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Resource Type:
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Asset Name:
E004532 - Rolleston, Sir Humphry Davy (1862 - 1944)
Title:
Rolleston, Sir Humphry Davy (1862 - 1944)
Author:
Royal College of Surgeons of England
Identifier:
RCS: E004532
Publisher:
London : Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date:
2013-10-23

2015-09-04
Description:
Obituary for Rolleston, Sir Humphry Davy (1862 - 1944), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Language:
English
Source:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Full Name:
Rolleston, Sir Humphry Davy
Date of Birth:
21 June 1862
Place of Birth:
Oxford
Date of Death:
23 September 1944
Place of Death:
Haslemere, Surrey
Occupation:
Titles/Qualifications:
Baronet 1924

GCVO 1929

KCB 1918

CB 1916

Hon FRCS 14 December 1939

MRCP 1889

FRCP 1894

PRCP 1922-26

BA Cambridge 1885

MB BCh 1888

MD 1891

Hon FRCPI 1925

Hon MD Dublin 1927

Hon LLD NUI 1933

Hon FRFPS Glasgow

Officier, Legion d'Honneur
Details:
Sir Humphry Rolleston was a physician and a College of Physicians man. He was elected LRCP before the establishment of the Conjoint Board and was never an MRCS. But he was a constant friend of the College of Surgeons, a life-long and almost daily reader in the Library, to which he gave many books, and took an active interest in the Imperial Cancer Research Fund managed by the two colleges. He was Chairman of the Fund 1925-41, and with particular reference to this work was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1939. Born at Oxford, 21 June 1862, eldest of the five sons and three daughters of George Rolleston, DM, FRS, Linacre professor of anatomy and physiology since 1859 (for whom see *DNB*), and Grace his wife, daughter of John Davy, MD (see *DNB*), the brother of Sir Humphry Davy, PRS (see *DNB*). Sir Humphry Davy had been elected an Honorary Member of the RCS in 1821, a degree discontinued on the institution of the Fellowship in 1843. Two of Rolleston's brothers achieved distinction in medicine, J D Rolleston, FRCP (d 1946) and Christopher Rolleston, FRCP (d 1950); his second sister, Rosamund Grace, trained as a nurse at St Bartholomew's and married J A Hayward, FRCS. The family was of Rolleston in Staffordshire, and Sir Humphry's great-grandfather was "Squarson" of Maltby in the West Riding. They had Anglo-Irish connexions, the poet T W Rolleston was a cousin, and Sir Humphry was well known in professional circles in Dublin and was honoured by both Universities and by the College of Physicians there. The Davys were Cornish. He was educated at Marlborough, at St John's College, Cambridge (scholar; pupil of Donald Macalister; Fellow 1889) and took first-class honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos, parts 1, 1885, and 2, 1886, and was university demonstrator in pathology, anatomy, and physiology. He played rugby football for his college and occasionally for the University, and later for the Bart's XV which won the Inter-Hospital cup; he played lawn tennis till over seventy. Rolleston retained close affection for Marlborough and Cambridge; he succeeded Sir Clifford Allbutt, whose life he wrote, as Regius professor of physic in 1925 while PRCP; only the famous Glisson, 250 years before, had similarly combined those offices. Rolleston gave no inaugural lecture; he retired in 1932. Rolleston received his medical training at St Bartholomew's and was house physician to Sir William Church, who nearly forty years later enrobed him as PRCP. As he could not afford to wait for a vacancy on the staff at Bart's he accepted an assistant physicianship at St George's, and in 1898 became physician there. He was elected emeritus physician for life in 1919, and a vice-president. He first made his mark as a pathologist. His earliest researches were with C S Roy, MD, FRS, on heart mechanism, later the subject of his Harveian oration, and he then took up the study of Addison's disease. This called forth his most original work and his one really first-class contribution to knowledge (for how few eminent and brilliant men achieve even one such success!): the discovery of the role of the suprarenals, announced in his Goulstonian lectures delivered in 1895, when he was 33. His results were confirmed by Schäfer and Oliver, and the secretion which he predicted was in due course isolated and became familiar as adrenalin. Rolleston was now threatened with phthisis, but volunteering for war service with the Imperial Yeomanry, he served as consulting physician to their hospital at Pretoria 1900, and his health was restored by the South African climate. On his return to London he built up a large practice in Upper Brook Street. He made his name widely known by his remarkably able editorship of Allbutt and Rolleston's *System of medicine*, 2nd edition, a reference work of enduring value, to which he himself contributed. Late in life he carried through with equal success Butterworth's *British Encyclopaedia of medicine and surgery*, to which he gave meticulous personal attention as general editor. Rolleston's wide reading, assiduous scholarship, and precisely retentive memory, equipped him with a knowledge of medical literature ancient and current probably seldom equalled. He kept his interest in the endocrines, the study of which grew during his life-time almost from the beginnings to a vast science. His Fitzpatrick lectures 1933-34 on this subject were elaborated into an historical study, *The endocrine glands*, 1936, his major work in the history of medicine, containing also much of clinical and scientific value. He made very many shorter historical studies, often biographical. He was elected the first consultant (for life) to the Army Medical Library at Washington, the central workshop of English-speaking medical scholarship, when he attended as guest of honour at its centenary celebrations, 1936. He edited *The Practitioner*, 1928-44, greatly enhancing the prestige and usefulness of that old-established journal by his flair for