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Resource Name:
Resource Type:
External Resource
Metadata
Asset Name:
E000462 - Bond, Charles John (1856 - 1939)
Title:
Bond, Charles John (1856 - 1939)
Author:
Royal College of Surgeons of England
Identifier:
RCS: E000462
Publisher:
London : Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date:
2008-03-07
Description:
Obituary for Bond, Charles John (1856 - 1939), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Language:
English
Source:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Full Name:
Bond, Charles John
Date of Birth:
27 October 1856
Place of Birth:
Bittersby, Leicestershire, UK
Date of Death:
23 November 1939
Place of Death:
Leicester, UK
Occupation:
Titles/Qualifications:
CMG 1917

MRCS 28 July 1879

FRCS 8 June 1882

LRCP 1879
Details:
Born at Bittersby, Leicestershire, the second of the three children and the only son of George Bond, gentleman farmer, and Elizabeth Higginson, his wife, on 27 October 1856. He was educated at Repton from January 1871 to 18 April 1873, was engaged in farming for a few months, and entered as a pupil at the Leicester Infirmary in February 1875. He went to University College, London, in October 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. Here he formed a close and lasting friendship with Victor Horsley. At Bedford General Infirmary he was house surgeon from 1879 until he was appointed resident house surgeon at the Leicester Royal Infirmary in 1882. Here he was surgeon from 1886 to 1912, when he resigned and was appointed consulting surgeon and vice-president. From 1925 to 1932 he acted as chairman of the drug and medical stores committee of the infirmary. He retired from private practice in 1912 but retained his hospital appointment, and visited Australia in 1914. During the war of 1914-18 he was gazetted temporary honorary colonel on 31 May 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 to 1918. He married Edith, daughter of George Simpson, JP, of Hazlebrow, Derbyshire on 7 August 1890. She survived him with a son and a daughter. He died on 23 November 1939 at 10 Springfield Road, Leicester, and left £1,000 to Leicester Royal Infirmary. Bond was a man of many interests and of great energy. As a surgeon he introduced with Sir Charles Marriott aseptic methods at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, and at the meeting of the British Medical Association there in 1905 he delivered the address in surgery on Ascending currents in mucous canals; he spoke on Septic peritonitis at the Toronto meeting of the Association in 1906. He was president of the Leicester Medical Society, and as vice-president took a keen interest in the progress of the Leicestershire and Rutland University College. He served on the Leicester city council for two years; was a member of the Leicester health insurance committee from 1918 to 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. Always interested in biology, he kept cocks and hens to study problems in breeding and in 1932 he delivered five William Withering lectures at Birmingham, taking as his subject Certain aspects of human biology; in 1928 he gave the Calton memorial lecture on Racial decay. During the latter years of his life his friendship with Charles Killick Millard, MDEd, who was for many years medical officer of health for Leicester, led him to take an active part in launching the voluntary euthanasia legalisation society. Its object was to seek the passing of a law permitting a doctor under safeguards to bring about easy death for incurable persons suffering prolonged agony who wished their sufferings ended. Bond was chairman of the society's executive committee from its inception. 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 contributed a chapter on “Health and healing” to *The great state* by H G Wells and others, and collaborated with Wells in *The claims of the coming generation*. In 1949 his admirers placed a memorial to Bond in the Leicester Royal Infirmary and endowed in his memory travelling and research scholarships in biology at Leicester University College. They presented a complete collection of his writings to the Royal College of Surgeons Library. *Other publications*: *The leucocyte in health and disease*. London, 1924. *Biology and the new physics*. London, 1936. *Recollections of student life and later days, a tribute to the memory of the late Sir Victor Horsley.* London, 1939.
Sources:
*The Times*, 25 November 1939

*Lancet*, 1939, 2, 1202, with portrait

*Brit. med. J.* 1939, 2, 1120 and 1949, 2, 655, memorial

Information from Professor G Grey Turner FRCS
Rights:
Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England
Collection:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format:
Obituary
Format:
Asset
Asset Path:
Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000400-E000499
Media Type:
Unknown