The fourth son and fifth child of the Rev. W. Wright Butlin, M.A., of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, who died in 1902 at the age of 88. His mother was Julia Crowther Trentham, a clever and strong-minded woman coming of an evangelical Northamptonshire family who, in spite of delicate health, lived to be 84. The Butlins were a Rugby family who carried on the business of Butlin's Bank which was established in 1791 and was absorbed by Lloyds Bank in 1868. The Rev. W. W. Butlin was Curate of Camborne, then held the joint living of Cury and Gunwalloe, Cornwall, and was finally Victor of Penponds, near Camborne, where he is said to have been instrumental in building the church. Later in life he came into some property at Rugby which had been left to his father - a medical man - by Mr. Benn, a cousin. It had belonged to Mrs. Anne Butlin, who carried on Butlin's Bank after the death of her husband. Henry Trentham Butlin was born on Oct. 24th, 1845. He was educated at home with his brothers by a resident tutor until he entered St. Bartholomew's Hospital in October, 1864, where he lived in the residential college of which Dr. James Andrew was Warden. The appointment of House Surgeon to Sir James Paget (q.v.) became vacant unexpectedly in 1868 by the resignation of William Square (q.v.), of Plymouth, and Butlin was appointed in his place from April to October. When the House Surgeoncy ended Butlin went to Charing, in Kent, with a view to partnership with Charles Wilks, who had taken his M.R.C.S. in 1825 and was a devoted adherent to this old medical school. An agreement was drawn up but never signed, as Butlin felt himself unsuited for a country practice after the stimulus of acting as House Surgeon to Sir James Paget, and had determined to settle in London as a surgeon. He was appointed Medical Registrar to the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street and held the post until July, 1872. It was generally recognized on his resignation that he could have been elected an Assistant Physician had he chosen to apply. Whilst he was Registrar he passed the F.R.C.S. examination, and was appointed Surgical Registrar at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in December, 1872. The duties were arduous, for the Registrar had to examine every patient admitted to the surgical wards and write a note with his own hand in specially kept books. He had to attend in the operating theatre, verify the diagnosis of tumours by microscopical examination, and conduct the surgical post-mortems. All these duties Butlin performed to the entire satisfaction of the staff, and soon made such a reputation for himself that he was co-opted to the Morbid Growths Committee of the Pathological Society, of which he was Secretary from 1884-1886. Being as poor as Job, he married in 1873 Annie Tipping, daughter of Henry Balderson, merchant, of Hemel Hempstead, took a house, No. 47 Queen Anne Street, and kept the wolf from the door with resident pupils who paid £126 a year apiece. The marriage was singularly happy, and Butlin rightly attributed much of his success in life to the sterling qualities of his wife, who relieved him of all domestic anxieties. By her he had two daughters and a son. The elder daughter, Olive, married Percy Furnivall, F.R.C.S., only son of F. J. Furnivall, the well-known Shakespearean scholar; the younger married Norman Morice, of the firm of J. C. & C. W. Moore, stockbrokers. The son, Henry Guy Trentham, survived his father, volunteered whilst still at Cambridge, and was reported missing and wounded from the Cambridgeshire Regiment near Beaumont Hamel, France, on Sept. 16th, 1916. Whilst acting as Surgical Registrar Butlin was elected Assistant Surgeon to the Metropolitan Free Hospital, a post he resigned on becoming Assistant Surgeon to the West London Hospital, where he remained from 1872-1880, having a few beds of his own, learning to do major emergency operations, and having Sir Alfred Cooper (q.v.) as his chief. He was also Surgeon to the Alexandra Hospital for Children with Hip Disease which then occupied a single house in Queen Square, Bloomsbury. He was appointed Demonstrator of Practical Surgery in the Medical School attached to St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1879, and in the following year he was elected Assistant Surgeon in the vacancy caused by the unexpected death of George W. Callender (q.v.). He was immediately put in charge of the Out-patient Department for Diseases of the Throat upon the resignation of Sir T. Lauder Brunton, M.D. He held the post for twelve years, and with the help of Dr. F. de Havilland Hall raised the department to as high a pitch of excellence as could be obtained in the cramped quarters assigned to it. He also made for himself a leading position amongst contemporary laryngologists, though he never pretended to specialize in surgery of the throat, and with Felix Semon and de Havilland Hall he was a principal founder of the Laryngological Society, which is now a section of the Royal Society of Medicine. He became full Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital when Morant Baker (q.v.) resigned in 1892, and was appointed joint Lecturer on Surgery with John Langton (q.v.) in 1896. He resigned the office of Surgeon in November, 1902, before he had reached the age limit, and was elected Consulting Surgeon and a Governor of the Hospital. He was placed on the Visiting Governors Committee in 1909. Butlin's connection with the Royal College of Surgeons began in 1873, when he won the Jacksonian Prize with his essay on "Un-united Fractures". He delivered the Sir Erasmus Wilson Lectures on Pathology in 1880 and 1881. The lectures were published in 1862 under the title *Sarcoma and Carcinoma, their Pathology, Diagnosis and Treatment.