eliciting contributions from the best authorities and by specializing the contents of each issue, as well as modernizing the style of production. Rolleston was a man of singular modesty and charm; his slightly caustic wit was modified by the real kindliness displayed in a wry smile. He was tall, thin, and good-looking. He married in 1894 Lisette Elsa, daughter of F M Ogilvy. Their elder son, Francis Lancelot, was killed in Flanders in 1914 and their younger son, Ian Humphry Davy, of the Colonial Civil Service, was killed in a riot at Zanzibar in February 1936. He bore his sorrows with stoical calm. Rolleston died at Martins, Haslemere, Surrey, where he had lived since leaving Cambridge in 1932, on 23 September 1944, aged 82. His strength had been failing for some weeks, when he collapsed in his bath and was severely scalded. Although conscious when helped out, he did not survive the shock. Lady Rolleston survived him; they had lately celebrated their golden wedding. He left £1,000 to Papworth Village Settlement near Cambridge for rehabilitation of the tuberculous, with whose work he had been closely identified, and the residue of his estate to St John's College, Cambridge, to help medical students. He left his medical books between the libraries of the Royal Society of Medicine, the Royal College of Physicians, and the Royal College of Surgeons. Summary of Rolleston's official positions, etc: RCP: Counsellor, Censor, President in succession to Norman Moore 1922-26. Rolleston published each of his annual presidential addresses. Goulston lecturer 1895, Lumleian 1919, Fitzpatrick 1933-34, Lloyd Roberts 1933; Harveian orator 1928. BMA: Section of pathology and bacteriology: secretary 1895, vice-president 1904; Section of medicine: vice-president 1899, president, Cambridge 1920, and centenary 1932; Section of diseases of children: president 1910; president, Cambridge and Huntingdonshire branch; vice-president of the Association 1932; acting president in England at the time of the Australian meeting 1935; gold medallist 1926; drafted report of special committee on arthritis. Other societies: Honorary Freeman, Society of Apothecaries; president, 1925 and 1929, Association of Physicians; president, British Institute of Radiology and Röntgen Society; president, 1927, Medical Society of London; chairman for 18 years, Medical Insurance Agency; president, London Cornish Association. Foreign societies: Corresponding member of Académie de Médecine, Paris, and Reale Accademia di Medicina, Rome; Honorary Fellow, New York Academy of Medicine; Honorary Member, Association of American Physicians. Examinerships: RCP, 1894-1902; Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Bristol, Durham, London, Manchester, Sheffield. Official service: (1) To the Crown: physician in ordinary 1923; in attendance during King George V's illness 1928-29, see the life of Sir H M Rigby; physician extraordinary 1932-36. Rolleston was granted the rare privilege of bearing the Lion of England as a "special difference" in his coat of arms. (2) War service: consulting physician, surgeon rear-admiral, RN 1915-18, and subsequently member of board of medical consultants, RN. (3) Miscellaneous: Represented RCP and Cambridge on GMC; chairman, VAD Council; member of medical advisory committee, RAF; Royal Commission on National Health Insurance; Royal Commission on Lunacy; Colonial Office committee on medical services; Home Office enquiry into industrial diseases and workmen's compensation Acts; Ministry of Health: committee on vaccination, chairman; committee of medical records; Croydon typhoid epidemic inquiry, 1937, one of two assessors; Trustee of the British Museum. Select bibliography: *A manual of practical morbid anatomy*, with A A Kanthack. Cambridge, Dighton Bell 1894. Rolleston's elegant microscopic handwriting was modelled on Kanthack's. Sir Clifford Allbutt *A system of medicine*, 8 vols, 1896-99, H D R was assistant editor; 2nd edition by Allbutt and Rolleston, 11 vols, 1906-11. Rolleston contributed to both editions articles on Alcoholism, Diseases of the oesophagus, Diseases of the small intestine, Adrenal glands, Spleen, Lymphatics. The suprarenal bodies, Goulstonian lectures, RCP. *Brit med J* 1895, 1, 629; 687; 745. *Diseases of the liver, gall-bladder and bile-ducts*. Philadelphia, 1905; London, 1912; and with J W McNee, 1929. *Cerebrospinal fever*, Lumleian lectures RCP London, 1919. *On writing theses for MB and MD degrees*. London, Bale 1911; 2nd edition, 1925. Medical aspects of Samuel Johnson. *Glasg med J* 1924, 101, 173. *Cardiovascular diseases since Harvey's discovery*, Harveian oration RCP. Cambridge, 1928. *The Right Honourable Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt*. London, Macmillan, 1929. Lord Moynihan, who had known Allbutt well, thought it unworthy of its subject; but F H Garrison, the doyen of medical historians and a friend of both subject and author, praised it in a remarkable review: *New York Acad Med Bull* 1930, 6,132-135. *The Cambridge Medical School, a biographical history*. Cambridge, 1932. *Some medical aspects of old age*, Linacre lecture enlarged. London, Macmillan, 1922. 170 pages. *Aspects of age, life and disease*. London, Kegan Paul, 1929. 304 pages. The two Heberdens. *Ann Med Hist* 1933, 5, 409; one of the best of a long series of biographical articles. *The endocrine glands, in health and disease, with an historical review*, Fitzpatrick lectures, RCP 1933-34, enlarged. Oxford, 1936. 521 pages. The early history of morbid anatomy and pathology in Great Britain, Vicary lecture, RCS 1938. *Ann Med Hist* 1939, 1, 217.
Sources:
*The Times*, 25 September 1944, p 6e

*Lancet*, 1944, 2, 487, with portrait and eulogies

*Brit med J* 1944, 2, 452, with portrait, and p 483, eulogy

*Practitioner*, 1944, 153, 257, with informal full-length portrait

*St Geo Hosp Gaz* 1944-45, 34, 23, with eulogies by R R James, FRCS, and others

Personal knowledge
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/E004000-E004999/E004500-E004599
Media Type:
Unknown