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).
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The British Society of Dental Surgeons was formed in 1923. The first meeting of the Committee to carry through the foundation of the Society was held in 1922. The proposed object of the society was the advancement of dentistry, the protection of interests of qualified Dental Surgeons, and the protection of public dental health. The first meeting of the Council of the British Society of Dental Surgeons was held in 1923, and Sir Frank Colyer, the new President of the Society, chaired the meeting. Following a referendum where British Dental Association members voted not to allow unqualified men from the Dentists Register 1921 to be admitted to the Association, the Society disbanded in 1928 with the balance of their funds handed to the Benevolent Fund of the British Dental Association.
James Fernandez Clarke was born in Olney, Buckinghamshire and baptised in 1812. He became apprenticed to C Snitch, a general practitioner in Brydges Street, Covent Garden, in 1828. Clarke spent some time at Cadell's Library on the Strand, and became aquainted with literature and literary people. He entered Dermott's Medical School in Gerrard Street, Soho, in 1833. He was Dermott's amanuensis for a time, and then assisted with the short-lived London Medical and Surgical Journal. In 1834 he wrote a report on a case of Joseph Lister's, who was impressed and introduced him to Thomas Wakely, editor of The Lancet. Wakely appointed Clarke an assistant and he worked for The Lancet for 30 years, as well as being a clinical reporter for hospitals and for various medical societies. He became a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries, in 1837. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and was Senior Surgeon to the Dorcas Charity, in 1852 . He was a Fellow of the Medical Society of London, an Honorary Associate of the Royal Medical and Botanical Society, and a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Academy of Surgery, Madrid. After completing 30 years service for The Lancet, Clarke published his reminisences in the Medical Times and the Gazette. These were reproduced as Autobiographical Recollections of the Medical Profession, in 1874. He died in 1875.
Eleazer Gedney was born in New York, in 1797. Under the altered name of Gidney rather than Gedney, he was apprenticed to Dr James L van Kleeck, of Poughskeepsie, in 1811. He transferred to Dr Abel Catlin, of Litchfield, Connecticut, from 1813-1817. In 1816, while still in Litchfield, Gidney advertised a remedy for cancer using handbills with testimonials from patients. He began to study dentistry at Baltimore and New York, in 1817. He published A Treatise on the Structure, Diseases and Management of the Human Teeth while living in Utica, in 1824. He travelled to Canada, where he practiced in Toronto and then Quebec in 1826. He then travelled to London and Paris to increase his professional knowledge. He attended courses of lectures in dental science and practice including those by Thomas Bell, James Snell and A F Talma in 1831-1832. He began to practise in Manchester in 1832. He was elected an honorary Fellow of the newly formed American Society of Dental Surgeons in 1840. He died in 1876.
No biographical information was available at the time of compilation.
No biographical information was available at the time of compilation.
John Hull Grundy was born in Southall in 1907. He studied art at King's College London and the Chelsea School of Art before working for the Royal College of Art. The start of World War Two drew him into the world of medicine, and he developed his drawing of the body with anatomical studies made for the Royal College of Surgeons and the Orpington War Hospital. In 1942, he began as lecturer in Entomology at the Royal Army Medical College in London, a post he kept until his retirement in 1967. On his retirement, he was named a member of the British Empire (MBE). His artwork on insects is much more widely known than his work on human anatomy.
John Croft was born in Pettinghoe, near Newhaven, in Sussex, in 1833. He was educated at the Hackney Church of England School. He was apprentice to Thomas Evans, of Burwash, in Sussex, and entered St Thomas's Hospital in 1850, where he served as House Surgeon. He acted as Surgeon to the Dreadnought Seamen's Hospital Ship from 1855-1860, and then returned to St Thomas's Hospital to become Demonstrator of Anatomy and Surgical Registrar. He was appointed Resident Assistant Surgeon in 1863, and Assistant Surgeon, and then Surgeon in 1871. He was elected Consulting Surgeon in 1891. He was also Surgeon to the Surrey Dispensary, to the National Truss Society, to the Magdalen hospital at Streatharn, and to the National Provident Assurance Society. He was elected a member of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1882 and resigned in 1890, after serving as Vice-President in 1889 and acting on the Court of Examiners from 1881-1886.
Juan N Restrepo and Julio M Escovar were both physicians from the Republic of Colombia, possibly working at the Hospital de Caridad de Honda. Further biographical information on Restrepo and Escovar is not known.
