An account of the life and work of R.W. Innes Smith (1872 - 1933) is given in H.T. Swan, 'R.W. Innes Smith: a man to study', in 'Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh' vol.22 (1992), pp.224-37.
Baptized, 1624; educated Oxford University and Montpellier; began his career as an army officer in the army of Charles I; entered medicine and became a famous London practitioner, often called 'the English Hippocrates'; His conceptions of the causes and treatments of epidemics and his classic descriptions of gout, smallpox, malaria, scarlet fever, hysteria, and chorea established him as a founder of modern clinical medicine and epidemiology; died, 1689.
Born, 1661; education: Magdalen Hall, Oxford, 1667-1677; moved to London and continued to pursue anatomy, 1677; MD, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 1680; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1683; anatomical curator, Royal Society, 1683; Ventera reader in anatomy at the Company of Barber-Surgeons, 1684-1699; Physician to Bethlem and Bridewell Hospitals, 1684; died, 1708.
Born, 1885; educated: Prior Park College, near Bath, 1898-1901; University College School, London, 1901-1903; University College Hospital; National Hospital, Queen Square. Royal Army Medical Corps, consulting neurologist to the British forces in Egypt and the Middle East, 1915-; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1920; staff of the National Hospital, 1921; the Department of Neurology was founded for him at University College Hospital, 1924; died, 1973.
Born, 1614; educated: Pembroke College, Cambridge, 1637; Trinity College, Oxford; studied chemistry and medicine with John Scrope at Bolton Castle, 1642-1645; moved to London to study medicine, 1645; returned to Oxford, 1646; DM, 1647; Fellow of the College of Physicians, London, 1650; incorporated at Cambridge on his doctor's degree, 1652; served as a censor of the College of Physicians, London, 1658, 1661, 1666, 1667, 1668, and 1673; practised medicine in London, 1648-; physician to St Thomas's Hospital, London, 1657-1673; died, 1673.
James Wilson was born, 1765; surgeon and from 1799 teacher of anatomy at the Hunterian School of Medicine in Great Windmill Street, London; father of James Arthur Wilson; died, 1821.
James Arthur Wilson was born, 1795; educated: Westminster School, 1808; Christ Church, Oxford, 1812-1815; entered his father's school in Great Windmill Street; studied at Edinburgh, 1817; MA at Oxford, 1818; MB, 1819; MD, 1823. Travelled through France and Switzerland to Italy as Physician to George John Spencer, second Earl Spencer, and his wife, 1819-1820; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1825; practised in London and was Physician to the Lisson Grove establishment, 1829; Censor of the Royal College of Physicians, 1828 and 1851; Physician to St George's Hospital, 1829-1857; consulting physician to St George's Hospital, 1857-; left London for Dorking, 1869; died, 1882.
The College of Physicians was founded by Royal Charter in 1518 after a small group of distinguished physicians led by Thomas Linacre petitioned the King to be incorporated into a College similar to those found in a number of other European countries. The main functions of the College as set down in the founding Charter, were to grant licences to those qualified to practise medicine and to punish unqualified practitioners and those engaing in malpractice. Membership comprises Fellows, Licentiates and from 1859 Members. Membership is by examination, Fellowship by invitation after recommendation by an existing Fellow.
William Francis Victor Bonney was born in Chelsea in 1872. He was educated at a private school and at St Bartholomew's Hospital, but transferred to the Middlesex Hospital, intending to become a physician. Sir John Bland-Sutton invited him to the Chelsea Hospital for Women, where he laid the foundations of his success as a gynaecological surgeon. In 1905 he became obstetric registrar and tutor at the Middlesex Hospital. He was elected assistant gynaecological surgeon in 1908, a post which he held till 1930, when he succeeded his old friend Sir Comyns Berkeley FRCS as gynaecological surgeon. Together they wrote Textbook of Operative Gynaecology. During the first World War Bonney served as a surgeon made famous for his 'violet green anti-septic', popularly called 'Bonney's blue' (British Medical Journal 15 May 1915). At the Royal College of Surgeons he was a Hunterian Professor in 1908, 1930, and 1931, Bradshaw Lecturer in 1934, and Hunterian Orator in 1943. He was the only gynaecological specialist ever elected to the Council, and served with distinction from 1926 to 1946, being a Vice-President 1936-1938; died, 1953.
