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William Munk was born on 24 September 1816 at Battle, Sussex, the eldest son of William Munk, an ironmonger originally from Devon. He was educated at University College London, and subsequently at the University of Leyden, where he graduated MD in 1837 at the early age of 21.
Munk began practice in London in September 1837. His first appointment was as demonstrator of morbid anatomy at St Thomas's Hospital. This was followed by a number of honorary appointments at the Eastern, Tower Hamlets, and Queen Adelaide's Dispensaries. In 1853 he was elected physician to the Smallpox Hospital, and the following year became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. For many years he was physician to the Royal Infirmary for Asthma, Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, and consulting physician to the Royal Hospital for Incurables.
Munk is best known however as an historian. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and, in 1857, was appointed Harveian Librarian of the Royal College of Physicians, serving in this office for over forty years until his death. In 1857 he wrote a biography of a former president of the College, A Memoir of the Life and Writings of John Ayrton Paris', published in the Medical Times and Gazette. In 1861 the first edition, in two volumes, of the Roll of the Royal College of Physicians (Munk's Roll) was published. In this Munk provided a biographical record of the fellows and licentiates of the College, from its foundation in 1518 to the end of the 18th century. He subsequently published a second edition, in three volumes, which was brought to 1825, the date when the College moved from Warwick Lane to Pall Mall East. Originally Munk's Roll was not intended for publication and consequently lacks detailed referencing and methodical presentation, however,it serves an essential purpose in providing historians and biographers with an invaluable and copious fund of information' (Munk's Roll, 1955, p.76).
In the medical world he was a leading authority of his day on smallpox, and was called in to consult Prince Arthur, later Duke of Connaught, when the Prince had smallpox in 1867. Munk's plea for the increased use of narcotics and analgesics for relieving pain in incurable diseases also attracted much attention. He published a number of papers in medical journals such as The Lancet and in the St Bartholomew's Hospital Reports. A further contribution to medical literature was his book Euthanasia, or Medical Treatment in aid of an Easy Death, in 1887. The book was
`an earnest and learned plea for the recognition of the duty which physicians owe their patients not to end life but to render its passing in hopeless cases more easy' (The Lancet, 1898, p.1818).
Munk also produced an edition of The Gold-Headed Cane (1884) by William Macmichael, Registrar of the Royal College of Physicians. The book tells of the adventures of a physician's cane carried by several eminent physicians, and gives both good biographies of the owners and information on the condition of medicine in 18th century England. Munk became vice-president of the College in 1889, and also served as senior censor.
In 1893 he retired from the Smallpox Hospital, although he remained consulting physician to the Royal Hospital for Incurables until his death. In 1895 he wrote a biography of Sir Henry Halford, the longest serving president of the College, entitled The Life of Sir Henry Halford, for which the College voted him £100.
Munk married Emma Luke in 1849, and they had two sons and three daughters. Munk died at Finsbury Square London, on 20 December 1898, after suffering for many years from glycosuria
Publications:
The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1518-1800 [Munk's Roll, vols. 1-3] (2nd ed., London, 1878) (continued as Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London)
A Brief Account of the Circumstances Leading to and Attending the Reintombment of the Remains of Dr William Harvey in the Church of Hempstead in Essex, October 1883 (London, 1883)
The Gold-headed Cane, William MacMichael (William Munk, ed.) (London, 1884)
Euthanasia: Or, Medical Treatment in Aid of an Easy Death (London, 1887)
The Life of Sir Henry Halford (London, 1895)
Marvodia [An Account of the Last Illness of James I and of the Post-Mortem Examination of his Body; with some Notes on the Marwoods and their Descendants]