Sir Hugh Mallinson Rigby was born in Dublin in 1870. He was educated at Bray School, Co Wicklow; at Dulwich College; and at University College London. He trained in Medicine at the London Hospital, where he remained throughout his career. He won the gold medal at the BS examination of 1897. He served as house surgeon, house physician, and surgical registrar. In the Medical College he was demonstrator of anatomy, from 1901-1903, and the first tutor in elementary clinical surgery, from 1903-1908. He was elected assistant surgeon in 1902, and became surgeon; retiring in 1927. He was appointed consulting surgeon and kept his large private practice. He was also surgeon to the City of London Maternity Hospital; to the East Ham Hospital; to the cottage hospitals at Beckenham and Cheshunt; and consulting surgeon to the Poplar Accident Hospital. During World War One he was a consulting surgeon to the British Expeditionary Force in France, and to the London district with the temporary rank of colonel, AMS. He was promoted temporary lieutenant-colonel, RAMC (T), and brevet major, both in 1917. He served as surgeon in ordinary to Queen Alexandra, who died in 1925; and he was surgeon in ordinary to the Prince of Wales from 1923 until his accession to the throne as King Edward VIII in 1936. He was Serjeant Surgeon to King George V, from 1928-1932, and Honorary Surgeon to His Majesty, from 1932-1936. When the King was taken seriously ill with empyema in 1928, Rigby performed the operation which saved his life. He had been made a KCVO in 1917, and was created a Baronet, of Long Durford, Rogate, Sussex, in 1929. He died in 1944.
Hermann Boerhaave was born at Voorhout, near Leiden, in 1668. His father had wanted him to become a clergyman, and so it was not until he had studied theology that he began to study medicine. In 1690 he took up the study of medicine, chemistry and botany, supporting himself by teaching mathematics. He began to be more interested in medicine, with an ambition to be 'a doctor of both body and soul'. He began to read every available medical work, but hardly ever attended lectures in medicine, with the exception of a few in anatomy. He obtained a degree in medicine at the provincial university in Harderwijk, in 1693. He became a general practitioner in Leiden in 1793, where he spent his entire professional life. He was appointed lecturer of theoretical medicine at the University of Leiden in 1701. He was appointed Professor of Medicine and Botany in 1709; second Professor of Practical Medicine in 1714 (he became first Professor in 1720); and Professor of Chemistry in 1718. For the next ten years he simultaneously held three of the five chairs that constituted the whole of Leiden's Faculty of Medicine. His influence spread throughout Europe, and as far as China. His works were also translated into arabic. He was a Hippocratist who put the care of the patients above all considerations of theory; he strived to reorder the medical sciences on a sound basis of natural science. He was a member of the Medical College, a corresponding member of the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris, and he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1730. He was also chairman of the Surgeon's Guild at Leiden from 1714-1738. He died in 1738.
William Alexander Greenhill was born in 1814. He was educated at Edmonton and Rugby, and then matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford in 1832. He studied medicine at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and went to Paris to study the practice in hospitals. He graduated MB in 1839 and MD in 1840. He was appointed physician to the Radcliffe Infirmary in 1839 and held this position until 1851. He began to practice in Oxford. He worked on sanitary matters when there was an outbreak of cholera in Oxford in 1849. He was a parishioner and churchwarden of St Mary's, Oxford, and corresponded with the vicar, John Henry Newman. Also, he was a member of Dr Pusey's theological society. Whilst living in Oxford he studied the Greek and Arabic Medical writers, and he produced translations of texts. He relocated to Hastings in 1851. He was a physician for the local infirmary and worked for various public charities. He produced many publications on public health and sanitary conditions in the area. He died on 1894.
James Murie obtained his M D at Glasgow University in 1857. He became Medical Officer in the expedition to support Speke and Grant in 1862, and visited the source of the Nile at Lake Victoria, Nyanza. He was lecturer in anatomy at the Middlesex Hospital. He retired to Leigh-on-Sea, where he became interested in Fisheries.
David Henry Monckton was born in 1829. He studied at King's College Hospital, where he became an Associate. From 1850-1852 he became a Student of Human and Comparative Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, and acted as Hunterian Professor. He practised at Rugeley, Staffordshire. He was Physician to the Staffordshire General Infirmary, Medical Officer of Health to the Lichfield Rural District, and Surgeon to the Rugeley Convalescent Home, District Hospital, Provident Dispensary and Sister Dora Convalescent Hospital. Monckton carried out a post-mortem examination on Mr Cook, one of the victims of William Palmer MRCS, and gave evidence at the trial in 1856. This was reported in the Illustrated Times. He moved to Maidstone, Kent, and became Surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the Maidstone County Volunteer Medical Staff Corps. He died in 1896.
