabriel on the river Dart. He entered St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and in 1840 was appointed Student in Human and Comparative Anatomy of the Royal College of Surgeons. He had a practice at 19 Gower Street, and was for a time Surgeon to the Blenheim Street Free Dispensary, then to the Central London Ophthalmic Hospital, to the Great Northern Hospital, and Medical Examiner to the Marine Society. He died in 1900.
George Robert Skinner was born in 1825, son of George Skinner, surgeon of Walcot, Somerset. He received the MRCS in 1847, and the FRCS in 1852. He was a Student in Comparative Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, 1849-1851. He joined the Bengal Army as Assistant Surgeon, in 1852. He died in Bath, in 1856, aged 30.
Currently no biographical information on Sydney Humphryes is known.
The biographical information of Alexander Wilson is currently unavailable.
Petrus Camper was born in Leiden, in 1722. He studied at Leiden University. He began lecturing at the University of Franeker, in 1749, and he taught in Amsterdam from 1756. He relocated to Groningen in 1763, to lecture in theoretical medicine, anatomy, surgery and botany. He supported his teachings with practicals and drawings, which he made himself. Camper made contributions to theoretical and practical medicine, especially in the fields of surgery and obstetrics. His main contribution was in comparative anatomy, where he studied skeletons of both animals and people, and studied racial differences based on anatomical sections and measurements of the skull. He died in 1787.
The Cardiothoracic Society, a travelling thoracic surgical club, was formed in 1959. The first chairman was Peter Jones, and the Society became known colloquially as 'Pete's Club'. The Society began with 15 members who would meet twice a year. The Society's purpose was to informally discuss mistakes or errors of judgement regarding cardiothoracic surgery to improve best practice. The one rule was 'no member should report any case which reflects credit upon himself.' By 1969 European surgeons were invited to become members. The first European visit of the Society was made to Paris, in 1975. The meetings included a presentation of surgical operations, a scientific meeting and a social event. The Society became more global by accepting members from Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, in 1980-1981. In 1989 the Society decided that it no longer has a useful purpose, as fewer mistakes and errors were being reported. The final meeting took place in 1989 in Vancouver.
Albert Carless was born in Surrey, in 1863. He was educated at Carrington Lodge, Richmond; at King's College School, London; at King's College London, where he won the senior scholarship in 1885; and at King's College Hospital. He had a distinguished undergraduate career, qualifying for the gold medal in surgery at the BS examination in 1887 and at the MS examination in the following year. In the King's College medical faculty he won the gold medal and prize for botany, the junior scholarship, the second-year scholarship, the senior medical scholarship, the Warneford prize and the Leathes prize. He was appointed house surgeon to King's College Hospital in 1885 and three years later he became Sambrooke surgical registrar. He was elected assistant surgeon to the Hospital in 1889, having the good fortune to serve under Joseph Lister; became surgeon in 1898, and from 1902 to 1918 was Professor of Surgery at King's College in succession to William Watson Cheyne. He accepted a commission as major a la suite in the territorial service in 1912, and was gazetted colonel AMS in 1917, serving at first as surgeon to the 4th London General Hospital and later as consulting surgeon to the Eastern Command; for his services he was created CBE in 1919. He retired from surgical work on demobilisation in 1919, resigned his hospital appointments, and devoted himself during the rest of his life to philanthropic work. He acted as honorary medical director at Dr Barnardo's Homes from 1919 to 1926. He died in 1936.
Theodore Turquet de Mayerne was born in Geneva, in 1573. He was educated in Geneva, and the University of Heidelberg. He went to Montpelier to pursue his medical studies and became an MB in 1596, and MD in 1597. He moved to Paris where he lectured on anatomy and pharmacy. He became one of the King's physicians in 1600. He had become greatly interested in chemistry, and made considerable use of chemical remedies in his medical practice. This support of chemical remedies 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 (1603). He demonstrated that chemical remedies were not only in accordance with the principles but also with the practice of Hippocrates and Galen. He came to England in c 1606 and became physician to James I and his Queen, Anne of Denmark. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, in 1616. He was knighted in 1624. Mayerne is ultimately famous for his copious case notes, the detail of which was extraordinary for his time. He died in Chelsea in 1655.
Biographical information was unknown at the time of compilation.
Sir Herbert Taylor was born in 1775. While his family travelled on the continent he received private tuition and became a good linguist. Through an acquaintance with Lord Grenville, he obtained a job in the foreign office where his knowledge of languages was useful. Taylor met Prince Frederick, Duke of York (1763-1827), in 1793. He was given a commission as cornet in the 2nd dragoon guards, and promoted to Lieutenant, in 1974. He remained with the Duke of York as assistant secretary. He accompanied Lord Cornwallis to Ireland as his aide-de-camp, military secretary and private secretary, in 1798. He became private secretary to the Duke of York, from 1799-1805, receiving promotions to major, and lieutenant colonel. He became Private Secretary to the King in 1805, and then to Queen Charlotte after the establishment of the regency. He was knighted in 1819. He was made Colonel of the 83rd foot in 1823, and promoted to Lieutenant-General in 1825. He became deputy secretary of war in the War Office in 1827, and the King made him his principal aide-de-camp. The following year he became Adjutant-General of the Forces, and then later, Private Secretary to William IV. He retired in 1837 and died in 1839. Taylor had been a confidential friend of the Duke of York, and wrote the Memoirs of the last Illness and Decease of HRH the Duke of York (London, 1827).