Nathaniel Bedford was born in 1757. In 1776 he served a years apprenticeship under John Gunning at St George's hospital. He qualified under the auspices of the Company of Surgeons as Second Mate, First Rate, March 5 1778 and as Surgeon, 5th Rate on April 19 1781. In December 1781 Bedford, joined the 'Formidable' as Surgeon. It was docked at Portsmouth and left in January 1782 sailing for the West Indies. Bedford was appointed Surgeon to the 'Ardent' in June 1782, soon after that he joined the 'Conqueror' in Barbados and sailed with it to New York and Boston and then back to Barbados. In December 1782 the ship sailed to Antigua and Guadeloupe and then to English Harbour returning to England in July 1783. The rest of Bedford's life and career is not known.
William Clift (1775-1849), museum curator and scientific illustrator, was born near Bodmin in Cornwall on 14 February 1775. He was the youngest of the seven children of Robert Clift (1720-1784), a miller, and his wife Joanna, a seamstress. Clift went to school at Bodmin, where is demonstrated his ability in illustration. This attracted the attention of Walter Raleigh Gilbert and his wife Nancy, who had been a schoolfellow of Anne Home who had married John Hunter in 1771. On the Gilbert's recommendation, Clift was apprenticed to John Hunter as an anatomical assistant, employed to make drawings, copy dictation and assist in the care of Hunter's anatomical specimens. Until Hunter's sudden death in 1793, Clift assisted him with dissections and often wrote from dictation from early morning until late at night. After Hunter's death, his collection of specimens was offered for sale to the government. During the period of negotiations, Clift was employed to look after the collections for a small income. He did this diligently from 1793 to 1799 when the collections were eventually purchased by the government. During this period, Clift feared for the safety of the collection, and copied out many of Hunter's unpublished manuscripts. This meant that much of the content of the collection was saved from loss through Sir Everard Home's destruction of his brother-in-law's manuscripts in 1823. In 1799 the government asked The Company of Surgeons (soon to become the Royal College of Surgeons in 1800) to look after the John Hunter collections. The Trustees of the College then made Clift conservator of the new Hunterian Museum paying him £80 per annum. Under Clift's supervision the collections were twice moved without damage into storage and then to new premises, and were greatly enlarged and enriched. Clift was a prolific record keeper and his diaries are a valuable resource for information about the workings of the College and Museum as well as wider social life in London. Clift married Caroline Harriet Pope (1775-1849) in January 1801. They had a son, William Home Clift (1803-1832) and a daughter, Caroline Amelia Clift (1801-1873). William Home Clift died after a carriage accident in 1832 and Caroline Amelia Clift married William Clift's assistant Richard Owen in 1835. William Clift was well known and highly thought of in the scientific community. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1823, was a member of the Society for Animal Chemistry, and also a fellow of the Geological Society. His skills as an illustrator were demonstrated through his work for Matthew Baillie's "A series of engravings... to illustrate the morbid anatomy of some of the most important parts of the human body," and also his work on illustrations in Sir Everard Home's numerous papers in the Philosophical Transactions. Clift submitted some papers to the Philosophical Transactions (1815, 1823), the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1831), and to Transactions of the Geological Society (1829, 1835). William Clift and Richard Owen also published the "Catalogue of the Hunterian Collection of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of London (1830-1831), and then the "Descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the physiological series of comparative anatomy contained in the museum of The Royal College of Surgeons (1833-1840). Clift retired from the museum in 1842, when he was replaced by Richard Owen as curator. His wife died on the 8th May 1849 and Clift died shortly afterwards on 20th June 1849, both being buried in Highgate cemetery. [Source: Edited from the entry by Phillip R. Sloan, 'Clift, William (1775-1849)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5668, accessed 7 March 2005]
These are the collected letters, poems and relicts of the Hunter-Baillie family. Matthew Baillie, (1761-1823), was an anatomist and physician extraordinary to George III and nephew to the surgeons William Hunter (1718-1833) and John Hunter (1728-1893). Matthew had two sisters, Joanna Baillie, (1762-1851) poet and dramatist and Agnes Baillie (1760-1861), their parents were Revd James Baillie and Dorothea Hunter Baillie. The family moved from the manse at Bothwell, Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1775 to Glasgow when Revd Baillie was appointed Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow. Revd Baillie died in 1778 and Dorothea's brother William Hunter supported the family.