John Henry Sylvester was born in 1830. He was a Student of Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1852-1853. He became the Deputy Surgeon General in India serving the Bombay Medical Service and participating in the Persian Campaign, the Indian Mutiny, and the Ambela Campain. He died in 1903.
Alban Henry Griffith Doran was born in Pembroke Square, Kensington, in 1849. He was educated in Barnes, and entered St Bartholomew's Hospital at 18, where he won many prizes. He served as House Surgeon to Luther Holden, as House Physician, and as Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy. He became Assistant in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1878, under Sir William Flower, who he helped with his work as a craniometrist. He became interested in the middle ear in mammals, exploring the mammalian skulls in the Museum and finding a great number of auditory ossicula, which he mounted on glass. The ossicula auditus were exhibited at a meeting of the Royal Society, and a little later a monograph on the subject was published, with engravings by C Berjeau, in the Transactions of the Linnean Society. Doran became Pathological Assistant at the College of Surgeons, and contributed to the compilation of a catalogue of the pathological specimens in the Museum. He became an Assistant Surgeon to the Samaritan Free Hospital for Women in 1877, and worked there for over 30 years. He retired in 1909 returned as a volunteer officer to the Hunterian Museum, where he contributed to re-organising the obstetrical and gynaecological collections. He compiled a descriptive catalogue of the obstetrical and other instruments in the Museum, including the appliances and instruments used by Lord Lister. He died in 1927.
Joseph Black originally studied arts at the University of Glasgow. He switched to study chemistry under the tutelage of William Cullen, and became his assistant. In 1751 Black returned to Edinburgh to complete his medical training, and in 1754 he presented to the faculty his thesis which dealt with the subject of acidity of the stomach. In his thesis he upturned previous notions, by introducing quantitative as well as qualitative analysis into chemistry, and demonstrated the presence of something he called 'fixed air', a gas distinct from air, and which French chemists later called 'carbonic acid gas'. In 1755 Black succeeded Cullen as Professor of Medicine at the University of Glasgow, where he lectured on chemistry and medicine. During this period Black made a further contribution to the advancement of science, through the formulation of the doctrine of latent heat, calorimetry, the first accurate method of measuring heat, and the device itself, the calorimeter. This discovery was backed up by research into the laws of boiling and evaporation, and it was these studies in particular which interested Joseph Black's friend and colleague James Watt, thus laying the foundations for the practical application of steam power. In 1766 Black accepted the chair of chemistry and medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He took a keen interest in industrial developments, such as bleaching, brewing, glassworks, iron-making and furnace construction. In 1767 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and in 1788 became the President of the College.
'Dr Pearson', is probably George Pearson (1751-1828). George Pearson was born in 1751 at Rotherham in Yorkshire. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, Leiden and London, obtaining his doctorate of medicine at Edinburgh in 1774. Pearson was admitted a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1784, and was elected as Physician to St George's Hospital in 1787. He lectured on chemistry, material medica and the practice of physic for a number of years. Dr Pearson died in 1828. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a frequent contributer to the 'Philosophical Transactions'.
The Western Friendly Medical Club was formed in 1862 for the purpose of 'establishing and maintaining a sociable and convivial intercourse amongst its' members.' The Club first met on 20 Oct 1862 and drew up its constitution: it was to include twelve members, and would meet on the 1st and 3rd Monday evenings of the month from Oct to Apr. The 5th resolution states: 'That Whist be played from eight until eleven o'clock, after which no rubber is to be commenced under a penalty of five shillings'. The 9th resolution states: 'That tea and coffee be handed round at 8 o'clock, biscuits and wine at 9, and that the supper consist of Sandwiches, Oysters, Ham or Tongue, Salad - with or without a Lobster, Wine and Cup. For any other dishes a fine of 5s.' The club continued to meet for nearly a century, before winding up their activities and donating their possessions to the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1952.
No biographical information was available at the time of compilation.