* In 1892 he lectured, as Hunterian Professor of Surgery and Pathology, "On Chimney Sweeps' Cancer". He delivered the Bradshaw Lecture in 1905, and in 1907 he gave the Hunterian Oration without a note or a falter - a feat which had only been accomplished in recent years by Sir James Paget, Sir William Savory, and Henry Power. He was a Member of the Council, 1895-1912. In 1909 he became President, was re-elected in 1910, and again in 1911. Failing health prevented him from completing his third year; he resigned, and Sir Rickman J. Godlee (q.v.) acted in his stead. Butlin had an equally brilliant career in the British Medical Association. A Vice-President of the Section of Pathology at the Worcester Meeting in 1882, he was President of the Section of Laryngology at the Leeds Meeting in 1889, and at the Portsmouth Meeting ten years later he was President of the Surgical Section. He delivered the General Address in Surgery at the Exeter Meeting in 1907, speaking of the "Contagion of Cancer in Human Beings". In 1910, as President of the Association, he spoke on the "Evolution of the British Medical Association and its Work". He was Treasurer of the Association from 1890-1893, and again from 1893-1896, being the only person who had been re-elected to that important and responsible office. At the University of London he was the first Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. He was President of the Pathological Society of London 1905-1907, during which he gave the Jubilee Address; and President of the Laryngological Society. During the latter years of his life he had the pleasure of acting as a Governor of Rugby School and thus renewing his ancestral ties with the County. He died after a long period of failing health due to laryngeal tuberculosis on Jan. 24th, 1912, and was cremated at Golder's Green. Butlin was a man of rather frail and slender physique, slightly above medium height, but possessed of such vitality, nervous energy, and endurance that after a long morning of private practice he would never leave the operating theatre at the hospital until the list was finished, so that he often remained standing from 1.30 to 7.30, when he was left in a state of profound exhaustion. He loved horses took his exercise in riding, and would often ride to St. Bartholomew's Hospital on a Sunday morning. His holidays were usually spent in travelling through France, Spain, and Italy. His carriage, always painted an olive green decorated with his coat-of-arms, and drawn by a well-groomed pair of excellent horses, made him recognizable everywhere, for, thanks to Lady Butlin, he always had a very smart turn-out. He was a good and fluent speaker, and it was clear that he had deliberately modelled his style on that of Sir James Paget. As a teacher of students both in the wards and in the lecture theatre he was excellent. He leant to the pathological side of surgery and was always much interested in tumours and their structure. As a surgeon he was bold, and undertook very extensive operations for the complete removal of malignant growths, so that he may be said to be one of the pioneers in England who adopted the radical cure of cancer and was not contented with the local removal practised by his predecessors. His practice was extensive and lucrative - beginning with nothing he left the sum of £90,996. He would have been equally successful had he gone into business, for he was far-seeing, had large ideas, was very careful in detail, and from a business point of view was one of the best occupants of the Presidential Chair at the Royal College of Surgeons. Honours came to him from many sources. He was created a baronet in 1911; he was an honorary D.C.L. of Durham (1893), and a LL.D. of Birmingham (1910). Butlin stood at the parting of the ways when Sir W. Mitchell Banks (q.v.) drew attention in 1877 and again in 1882 to the good results obtained by removing the axillary glands with the breast in cases of cancer. He had followed the example of his seniors, and especially of Sir James Paget, in adopting local removal. For a while he followed the new teaching, but it was breaking away from tradition and for a time he went back to the old methods. In the end he became a whole-hearted adherent, and, like a true convert, he practised larger and larger extirpations in every case of malignant disease, more especially of the tongue, and followed up the results with unusual energy. His lectures on diseases of the tongue were published in 1885 and were illustrated with water-colour drawings made by T. Godart and Dr. Leonard Mark. The original drawings are preserved in the Museum of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. This excellent manual was reprinted in Philadelphia in 1895, was translated into German in 1887 by Julius Beregszaszy and into French by Douglas Aigre in 1889. Large additions were made when a new edition was published in 1900. The patients seen by Butlin in his private practice came in a much earlier stage of the disease than the ordinary hospital patient. He was therefore able to state that in 197 cases where he had removed the tongue for cancer quite 30 per cent were alive and free from recurrence three years after the operation. He recommended local removal as soon as possible, with subsequent excision of any leucoplakic patches. He foresaw that treatment by radium was likely to be serviceable, but before his death he had attained to a degree of success which remained unsurpassed until the treatment by radium came into general use. Of his portraits the best is the photograph in the obituary notice in the *British Medical Journal.* A three-quarter length in oils by the Hon. John Collier hangs in the Museum Hall at the Royal College of Surgeons. This is a replica of the picture exhibited in the Royal Academy. PUBLICATIONS:- *Sacroma and Carcinoma, their Pathology, Diagnosis and Treatment,* 8vo, London, 1882. *On Malignant Diseases (Sarcoma and Carcinoma) of the Larynx*, 8vo, 1883. *Diseases of the Tongue,* 12mo, London, 1885. An excellent manual on the subject. It was reprinted and an American edition was published in Philadelphia, 1885; it was translated into German (Vienna, 1887) and into French (Paris, 1889). The original water-colour drawings by T. Godart and Leonard Mark are in the Museum of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. 2nd ed. (with W. G. SPENCER), 1900. *On the Operative Surgery of Malignant Disease,* 8vo, London, 1887. *On Cancer of the Scrotum in Chimney Sweeps,* 8vo, 1892.