Matthew moved to London in 1779 to lecture at William Hunter's medical school in Great Windmill Street. When William Hunter died in 1783, he left his medical museum and his collections of manuscripts, books and coins to Glasgow University, subject only to the life interest of his nephew, Matthew Baillie, who succeeded him in his school of anatomy. Matthew Baillie kept only certain personal things, among them the letter-book, which Hunter had acquired from the family of Queen Anne's physician, John Arbuthnot (1667-1735). To this William Hunter had added letters written to himself by famous or distinguished people.
In 1783 Joanna, Agnes and Dorothea moved to London to keep house for Matthew. Joanna built up a close relationship in London with her other uncle, John Hunter, his wife, the poet, Anne Home Hunter [whose poems are included in this collection] and their daughter Agnes, later Lady Campbell. After Matthew's marriage to Sophia Denman in 1791 Joanna, Agnes and Dorothea moved to Red Lion Hill and later after the death of Dorothea in 1802 to Hampstead.
Joanna started publishing poems and plays in 1790 and gradually her reputation became known. She made friends with many leading literary and society figures of the day including Maria Edgeworth, Samuel Rogers, William Sotheby, William Wordsworth, and Lord Byron among many others. Joanna was particularly close to Sir Walter Scott [over sixty letters between them are included in this collection].
Joanna's long life, she died aged 88 in 1851 meant that she witnessed the death of many of her contemporaries, the death of her brother, Matthew in 1823 affected her strongly but she became close to younger generation especially her niece Elizabeth Margaret Baillie (1794-1876) companion of Walter Scott's daughter Sophia; and her nephew William Hunter Baillie (1797-1894). William, a barrister, moved in the same literary circles as his aunt and was interested in Hunter-Baillie family history.
Matthew Baillie was one of the leading London physicians of his day and a favoured friend at Court. He continued to add to the family collection letters, which he received, from his distinguished friends and patients. He also kept together the letters written to him by the Royal Princesses, all of which begin 'Dear Baillie.'
Matthew Baillie's wife was Sophia, daughter of Dr. Thomas Denman, (1733-1815) whose reminiscences of his early life as a ship's surgeon have been quarried for some historical novels. Denman had a fashionable obstetric practice, in which he was followed by his other son-in-law, the ill-fated Sir Richard Croft (1762-1818), who killed himself after the death of his patient Princess Charlotte, the heir to the Throne. Denman's son, Thomas Denman (1779-1854), a lawyer, advocated legal reform including the abolition of slavery, defended Queen Charlotte and became Lord Chief Justice.
Justice Denman interested himself in the family collection, helping Matthew Baillie's granddaughters to complete the work, begun by Matthew's wife Sophia, of identifying and arranging the letters. He also brought into it a miscellaneous collection of autographs gathered by his side of the family. Matthew Baillie had been a friend of Edward Jenner (1749-1823), discoverer of the small pox vaccine and of Jenner's biographer John Baron (1786-1851), and at the end of his life settled near them in Gloucestershire. Through Baron a small collection of papers of Jennerian interest was added.
John Hunter and his brother William ran a School of Anatomy in Great Windmill Street, London which was opened by William in 1768. John practised as surgeon in Golden Square from 1763, was Surgeon to St George's Hospital from 1768, and enjoyed widespread recognition as the leading teacher of surgery of his time. Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, 1749, and was a resident pupil of John Hunter from 1770 to 1772. He returned to practice medicine at Berkeley in 1773, but continued to correspond with John Hunter on many subjects until Hunter's death in 1793. Jenner went on to investigate and experiment with vaccinations for small pox with cow pox, publishing articles and books on the subject. Hunter maintained a long correspondence with his former pupil which ended only with Hunter's death in 1793. Only Hunter's letters survive.