Harold Burrows was born in India in 1875, the son of Surgeon-Major E P Burrows of the Bombay Army. Harold Burrows was educated at Marlborough and St Bartholomew's Hospital. After qualifying in 1899 he became a prosector at the Royal College of Surgeons and was also an assistant editor of The Hospital. His first surgical appointment was in 1903 at the Bolingbroke Hospital, Wandsworth, and in 1905 he became senior assistant surgeon to the Seamen's Hospital, Greenwich. In 1907 he joined the staff of the Royal Portsmouth Hospital. As a Territorial he was mobilised on the outbreak of the 1914-1918 war, served in France with the 20th General Hospital and later became consultant surgeon to the First Army and to the Army of the Rhine, with the rank of Colonel. He was twice mentioned in dispatches and created CBE in 1919. After the war he returned to Portsmouth, where he organised the collection of funds for providing orthopaedic clinics. In 1920 he was awarded the Jacksonian Prize of the Royal College of Surgeons for his essay, The results and treatment of gun shot injuries of the blood vessels. A regular worker in the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, Burrows was also a Hunterian Professor in 1922, 1933, and 1935. He published two very successful books Pitfalls of Surgery, and Surgical Instruments and Appliances. He became an experimental biologist at the research laboratories of the Royal Cancer Hospital (now the Chester Beatty Research Institute), in 1925. At the age of 63 he was awarded a PhD from London University. His major work The Biological Action of Sex Hormones was published in 1944 when Burrows was 69. He died in 1955.
The register of midwifery cases was possibly compiled by Thomas Ballard, an obstetrician practising in Southwick Place, Hyde Park, London. Ballard became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1843, and licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1844. He studied at St Georges Hosptial, and obtained his doctorate from St Andrews University in 1862. Ballard was a member of the Harveian Society, a fellow of the Royal Medical Chirurgical and Obstetrical Society, and a member of the Pathological Society.
Sir Albert James Walton was born in 1881. He was educated at Framlingham College and the London Hospital, where he gained many scholarships and prizes, qualifying in 1905. In the BSc examination in 1906, he obtained honours in anatomy and morphology, and on taking the MB, BS degrees he secured honours in midwifery, gynaecology and pathology. At the London Hospital he held appointments as emergency officer, house physician, receiving room officer, resident anaesthetist, house surgeon, assistant director of the Institute of Pathology, surgical registrar and demonstrator of anatomy, before being elected to the honorary staff in 1913. Other hospitals to which he was attached were the Poplar Hospital for Accidents; the Evelina Hospital for Children; the Seamen's Hospital, Greenwich; and the Victoria Hospital, Kingston. During the World War One he served as Captain RAMC(T) attached to the 2nd London General Hospital and also at the Endsleigh Hospital for Officers, the Palace Green Hospital for Officers and the Empire Hospital for Diseases of the Brain and Spinal Cord. In World War Two he was a temporary Brigadier attached to the Army Medical Service. At the College he was a Hunterian Professor, 1919; a member of Council, 1931-1947; and Vice-President, 1939-1941. He was an extra surgeon to the Queen, having been surgeon to King George V, King George VI and to the Royal Household. An honorary member of the Academie de Chirurgie of Paris, he was a past President of the Association of Surgeons, the Medical Society of London, and the surgical section of the Royal Society of Medicine. He was awarded the diploma with distinction of the Gemmological Association of which he became President, and he was chairman of the National Association of Goldsmiths. These two bodies established at their headquarters in the city the Sir James Walton Memorial Library, containing models of minerals made by Sir James himself. He was the first medical man to appreciate the importance of the atomic structure of minerals in the causation of chest diseases. He died in 1955.
John Hunter was born in East Kilbride, in 1728. He travelled to London to join his elder brother William Hunter (1718-1783) in 1748. John assisted William by carrying out dissections and preparing specimens. John began attending lectures by leading surgeons in 1749, and by 1754 John was a surgeon-pupil at St George's Hospital, London. Soon afterwards he began to take some of William Hunter's lectures. John Hunter carried out research into a variety of areas, many of which were published later in his life. John Hunter was commissioned as army surgeon to the British Army in 1761. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767. He became a member of the Company of Surgeons in 1768. John Hunter married Anne Home in 1771, with whom he had two children, John Banks Hunter and Agnes Hunter (two further children died in infancy). John Hunter built up his private practice and continued to give lectures in surgery. He remained an active teacher and researcher until his death in 1793. For a further biographical information see MS0189.
William Hunter was also born in East Kilbride in 1718. He studied medicine at Edinburgh. By 1746 had embarked on a successful private career in London as a midwife and physician and a private lecturer in surgery and anatomy. He died in 1783.
Henry Nathaniel Rumsey was a surgeon practising at Chesham, Buckinghamshire. Rumsey had taken shorthand notes of John Hunter's lectures in 1786-1787, which were printed by James F Palmer in his edition of Hunter's works. They were admired for their completeness, including examples and illustrations.
W Waller was a surgeon at Gosport, Hampshire, reported to be a pupil of John Hunter together with his brother, also W Waller, a surgeon at Portsmouth. The name Waller appears in the Hampshire Directory for 1784 under Surgeons in Gosport.
