Doran , Alban Henry Griffith , 1849-1917 , surgeon

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.