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay on 30 December 1865. He was the son of the architectural sculptor and designer John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911) and a cousin of Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947). He was educated at United Services College, Westward Ho! North Devon. In 1882, he joined the staff of the Civil and military gazette and pioneer in Lahore, and became Assistant Editor serving until 1889. He then settled in London though travelled widely in China, Japan, America, Africa, and Australia. From 1902 he lived in Burwash. His early writing included Plain tales from the hills (1887), Soldiers three and Wee Willie Winkie . Other stories and verse such as The light that failed (1891), The jungle book (1894), Second jungle book (1895), and Captains Courageous (1897) brought him to the height of his fame. His publications also included Barrack-room ballads (1897), Kim (1901), the Just so stories for little children (1902), Puck of Pook's hill (1906), and A school history of England (1911). In 1907 Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Rudyard Kipling, who was a cousin of Stanley Baldwin, died on 18 January 1936.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Thomas Woolhouse was born in Halstead, Essex, in 1666. Son of Thomas Woolhouse, royal oculist and of the third generation, according to Woolhouse, to have followed that profession. He was educated at Westminster School and matriculated in 1684 at Trinity College, Cambridge, on a scholarship. He graduated in 1686/7 and then travelled throughout Europe to familiarise himself with the various methods of treating diseases of the eye. He started a practice in London, and served for a time as Groom of the Chamber to King James II. He was working in Paris from before 1700 to about 1730. He served as surgeon to the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts in 1711. He originated the operation of iridectomy to restore sight in cases of occluded pupil, and he was the first to describe the complete and systematic extirpation of the lachrymeal sac when the duct was blocked. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Surgeons of England, in 1721, being at that time oculist to the French King. He was also a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin and of the Institute of Sciences of Bologna. He died in 1734.
The British Journal of Surgery was established in 1913. The first meeting of the Editorial Committee and Sub-Committee was held at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 13 Feb 1913. It was attended by the following: Sir William Bennett, Edred Moss Corner, Sir Thomas Crisp English, Charles Herbert Fagge, William Sampson Handley, Robert Jones, Sir Berkeley Moynihan, Ernest William Hey Groves, and Sir Berkeley Moynihan as chairman. The British Journal of Surgery was to be a periodical devoted entirely to surgery, and was published by John Wright & Sons Ltd.
Thomas Henry Watson was a student at Edinburgh University from 1871-1875. He graduated Bachelor of Medicine and Master in Surgery in 1875. Watson's career history included Assistant Medical Officer, Fife and Kinross District Asylum; Resident Medical Officer at Mildmay Mission Hospital and Dispensary, Bethnal Green, London; Medical Officer, 2nd District, and Public Vaccination Officer, 4th District, Eastbourne Union. He died in 1927.
'Archibald John Richardson, Draper, Hotiern, Doncaster.' is written at the front if the volume, in the same hand as the prescriptions. It may be the name of the author, or a note written by the author. No further biographical information is available.
A card is pasted inside the back cover, which reads 'In affectioniate rememberance of Henry Motherby of Henshall, who died on the 26th December 1870, aged 41 years.' No further biographical information is available.
The name 'Pitt' is written on the inside of the front cover. No further biographical information is available.
No biographical information was available at the time of compilation.
No biographical information was available at the time of compilation.
George Kerr Grimmer studied his BA in New Brunswick, Canada in 1887, and his MB, CM at Edinburgh in 1892. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh in 1900. He was a Junior Demonstrator of Anatomy and an Assistant Demonstrator of Practical Physiology, at Edinburgh University. He was a member of the Edinburgh Medical and Chirurgical Society. He was Clinical Assistant in the Ear and Throat department of the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh, and the Medical Officer for the Health Service at Queensferry. He died in 1942.
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.
Mr Gardiner attended lectures by Joseph Else, Hugh Smith MD and Thomas Denman, from 1774-1775. Further biographical information is currently unavailable.
No biographical material was available at the time of compilation.
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.
The Institute of Laryngology and Otology (ILO) was established on the Gray's Inn Road site in 1946 as one of the Federated Postgraduate Institutes of the University of London. These Institutes were set up to undertake specialised research, teaching and training and were associated with the appropriate specialist hospitals. The Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital (RNTNE) was the companion hospital for the ILO. In Aug 1987 the ILO was incorporated into University College London (UCL), although the name was protected by statute. The incorporation brought significant advances in terms of co-operation with other departments in UCL but changed the status from independently funded Postgraduate Medical Institute to that of a university department with quite different funding strategies.