Charles Wilkinson was a surgeon practicing at Pulteney Street, Bath, in c1846. He was a member of the Company of Surgeons in 1791, and last appeared in the Medical Directory in 1849.
No biographical information was available at the time of compilation.
John Abernethy was born in Coleman Street, London, in 1764. He was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar school, and at the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to Charles Blicke, surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. Abernethy remained at Bart's for the rest of his career, being appointed assistant surgeon in 1787, and promted to full surgeon in 1815. During the 1790s Abernethy published several papers on a variety of anatomical topics. On the strength of these contributions he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1796. Between 1814 and 1817 he served as Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons. Abernethy also offered private lectures in anatomy in a house in Bartholomew Close, near to the hospital. The governors of Bart's then built a lecture theatre within the hospital to accommodate his classes. In 1824 Thomas Wakley, editor of the newly established journal The Lancet, published Abernethy's lectures without his permission. Abernethy sought an injunction but was unsuccessful, and remained resentful about the incident. Abernethy had himself attended the lectures of John Hunter, with whom he was also personally acquainted, and after Hunter's death he professed himself to be the spokesman for Hunter's physiological and pathological views. He died in 1831.
John Abernethy was born in Coleman Street, London, in 1764. He was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar school, and at the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to Charles Blicke, surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. Abernethy remained at Bart's for the rest of his career, being appointed assistant surgeon in 1787, and promted to full surgeon in 1815. During the 1790s Abernethy published several papers on a variety of anatomical topics. On the strength of these contributions he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1796. Between 1814 and 1817 he served as Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons. Abernethy also offered private lectures in anatomy in a house in Bartholomew Close, near to the hospital. The governors of Bart's then built a lecture theatre within the hospital to accommodate his classes. In 1824 Thomas Wakley, editor of the newly established journal The Lancet, published Abernethy's lectures without his permission. Abernethy sought an injunction but was unsuccessful, and remained resentful about the incident. Abernethy had himself attended the lectures of John Hunter, with whom he was also personally acquainted, and after Hunter's death he professed himself to be the spokesman for Hunter's physiological and pathological views. He died in 1831.
Sir Everard Home was born in Hull, Yorkshire, in 1756. He was educated at Westminster School, and became a surgical pupil of his brother-in-law John Hunter (1728-1793), surgeon at St George's Hospital, London. Home qualified through the Company of Surgeons in 1778 and was appointed assistant surgeon in the new naval hospital at Plymouth. In 1779 he went to Jamaica as staff surgeon with the army, but on returning to England in 1784 he rejoined Hunter at St George's as assistant. He was elected FRS in 1787, and in the same year he became assistant surgeon at St George's Hospital. In 1790-1791 Home read lectures for Hunter and in the following year he succeeded Hunter as lecturer in anatomy. Home joined the army in Flanders in 1793, but returned just before Hunter's sudden death in 1793. He then became surgeon at St George's Hospital and was also joint executor of Hunter's will with Matthew Baillie, Hunter's nephew. In 1793-1794 they saw Hunter's important work, On the Blood, Inflammation and Gun-Shot Wounds, through the press and in 1794 Home approached Pitt's government to secure the purchase for the nation of Hunter's large collection of anatomical and pathological specimens. After protracted negotiations the collection was purchased for £15,000 in 1799 and presented to the College of Surgeons. In 1806 the collection was moved from Hunter's gallery in Castle Street to form the Hunterian Museum at the new site of the college in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Home was chief curator and William Clift, who had worked with Hunter since 1792, was retained as resident conservator. Clift also had charge of Hunter's numerous folios, drawings, and accounts of anatomical and pathological investigations, which were essential for a clear understanding of the collection. In the years following Hunter's death Home built up a large surgical practice and published more than one hundred papers of varying quality, some very good, mainly in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The society awarded him its Copley medal in 1807. He gave the Croonian lectures fifteen times between 1794 and 1826. As Hunter's brother-in-law and executor he had great influence at the Royal College of Surgeons where he was elected to the court of assistants in 1801, an examiner in 1809, master in 1813 and 1821, and its first president in 1822. Having, with Matthew Baillie, endowed the Hunterian oration, he was the first Hunterian orator in 1814, and again in 1822. He became Keeper and a trustee of the Hunterian Museum in 1817 and was Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the College from 1804 to 1813, and again in 1821. His Lectures on Comparative Anatomy were published in 1814 with a volume of plates from drawings by Clift. A further volume of lectures followed