Cheadle , Walter Butler , 1835-1910 , physician

Walter Butler Cheadle was born on 15 October 1835 in Colne, Lancashire, the son of James Cheadle, Vicar of Bingley, Yorkshire. Cheadle was educated at Bingley Grammar School, before proceeding to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1855. He graduated BA in 1859, and then MB two years later, having studied medicine at both Cambridge and St George's Hospital, London.

In 1862 he accompanied William Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton, on an expedition to explore a route through the Rocky Mountains in Canada. On their return to England in 1864 he authored the popular and successful account of their adventures, The North-West Passage by Land (1865), which ran to nine editions. Indeed the 1892 expedition conducted by Sir Sandford Fleming through the Rocky Mountains to plan the Canadian Pacific Railway, was largely guided by Cheadle's track. Cheadle became one of the earliest fellows of the Royal Geographic Society.

In 1865 he proceeded MA and MD at Cambridge, and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians. In the same year he was elected physician to the Western General Dispensary. In 1866 Cheadle was appointed as assistant physician to St Mary's Hospital, where he lectured on pharmacology, pathology, medicine and clinical medicine, and was for many years a dermatologist. He was also Dean of the medical school for four years, 1869-73, during which time the number of students more than doubled. In 1869 he became assistant physician at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. In 1870 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and began an extended connection with the College.

Cheadle acquired a considerable reputation as a consultant on children's diseases. Indeed in his private practice most of his patients were children. He pioneered work on the artificial feeding of infants and on childhood rheumatism. In 1877 he was the first to define a then mysterious childhood disease, which he named 'infantile scurvy'. It was characterised by pain and tenderness of the limbs, haemorrhages, and swellings of the gums. He ascribed the condition to artificial foods that possessed no anti-scorbutic properties. Described as `a radical in politics', Cheadle advocated the admission of women into the medical profession, and was one of the first lecturers at the London Medical School for Women (DNB, 1912, p.358).

It is said that he was at his best as a clinical teacher of senior and postgraduate students' (Munk's Roll, 1955, p.176). It was his example of regard for his patients that wasone of the greatest benefits he conferred upon his students' (BMJ, 1910, p.908). A series of his postgraduate lectures on feeding infants was published under the title, On the Principles and Exact Conditions to be observed in the Artificial Feeding of Infants; the Properties of Artificial Foods; and the Diseases which arise from Faults of Diet in Early Life (1889). His medical writings were considered essentially terse and practical', and none more so than his Occasional Lectures on the Practice of Medicine (1900), which wasfull of practical hints from a mature judgment' (The Lancet, 1910, p.962).

In 1884 Cheadle visited Canada with the British Association, where he contracted dysentery which permanently injured his health. In 1885 he became physician to in-patients at St Mary's. Between 1885-88 he acted as examiner in medicine in the Royal College of Physicians. Cheadle became a councilor at the College in 1889-91, censor in 1892-93, and senior censor in 1898. In 1892 he left the active staff of Great Ormond Street, and became honorary consulting physician. In 1898 he endowed the Cheadle prize and a gold medal for proficiency in clinical medicine at St Mary's. He delivered the Lumleian Lectures at the College in 1900, on cirrhosis of the liver. In 1904 he retired from active service at St Mary's, and became honorary consulting physician.

Cheadle was married twice, first in 1866 to Anne Murgatroyd, by whom he had four sons, all of whom survived him, and secondly in 1892 to Emily Mansel Mansel, Inspector of Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute for Nurses. In 1909 Cheadle was operated upon for intestinal obstruction. He died in London on 25 March 1910, and was buried in Eastbourne.

Publications:
The North-West Passage by Land (London, 1865)
On the Principles and Exact Conditions to be observed in the Artificial Feeding of Infants; the Properties of Artificial Foods; and the Diseases which arise from Faults of Diet in Early Life (London, 1889, 5th ed. ed. by Dr F.J. Poynton, 1902)
The Various Manifestations of the Rheumatic State as exemplified in Childhood and Early Life; Lectures delivered before the Harveian Society of London (London, 1889)
1831; A Retrospect (Harveian Society of London, Presidential Address, 1893) (London, 1893)
Occasional Lectures on the Practice of Medicine (London, 1900)
On some Cirrhoses of the Liver (Lumelian Lectures, 1900) (London, 1900)
Cheadle's Journal, being the Account of the First Journey across Canada undertaken for Pleasure only, by Dr Cheadle and Lord Milton, 1862/1863, John Gellner (ed.) (Toronto, 1967?)