George Bennett was born in Plymouth, in 1804. He visited Ceylon and Mauritius in 1819. When he returned to England, he studied medicine in Plymouth and London, and entered the Middlesex Hospital and the Windmill Street School, where his masters were Charles Bell, Herbert Mayo, and Caesar Hawkins. After qualifying he went to New Zealand, and studied coniferous trees including the Thuja pine, the Kawaka of the Maoris. He also found a live Pearly Nautilus in 1829, and sent the unique specimen to his friend Richard Owen, at that time assistant to William Clift at the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum. Owen to wrote a brilliant description of it which was published in 1882. In the Asiatic Journal, he published an account of the Polynesian dialects and of the practice of medicine. Bennett visited Java, Sumatra, Singapore, and China after leaving Australia, and embodied his observations in his well-known work, The Wanderings of a Naturalist in New South Wales, Batavia, Pedir Coast, Singapore and China, published in two volumes by Bentley in 1834. In 1834 he was awarded the Honorary Gold Medal by the Royal College of Surgeons for his discovery of the Pearly Nautilus and for preparations illustrating the developmental history of the kangaroo and ornithorhyncus (platypus). He was elected a Corresponding Member of the Zoological Society of London in 1832. The Zoological Society awarded him its Silver Medal in 1862. Bennett settled in New South Wales after 1834, and began to practise in Sydney in 1836 in order to add to the income (£1OO per annum) derived from the Secretaryship of the Australian Museum Committee, to which he was appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies on the advice of the President of the Royal College of Surgeons and other College authorities. He published his best-known book Gatherings of a Naturalist (1860). It is a store-house of facts as to the natural and general history of Australia. He was appointed an Associate and a Member of the Committee of the Biological Section of the British Association (Aberdeen) in 1859, and held the same positions at the Oxford (1860) and Plymouth (1877) Meetings. He was elected a Member of the Board of Examiners in the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Sydney in 1856, and three years later Professor Harvey dedicated to him Volume II of his Phytologia Australica. In 1860 he was appointed a Member of the Imperial Australian Zoological and Botanical Society. An Acclimatization Society having been formed in Sydney in 1861, he delivered a lecture on 'Acclimatization and its Adaptation to Australia', which was afterwards published by the Melbourne Acclimatization Society and largely distributed in Sydney. He was Honorary Secretary of the Sydney Acclimatization Society from 1868-1871. At the end of his tenure of office a long correspondence was carried on with the Government of India on the subject of the cultivation of silk, and that portion of it which related to New South Wales was published by the Government (1870). Bennett also corresponded with Japan on the same subject, and was sent full information and a collection of choice eggs to found an Australian silk-worm industry. He became a member of the Imperial Society of Cherbourg in 1864 and a corresponding member of the Royal Society of Tasmania. In 1871 he began a search for fossil mammalia and reptilia and discovered many important new specimens in the Queensland drifts. Bennett was awarded the Silver Medal of the Acclimatization Society of Victoria in 1878 in recognition of his services in their cause, and in 1874 he was appointed Honorary Consulting Physician to St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney. He took a trip to Europe in 1877, travelling via North America, and returned in 1879 via Bombay and Ceylon. During this visit he was elected Corresponding Member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, Honorary Member of the Geographical Society of Rome, Fellow of the Royal Colonial Institute, and Honorary Corresponding Secretary. He acted as Executive Commissioner representing the Ceylon Government at the Sydney International Exhibition (1879-1880), and in 1882 was elected President of the New South Wales Zoological Society. In 1888 he was elected President of the Natural History Association, and was re-elected in 1891, when the Society was re-named the Field Naturalists' Society of New South Wales. In this year he presented a stained glass window to the Medical School of Sydney University. The Clarke Memorial Medal of the Royal Society (NSW), awarded 'for Meritorious Contributions to the Geology, Mineralogy, or Natural History of Australia to men of science, whether resident in Australia or elsewhere', was bestowed upon him in 1890, and the same year he bequeathed scientific works to the value of over £2000 to the Library of Sydney University. The gift included the valuable works of John Gould, with whom he had been much associated, and whom, with many other leading naturalists, such as Cumming, he often mentions in his letters. For the last ten years of his life Bennett took little active part in the work of his profession, though he continued to act as Co-examiner in Materia Medica and Therapeutics at the University, subjects in which he had always been greatly interested. He died in 1898.
Sir Richard Jebb was born in Stratford, Essex, and was baptised there in 1729. He matriculated at Oxford in 1747. He obtained his doctorate of medicine at Marischal College, Aberdeen in 1751. He was admitted a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1755. He was physician to the Westminster Hospital in 1754, and physician to St George's Hospital from 1760. He was elected as a permanent physician at St George's in 1962, and resigned his post at Westminster Hospital. He resigned from St Georges in 1768. He was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1771, and delivered the Harveian Oration in 1774. He was a fellow of the Royal and Antiquarian societies, Physician Extraordinary to King George III, and Physician in Ordinary to the Prince of Wales. He died in 1787.