in 1823 accompanied by microscopical and anatomical drawings by Bauer and Clift. Two more volumes appeared in 1828. This work, although lacking in structure, is an important record of Hunter's investigations, especially the last two volumes. Home drew heavily on Hunter's work in the papers and books which he published after Hunter's death. Before the collection was presented to the Company of Surgeons in 1799 Home arranged for Clift to convey to his own house Hunter's folio volumes and fasciculi of manuscripts containing descriptions of the preparations and investigations connected with them. He promised to catalogue the collection, refusing help, but, despite repeated requests, only a synopsis appeared in 1818. B C Brodie says that Home was busily using Hunter's papers in preparing his own contributions for the Royal Society. Home himself later stated that he had published all of value in Hunter's papers and that his one hundred articles in Philosophical Transactions formed a catalogue raisonée of the Hunterian Museum. Home destroyed most of Hunter's papers in 1823. After his death in 1832, a parliamentary committee was set up to enquire into the details of this act of vandalism. Clift told this committee in 1834 that Home had used Hunter's papers extensively and had claimed that Hunter, when he was dying, had ordered him to destroy his papers. Yet Home, who was not present at Hunter's death, had kept the papers for thirty years. Clift also declared that he had often transcribed parts of Hunter's original work and drawings into papers which appeared under Home's name. Home produced a few of Hunter's papers which he had not destroyed and Clift had copied about half of the descriptions of preparations in the collection, consequently enough of Hunter's work survives to suggest that Home had often published Hunter's observations as his own. Although the full extent of Home's plagiarism cannot be determined, there is little doubt that it was considerable and this seriously damaged his reputation.
Charles Bell was born in Edinburgh, in 1774. He received his medical education from the University of Edinburgh between 1792-1799, attending courses on anatomy, botany, chemistry, and the practice of medicine and clinical lectures at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He also assisted his brother John, also a surgeon, teaching anatomy and surgery in the Edinburgh extramural school. Charles Bell had a talent for drawing and developed his skills as an artist during this time. While still a student in 1798, he published a System of Dissections, illustrated by his own drawings. He was elected a fellow of the College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1799, and practised at the Edinburgh Infirmary. He published The Anatomy of the Brain, Explained in a Series of Engravings, in 1802. He left Edinburgh for London in 1804. He married Marion Shaw in 1811 and used the money from the dowry to buy a share in the Hunterian School of Medicine, in Great Windmill Street. He was appointed surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital in 1814, and became a member of The Royal College of Surgeons of London. He lectured as Senior Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at The Royal College of Surgeons of London in 1824, and then became a member of Council. He was knighted in 1831. He was appointed Professor of Anatomy, Surgery and Physiology at the London University in 1827. When the University Medical School finally opened in 1828, Bell gave the inaugural speech. There were some difficulties in the new Medical School and in 1830, Bell left to help establish a medical school at the Middlesex Hospital where he conducted his clinical lectures. The school opened in 1835, and Bell was to teach surgery and anatomy. However, at this time, Bell was offered the post of Professor of Surgery at Edinburgh University, which he accepted, returning to Edinburgh in 1836. In 1840 he made a three month tour of Italy to view works of art for one of his publications. He died in 1842.
John Bell was born in Edinburgh, in 1763. Aged 17 he was apprenticed to Alexander Wood, the leading surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and attended the lectures of Joseph Black, William Cullen and Alexander Monro secundus. He was admitted freeman surgeon apothecary by the Royal College and Corporation of Surgeon Apothecaries of Edinburgh, in 1786. He began his own practice and also his own programme of lectures. He opened his own lecture theatre in Surgeon's Square, Edinburgh, in 1790. He published a series of textbooks on surgical anatomy and emphasised the practical experience of surgical techniques in training. He had a talent for drawing and produced his own illustrations for his The Anatomy of the Bones, Muscles and Joints (1793-1794) and Discourses on the Nature and Cure of Wounds (1793-1795). He died in Rome in 1825.
Thomas Appleby was a surgeon at Castleton in the early 19th century. Further biographical information is currently unavailable.
George Ramsey Rodd was a surgeon who resided in Hampstead. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1807-1827. No further biographical information is currently available.
Alexander Henry Bartlett was born in Ipswich in 1800. He became a student at Guy's and St Thomas's Hospitals, where he was dresser to Sir Astley Cooper in 1822-1823. After qualifying he settled in Ipswich, where he was first elected to the Dispensary. He was appointed Surgeon to the Gaol in 1825. He had an important share in the establishment of the East Suffolk Hospital, and headed the poll at the election of surgeons in 1836. He served on the active staff of the Hospital for forty years and then became Consulting Surgeon. He died in 1887.