Alfred Poland was born in London, in 1822. He was educated at Highgate, in Paris, and in Frankfurt. After qualifying he became Demonstrator of Anatomy; then Assistant Surgeon to Guy's Hospital in 1849; Surgeon in 1861; and was placed in general charge of the Ophthalmic Department. He was Surgeon to the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields, 1848-1861, but he gradually gave up ophthalmic practice due to ill health. He won an honorarium of fifty guineas for his Triennial Prize Dissertation,The Origin, Connection and Distribution of the Nerves of the Human Eye and its Appendages. He won the Fothergillian Prize with the Gold Medal for his essay Injuries and Wounds of the Abdomen, at the Medical Society of London, in 1853. He died in 1872.
Sir Harry Platt was born in Thornham, Lancashire, in 1886. At the age of five he developed tuberculosis of the knee. He was educated in classics and languages by home tutors. He graduated MB BS (London) from the University of Manchester in 1909, with a distinction in medicine and the gold medal in surgery. He obtained his FRCS in 1912 and was appointed resident surgical officer in the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, London. During World War One, due to his knee disability, he was made a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps Territorial Forces, in charge of the Military Orthopaedic Centre in Manchester. He joined the staff of the Shropshire Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry in 1920. He became surgical director of the Ethel Hedley Hospital in Windermere; consultant to the Lancashire county council for education, public health, and tuberculosis; and a lecturer in orthopaedic surgery to the University of Manchester. The Manchester Royal Infirmary established an orthopaedic department away from the control of general surgery and Platt transferred there in 1932. Manchester University recognized his outstanding academic contribution to orthopaedics by creating a personal chair for him in 1939, which he held until 1951. Having helped found the British Orthopaedic Association in 1917, Platt became its President (1934-1935). He was also President of the Royal Society of Medicine orthopaedics section in 1931-1932 and British delegate (1929-1948) and later President (1948-1953) of the international committee of the Société Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopédique et de Traumatologie. He served on the council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (1940-1958) and was its President in 1954-1957. He was knighted in 1948 because of this work. He was consultant adviser in orthopaedic surgery to the Ministry of Health (1940-1963), organising general orthopaedics and special fracture and peripheral nerve injury centres as well as being honorary civilian consultant to the Army Medical Services (1942-1954). Platt was actively involved in setting up the National Health Service before and after 1948. In 1958 Platt was made a baronet, as was then customary for Presidents of the Royal College of Surgeons. He received six honorary degrees and held sixteen honorary memberships of various societies and eight honorary fellowships of surgical colleges. Up to 1982 he wrote prolifically on orthopaedic subjects-their history, organisation, staffing, nursing, and education. He died in 1986.
Percivall Pott was born in London, in 1714. He was educated at a private school in Darenth, Kent. He became apprenticed to Edward Nourse in 1729, preparing dissections for demonstration at Nourse's anatomy and surgery lectures. Pott built a good professional reputation, and received the freedom of the Barber-Surgeons' Company in 1736, and also passed the grand diploma examination, without actually being in attendance. Pott was appointed assistant surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1745, and became full surgeon in 1749. He challenged some long established treatments, for example the use of hot iron cauteries. Pott and William Hunter were elected the first lecturers in anatomy to the new Surgeon's company, in 1753. Pott became a member of the court of examiners in 1763, and master of the company in 1765. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1764. He had a large practice, with patients including David Garrick, Samuel Johnson, and Thomas Gainsborough. He was made honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1786, and an honorary member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1787. He resigned from St Bartholomew's Hospital aged 73, was made a hospital governor and continued in private practice until his death in 1788.
Samuel Hall Wass was born in 1907. He was educated at University College Nottingham, and came to Guy's Hospital as a preclinical student in 1928. He qualified in 1934, became FRCS in 1935 and MS of London University in 1936. His appointment to the consulting staff was delayed because of the World War Two. He was a clinical assistant at St Mark's Hospital from 1937 to 1939, where he excellenced in diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the colon and rectum. Before his election to the consulting staff of Guy's Hospital in 1946, Wass had already served on the staff of the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children, St John's Hospital, Lewisham, and St Olave's Hospital, Bermondsey. He was also appointed Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons and lectured on odontoma and other affections of the jaw. He served on the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons for nine years between 1955 and 1964. He also examined in surgery for the University of London. He was appointed a governor of Guy's Hospital in 1964 and was elected Chairman of the Medical Committee and also of the School Council in 1966. He died in 1970.
Robert Whytt was born in Edinburgh in 1714. He studied in St Andrews, where he was awarded Master of Arts in 1730, and also in Edinburgh, Paris and Leiden. He was awarded Doctor of Medicine at the University of Rheims in 1736. He began to practice as a doctor in 1738. He was appointed Professor of Medicine, at the University of Edinburgh in 1747, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1752. Whytt's important work concerned unconscious reflexes, tubercular meningitis, and the treatment of urinary bladder stones. His experiments indirectly led to the discovery of carbon dioxide by Joseph Black in 1754. His studies of reflexology and tubercular meningitis had a greater impact on the science of medicine. Whytt was the first to ascribe a reflex - Whytt's reflex, a dilation of the pupil brought on by pressure on the optic thalamus - to a specific part of the body. He also demonstrated that the spinal cord, rather than the brain, could be the source of involuntary action. His description of 'dropsy of the brain' (tubercular meningitis) was the first methodical and accurate definition of the disease, and it would have been impossible to define to a more accurate extent with the instruments available in at that time. He was physician to King George III in Scotland from 1761. He was elected President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1763. He died in 1766.
John Williams was born in Gwennap, Cornwall, in 1819. He was educated at Swansea Grammar School and afterwards studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He became interested in comparative anatomy and was elected Student Assistant at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1843. He accepted an appointment as Surgeon to the Honourable East India Company in 1847, and went to the Bengal Presidency. He served in India as Surgeon Major, then as Deputy Inspector of Army Hospitals until he retired. He died in 1878.