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.
William Birmingham Costello was born in Dublin in 1800. He was educated locally and moved to London as a consulting surgeon in c 1832. He became a medical superintendant of Wyke House Asylum, near Isleworth. He was a member of the Royal College of Physicians, London and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. He was the editor of the Cyclopedia of Surgery published in London, in twelve parts from 1841-1843. He was also the editor of Pinel's 'Lectures on Insanity', Medical Times, 1845. Costello spent the latter part of his life in Paris, where he died in 1867.
Charles Spence Bate was born at Trenick House, near Truro, Cornwall, in 1819. Charles Spence Bate practised dentistry at Swansea from 1841-1851, and then practised at Plymouth. During his career, Bate was Secretary and President of the Plymouth Institution, President of the Odontological Society and an Honorary Member of the Dublin Natural History Society. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1854, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1860, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1861. Bate published 'On the Development of Decapod Crustacea' in the Philosophical Transactions, 1857. He was an eminent zoologist, and became known as an authority in Crustacea. He died in 1889.
Charles John Bond was born in Bittersby, Leicestershire, in 1856. He was educated at Repton from 1871-1973, was engaged in farming for a few months, and entered the Leicester Infirmary as a pupil in 1875. He went to University College London, in 1875, where he won the gold medals in physiology and anatomy, the silver medals in surgery, midwifery, and forensic medicine, and was an assistant demonstrator of anatomy. He was house surgeon from Bedford General Infirmary from 1879, until he was appointed resident house surgeon at the Leicester Royal Infirmary in 1882. Here he was surgeon from 1886-1912, when he resigned and was appointed consulting surgeon and vice-president. He acted as chairman of the drug and medical stores committee of the infirmary from 1925-1932. He retired from private practice in 1912 but retained his hospital appointment. During World War One he was gazetted temporary honorary colonel in 1915, was appointed consulting surgeon to the military hospital in the Northern command, and was the representative of the Medical Research Council on the inter-allied committee on the treatment of war wounds. The meetings of the committee were held at Paris from 1916-1918. After the War he served on Leicester city council for two years; was a member of the Leicester health insurance committee from 1918-1920; and on the advisory council of the National Insurance Committee; and was president of the Literary and Philosophical Society in 1901 and again in 1935. For his civic work he was rewarded in 1925 with the freedom of the city of Leicester, and in 1924 he became a Fellow of University College. In 1928 he gave the Calton memorial lecture on 'Racial Decay'. His friendship with Charles Killick Millard, MD Ed, medical officer of health for Leicester, led him to take an active part in launching the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society. For eight years he was a member of the Industrial Fatigue Research Board; of the Departmental Commissions on cancer and blindness; and the Trevithin committee on the prevention of venereal disease. He died in 1939.
Sir Herbert Atkinson Barker was born in Southport, in 1869. He was educated in the grammar school at Kirkby Lonsdale, and then visited Canada for his health. On his return he was apprenticed to his cousin, John Atkinson, the bone-setter of Park Lane. Before he was twenty-one Barker set up practice on his own, and was successful in Manchester and Glasgow before he established himself in London. He soon fell foul of the medical profession which does not look kindly on people who practice without having received the traditional education of a teaching hospital, an attitude partly excused by the sincere wish to protect the public from quacks professing to cure disease. However Barker did cure patients, many of whom had failed to obtain relief from qualified doctors. Barker had many journalistic friends, such as R D Blumenfeld, to press his claims, and many of the patients whom he cured were well known in sporting and public life. The controversy reached its height after 1911 when Dr F W Axham was struck off the register for acting as anaesthetist for Barker. This action made Barker more popular with the public, and he gained further sympathy in 1917 when the refusal of his offer to treat soldiers was discussed in Parliament. It was eventually conceded that men might consult an unqualified person on their own responsibility. By this time many eminent people, including leading medical men, were seeking some sort of recognition of Barker's skill. The Archbishop of Canterbury in 1920 was asked to exercise his special powers and bestow on Barker the degree of doctor of medicine. Finally, Barker was knighted in 1922. He retired from regular practice soon afterwards and thereafter spent much of his time on the continent and in the Channel Islands. The animosity of the doctors gradually died down, and in 1936 Barker gave a demonstration of his skill before the British Orthopaedic Association at St Thomas's Hospital. Barker did make a contribution to humanity, not only in relieving suffering but also in stimulating doctors to make more use of this form of therapy. In 1941 he was elected as a manipulative surgeon to Noble's Hospital in the Isle of Man. There had been many bone-setters before Barker, but none attained his eminence. Barker had remarkable success and seemed to have the gift of healing. Experience taught him which patients were unlikely to benefit by his treatment, and his doctor friends were often inundated with patients, mostly incurable, sent to them by Barker. He died in 1950.
Thomas Wallace (1680-1763) was a physician practising in Whatfield, Suffolk. He is listed as a medic in P J and R V Wallis, Eighteenth Century Medics (1988).
Ward names are indicated in the volume, and research conducted by E Muirhead Little in 1928, for an article in the British Medical Journal, shows that the wards are in St Thomas's Hospital, London.
Alexander Walker was born in 1764. He became a cadet in the service of the East India Company in 1780. In 1782 he became an ensign and in the same year took part in campaigns against the forts of Haidar Ali Khan on the Malabar Coast. Walker was also present at Mangalore during the siege by Tipu and its subsequent surrender in 1784. In 1788, after a period in enemy hands, and after taking part in an expedition to the north-west coast of America undertaken by the Bombay government, he was made a lieutenant and was sent with the expedition to relieve the Rajah of Travancore in 1790. In 1791, he was an adjutant. On the conclusion of this stage of the war against Tipu, a commission was nominated to regulate the affairs of Malabar, and Walker was appointed as an assistant. On the arrival in Malabar of General James Stuart (d 1793), commander-in-chief of the army in Bombay, he became his military secretary. In 1797, Walker was made captain, and the same year he became quartermaster-general of the Bombay army with the rank of major. In 1799, he took part in the last war against Tipu and was present at the fighting at Seedaseer and at the siege of Seringapatam during which Tipu Sahib was killed. In 1800, Walker was sent to the Mahratta states with the intention of pacifying and reforming the region and the Mahratta confederacy. Discontent in Baroda culminated in the insurrection of Mulhar Rao in 1801, though this was put down by 1802. In June 1803, Walker was appointed political resident at Baroda and he succeeded in establishing an orderly administration there. His career continued in India, and he attained the rank of lieutenant-general in 1808. In 1810 he returned to Britain, doubtless to his estate of Bowland in Edinburgh and Selkirk, and he retired from service in 1812. Ten years later in 1822 he was called back from his retirement to the government of St. Helena which was under the administration of the East India Company. There he had the rank of brigadier-general. While in St Helena, he improved the island's agriculture and horticulture. Brigadier-General Alexander Walker died in Edinburgh, in 1831.
John Herbert Hicks was born in Bristol in 1915. He studied medicine at Birmingham University, obtained his Fellowship in 1942 and served as a ship's surgeon in the Merchant Navy, 1942-1946. He became surgical registrar and resident surgical officer at Birmingham General Hospital. He obtained the MCh (Orth) from Liverpool in 1950. He was appointed surgeon to the Birmingham Accident Hospital in 1951, where he proved to be an innovative exponent of accident surgery. Hicks' outstanding contribution was in the rigid fixation of fractures, and his work on the composition of metallic implants and the dangers of corrosion; the management of infected fractures; the treatment of non-union; and elucidation of the structure and function of the foot. He was a teacher, a botanist of distinction (he joined an expedition to Bhutan and had two plants named after him) and the author of provocative articles in medical journals. He died in 1992.
John Hunter was born in East Kilbride, in 1728. He received little formal education. He moved to London in 1748, with his elder brother William Hunter (1718-1783) who was a midwife and physician, and a private lecturer in surgery and anatomy. Initially John made dissections and prepared specimens for William's lectures, and he started attending lectures in 1749. He became a surgeon-pupil at St George's Hospital in 1754, and started to give lectures for William. By 1750 John was so proficient at dissection that he was able to make the first set of preparations for his brother's comprehensive study of pregnancy, The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, published in 1774. John was commissioned as an army surgeon in 1761, and joined the British military expedition to Belle Île, off the northern coast of France. He was posted to Portugal in 1762. While serving with the army he laid the foundations for future work by studying the regeneration of the tails of lizards. He also carried out researches on the treatment of venereal disease and gunshot wounds. On his return to London he taught practical anatomy and operative surgery, and worked with the dentist James Spence. The latter resulted in two major publications: The Natural History of Human Teeth (1771) and A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of the Teeth (1778) which included important accounts of the transplantation of teeth in people, as well as the more famous experiment of the transplantation of a human tooth into a cock's comb. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767 and became a Member of the Company of Surgeons in 1768. He was appointed surgeon at St George's Hospital. He gave lectures in anatomy at the Incorporated Society of Artists in 1769-1770. Shortly afterwards he started to lecture in surgery to his pupils from St George's Hospital. In 1775 Hunter began to advertise a course of lectures on 'The Principles and Practice of Surgery', and he continued to stage these each year until his death. His surgical achievements were recognised by his appointment as Surgeon-extraordinary to George III and as Croonian lecturer at the Royal Society. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society and received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. He was elected a Member of the Court of Assistants of the Company of Surgeons in 1789. Hunter had been appointed Assistant Surgeon-General to the armed forces in 1785, and Surgeon-General and Inspector General of Regimental Hospitals in 1790. He drew up a scheme for training army medical staff which he successfully put into practice. Hunter was also one of the first vice-presidents of the London Veterinary College, established in 1791. He died in 1793.
John Hunter kept many manuscript notes of his dissections, cases, and research. Hunter employed a number of amanuenses so that fair copies of his rough manuscripts could be taken, the rough manuscripts often being destroyed after this had been done. There still remained a great deal of unpublished material after Hunter's death in 1793 and these manuscripts were kept at Hunter's house under the care of William Clift. Over the next six years, Clift copied many of the manuscripts for his own reference. Hunter wanted his collection of specimens to be offered to the British Government. In 1799 the collections were offered to The Company of Surgeons, which became The Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1800. A museum was purpose built to incorporate these collections in Lincoln's Inn Fields. In 1799, Sir Everard Home ordered that all the Hunterian manuscripts should be transferred to his own house. Home, a Hunterian Trustee, Hunter's brother-in-law, and one of Hunter's executors, was entrusted by the Board of Trustees for the Hunterian Collections, to use the manuscripts to compile a catalogue of the specimens. However, this catalogue never appeared. In 1823, Home spoke to Clift of a fire at his home resulting in the fire brigade being called, which was caused by his burning of Hunter's manuscripts in the fireplace. The Hunterian Trustees began to worry about the catalogue being completed and elected a committee to consider the catalogue at their meeting in Feb 1824. The Board of Curators of the Museum requested on 5 Mar 1824 that the Hunter manuscripts be transferred to the College as soon as possible. Home responded that Hunter did not consider his manuscripts to be seen by the public due to their imperfect state and that they should instead be destroyed. Home claimed that he had spent the last 30 years using the papers for the benefit of the museum, but due to his own ill health could not continue this, and ended his executorship by destroying them. The Board of Trustees were astonished and correspondence followed between the Trustees, the Board of Curators, and Home. This resulted in Home presenting the Board of Trustees with a sealed parcel containing some of Hunter's descriptions of specimens, in 1824. Home claimed these were all the records of Morbid Anatomy by Hunter. The Board of Curators reported that the records were incomplete and Clift revealed that the records, when he had looked after them between 1793-1799, had been much more numerous. Home did not respond to the questions asked of him about these records, but presented the 'Cases in Surgery' manuscripts to the Board of Trustees in 1825. The reasons behind Home's destruction of the Hunterian Manuscripts has been discussed on numerous occasions, with several theories being proposed. Sir Arthur Keith suggested for example that Home destroyed the manuscripts out of piety due to the heretical content of some the papers. This explanation has been considered limited due to minority of papers that might be considered of a heretical nature. The theory now more generally accepted to explain the destruction of the majority of the Hunterian manuscripts is that Home was using the contents of the manuscripts in his own publications. Evidence used to back up this argument includes comparisons between some of Hunter's works and those of Home, which contain striking similarities; the extent of publications produced by Home between 1793-1823, including an incredible amount of original work for such a short time period; and the fact that Home destroyed the Hunterian manuscripts a few days after receiving the final proofs of his work Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. Following the presentation by Home of the manuscripts of records in morbid anatomy and cases in surgery, Clift began to transcribe them. These transcriptions were completed by 1825, and were added to the transcriptions of other Hunterian Manuscripts undertaken by Clift before the originals were destroyed. Other Hunterian manuscripts have been added to the collections over the years from various sources.