Edmund Belfour was born in 1790. He became secretary to The Royal College of Surgeons of England at age 21, taking over from his father, Okey Belfour. Edmund Belfour held this post for fifty years, and died on in 1865 at his residence in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
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.
Sir Richard Owen was born in Lancaster in 1804. He was educated at Lancaster grammar school, the University of Edinburgh, and St Bartholomew's Hospital. He was a comparative anatomist, a palaeontologist, conservator of the Hunterian Museum, and superintendent of the Natural History collections of the British Museum. He died in 1892.
William Wadd was born in 1776 He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School from 1784, and was apprenticed to James Earle in 1797, becoming a surgeon's pupil at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He was admitted a member of The Royal College of Surgeons in 1801. He practised and resided in Basinghall St, London. At The Royal College of Surgeons, Wadd was a member of the council in 1824, and he was appointed a member of the court of examiners in 1829. He was appointed one of the surgeons-extraordinary to the Prince Regent in 1817, and then surgeon-extraordinary to George IV in 1821. Wadd was a fellow of the Linnean Society and an associate of the Societe de Medecine of Paris. He died in 1829.
A new hospital was built in Tooting by the Metropolitan Asylums Board after a resurgence of Scarlet Fever in 1893. This was the 400 bed Fountain Fever Hospital, designed by Thomas W Aldwinckle, and built in nine weeks.
Most of the buildings were single-storey structures with timber frames, covered with boarding, felt and corrugated iron. On the inside, the walls were lined with boarding and asbestos on plaster. A porter's lodge stood at the west of the site at the entrance on Tooting Grove. It contained a gate office, waiting room, and lavatory, with discharging rooms and bathrooms to the rear. There were separate entrances at each side - the 'infected' one leading to the receiving wards, and the 'non-infected' one leading to the administration buildings and stores.
There were 8 ward blocks, arranged in two rows of 4, and all linked by a central covered way. Each block contained 24 beds, plus a scullery, attendant's bedroom and staff WC, linen room, and patients' bathroom. Two further isolation blocks were situated at the north-west edge of the site. The 'temporary' ward blocks were still in use in 1930. There was also accommodation for nursing staff, domestic staff and male servants, as well as workshops and a mortuary.
In 1911-1912, the hospital was redesignated as a mental hospital and became used for the accommodation of the lowest grade of severely subnormal children, becoming the Fountain Mental Hospital. In 1930, the administration of the hospital passed to the London County Council who retained it as a hospital for mentally defective children. From 1948 the hospital was known as the Fountain Hospital. It was demolished in 1963 and the site is now occupied by St George's Hospital.
Thomas Brushfield was a surgeon, and formerly the Senior Medical Officer at the Fountain Mental Hospital. This collection was compiled during his work there between 1914-1927, and is also known as the Brushfield Amentia Collection.
Charles Alexandre Lesueur was born in 1778, the son of a French naval officer. Aged 23, he sailed from his home at Le Havre, France, on an expedition to Australia and Tasmania. During the next 4 years, Lesueur and the naturalist François Péron collected over 100,000 zoological specimens representing 2,500 new species, and Lesueur made 1,500 drawings. Lesueur met William Maclure in 1815, and was persuaded to join him in Philadelphia where he lived until the end of 1825. Lesueur travelled on Maclure's 'Boatload of Knowledge' to Mount Vernon, Indiana, and then a few miles on to New Harmony. He remained there until 1837, when he returned to France. He was appointed curator of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle du Havre in 1845, which was created to house his many drawings and paintings. He died in 1846.
Frederick Christian Lewis was born in London, in 1779. He was primarily a printmaker and engraver, and his prints were highly valued by his contemporaries. He became engraver of drawings to Princess Charlotte, Prince Leopold, George IV, William IV, and Queen Victoria. He also made tours in Europe producing various etchings. He died in Enfield, Middlesex, in 1856.
Biographical information regarding B A Vitry was unavailable at the time of compilation.
