Vincent Zachary Cope, surgeon, author, historian and poet was born in Hull, on 14 February 1881; John Hunter's birthday, a coincidence which must have given him much pleasure later in life. He was the youngest of the ten children of Thomas John Cope, a Methodist minister, and his wife Celia Anne Cro

John Robinson Wilson was born in Leeds on 19 November 1919, and was educated at Stonyhurst College and Leeds University where he qualified with the Conjoint Diploma and the University MB ChB in 1943. He held house appointments at Leeds and Sheffield, and then spent two years as a ship's doctor in th

The son of a rector in London; educated at St Bartholomew's Hospital and the University of Edinburgh. He was at various times Surgeon on the Orient Steamship Company's line, House Surgeon at St Mark's Hospital, London, and at the General Hospital, Birmingham. He was also a Lecturer on First Aid to t

Born on 16 August 1876, eldest son of William Abraham JP of Coleraine Co. Derry, he was educated at Coleraine Academy and at Trinity College Dublin, where he was senior moderator and won the gold medal for natural science. At the same time he showed his literary bent by winning prizes for literature

William Milo Keynes was an honorary consultant surgeon at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and subsequently a writer and medical editor. He was born on 9 August 1924, the third son of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, a former vice president of the College, and Margaret Elizabeth née Darwin, a descendant of Char

Michael Du Preez (he did not use ‘Hercules’) was born in Cape Town on 19 November 1935, the son of Hercules James Du Preez, a company director, and his wife Josephine Florence née Koll. Educated at Rondebosch Boy’s School from 1944 to 1952, he proceeded to study medicine at the University of Cape To

Richard Lionel Spittel was born on 9 December 1881 in Tangalle, a town on the south coast of Ceylon, where his father Dr F G Spittel was stationed at that time as Government Medical Officer. He entered the Ceylon Medical College at the turn of the century, and qualified LMS Ceylon in 1905. He entere