Norman, George (1783 - 1861)
by
 
Royal College of Surgeons of England

Asset Name
E000469 - Norman, George (1783 - 1861)

Title
Norman, George (1783 - 1861)

Author
Royal College of Surgeons of England

Identifier
RCS: E000469

Publisher
London : Royal College of Surgeons of England

Publication Date
2008-03-27

Subject
Medical Obituaries

Description
Obituary for Norman, George (1783 - 1861), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Language
English

Source
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows

Full Name
Norman, George

Date of Birth
1783

Date of Death
17 January 1861

Place of Death
Bath, UK

Occupation
General surgeon

Titles/Qualifications
MRCS June 4th, 1801
 
FRCS December 11th 1843, one of the original 300 Fellows
 
JP
 
DL for Somersetshire

Details
The son of a surgeon in good practice in Bath. After a short stay in London he returned to Bath and began professional life as his father’s assistant in the year 1801. On the death of an elder brother, a surgeon, he began to practise on his own account. In 1817 he succeeded his father as surgeon to the Casualty Hospital, and in 1826 was the first surgeon appointed to the Bath United Hospital, then newly formed by the Union of the Casualty Hospital and the City Dispensary. He continued to hold office till 1857, discharging his duties with the utmost attention. This long period of service was the more honourable to him because, during the greater part of it, from the wide extent of his private practise, the calls upon his time were so incessant that his gratuitous labours must have entailed upon him sacrifices which few are found willing to make. In his private practice he took the highest position in Bath, and while he was at his zenith his practice probably exceeded that of any other provincial surgeon. For a long period his receipts verged upon, if they did not exceed, £4,000 a year. On his retirement from the hospital he was at once made one of its Vice-Presidents, and his bust, executed in marble by the then popular sculptor Behnes, was set up in the hall of the institution. After this honour had been paid him the working men of Bath presented him with a handsome testimonial to mark their sense of his services to the public. His professional character stood very high, and he has been described as the very type of an English gentleman – simple, unaffected, perfectly self-possessed. In politics he was a strong Liberal and was an active politician. For forty years he was a member of the Bath Corporation and twice Mayor of the City. He was also Deputy Lieutenant of the County. At the time of his death he was Consulting Surgeon to the United Hospital, Surgeon to the Puerperal Charity, Vice-President of the British Medical Association, and Fellow of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society. He died of pleuropneumonia after a few days’ illness on Jan 17th, 1861, at his residence, 1 Circus, Bath. Norman contributed three papers to the *Medico-Chirurgical Transactions*, of which the first (1819, x, 94) on aneurysm, contains the history of two hospital patients in whom he had successfully tied the external iliac artery. In a second paper (1837, xx, 301) he described the dissection, twenty years afterwards, of one of these men. In a third paper (1827, xii, 348) he describes a remarkable case of extra-uterine foetation, which, in the ninth month of pregnancy, the foetus was extracted by means of an incision through the posterior wall of the vagina. He communicated also some three or four other papers, dealing with remarkable cases, to the Bath and Bristol Branch of the British Medical Association. A numerous and valuable series of preparations made by him for the Museum of the United Hospital, of which they constituted the first nucleus, must not be omitted form the list of his scientific labours. A fine mezzotint portrait of Norman is in the Young Collection (No 59). It was published by Henry Benham on Oct 16th, 1840, and is engraved after the painting by W O Geller. It represents a seated figure in the typical professional costume of the period.

Sources
*Lancet*, 1861, i, 127

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

URL for File
372653

Media Type
Unknown