Sir Richard Owen was born in Lancaster, in 1804. He was educated at Lancaster Grammar School and then enlisted as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. He became interested in surgery He returned to Lancaster and became indentured to a local surgeon, in 1820. He entered the University of Edinburgh medical school, in 1824 and privately attended the lectures of Dr John Barclay. He moved to London and became apprentice to John Abernethy, surgeon, philosopher and President of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1825. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1826. He became Assistant Curator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in 1827, and commenced work cataloguing the collection. He set up a private practice in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He became lecturer on comparative anatomy at St Bartholomew's Hospital, in 1829. He met Georges Cuvier in 1830 and attended the 1831 debates between Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, in Paris. He worked in the dissecting rooms and public galleries of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in 1831. He published anatomical work on the cephalopod Nautilus, and started the Zoological Magazine, in 1833. He worked on the fossil vertebrates brought back by Darwin on the Beagle. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1834; Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, in 1836-1856; and gave his first series of Hunterian Lectures to the public, in 1837. He was awarded the Wollaston gold medal by the Geological Society, in 1838; helped found the Royal Microscopical Society, in 1839; and identified the extinct moa of New Zealand from a bone fragment, 1839. He refused a knighthood in 1842. He examined reptile-like fossil bones found in southern England which led him to identify "a distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles" he named Dinosauria, in 1842. He developed his concept of homology and of a common structural plan for all vertebrates or 'archetype'. He became Joint Conservator of the Hunterian Museum with William Clift, in 1842, and Conservator, in 1849. He was elected to 'The Club', founded by Dr Johnson, in 1845. He was a member of the government commission for inquiring into the health of London, in 1847, including Smithfield and other meat markets, in 1849. He described the anatomy of the newly discovered (in 1847) species of ape, the gorilla, [1865]. He engaged in a long running public debate with Thomas Henry Huxley on the evolution of humans from apes. He was a member of the preliminary Committee of organisation for the Great Exhibition of 1851. He was Superintendent of the natural history collections at the British Museum, in 1856, and began researches on the collections, publishing many papers on specimens. He was prosector for the London Zoo, dissecting and preserving any zoo animals that died in captivity. He taught natural history to Queen Victoria's children, in 1860. He reported on the first specimen of an unusual Jurassic bird fossil from Germany, Archaeopteryx lithographica, in 1863. He lectured on fossils at the Museum of Practical Geology, and he was Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution, during 1859-1861. His taxonomic work included a number of important discoveries, as he named and described a vast number of living and fossil vertebrates. He campaigned to make the natural history departments of the British Museum into a separate museum, leading to the construction of a new building in South Kensington to house the new British Museum (Natural History), opened in 1881; [now the Natural History Museum]. He was knighted in 1884. He died in Richmond in 1892.
Whitlock Nicholl was born in Treddington, Worcester, in 1786. He grew up with his uncle, the Reverend John Nicholl. He was placed with Mr Bevan in 1802, a medical practitioner at Cowbridge in Glamorganshire. He entered as a pupil at St George's hospital, in 1806. He attended the lectures of Mr Wilson, Dr Hooper, Dr Pearson, Dr John Clarke, and Sir Everard Home. He was appointed house surgeon at the Lock Hospital, in 1808, and admitted as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1809. He returned to Cowbridge and entered into partnership with his former master, Mr Bevan, and then succeeded him as physician on his retirement. He was created Doctor of Medicine by Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1816, and was admitted an extra Licentiate of the College of Physicians, the same year. He was created Doctor of Medicine by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1817, through the interest of his relation Sir John Nicholl. He had a successful practice in Ludlow. He matriculated from Glasgow in 1825, and attained the M D in 1826. He then moved to London, where he was admitted a Licentiate of the College of Physicians in 1836. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1830. He died in 1838.
Sir Anthony Carlisle was born in Stillington, Durham, in 1768. He was sent to his maternal uncle, Anthony Hubback, in York, for medical training. Following his uncle's death Carlisle transferred to a Durham surgeon, William Green, in 1784. Carlisle went to London in the late 1780s, and attended lectures by John Hunter, Matthew Baillie and others. He became the house pupil of Henry Watson, and on Watson's death succeeded him to the post of surgeon to the Westminster Hospital, in 1793. He began offering lectures on surgery in 1794, hoping to establish a formal medical school there. He advocated the systematic collection and publishing of hospital statistics. He was active in securing the collections of John Hunter for the Royal College of Surgeons, during the 1790s. He was one of the original members of the College in 1800. He sat on Council and the Court of Examiners. He served as Vice-President and twice as President (1829 and 1839). He delivered the Hunterian Oration in 1820. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1804. With William Nicholson, he electrolyzed water into its constituent gases and communicated this to the Royal Society in 1800. He secured the post of Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy in 1808, and also studied art there. He was appointed surgeon to the Duke of Gloucester and then surgeon-extraordinary to the Prince Regent (later King George IV). He was investigated but exonerated for three cases of neglect in 1838. He opposed male midwives on the grounds of modesty and incompetence. He died in 1840.
An ola is a leaf or strip of a leaf of the palmyra, traditionally used in Southern India and Sri Lanka for writing on. It is also a letter or document written on such a leaf.
The Sinhalese are the native inhabitants of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon).