Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Anatomist - Ophthalmic surgeon SirsiDynix Enterprise https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/lives/lives/qu$003dMedical$002bObituaries$0026qf$003dLIVES_OCCUPATION$002509Occupation$002509Anatomist$002509Anatomist$0026qf$003dLIVES_OCCUPATION$002509Occupation$002509Ophthalmic$002bsurgeon$002509Ophthalmic$002bsurgeon$0026ps$003d300$0026isd$003dtrue? 2024-06-26T04:02:25Z First Title value, for Searching Power, Henry (1829 - 1911) ent://SD_ASSET/0/SD_ASSET:375169 2024-06-26T04:02:25Z 2024-06-26T04:02:25Z by&#160;Royal College of Surgeons of England<br/>Publication Date&#160;2012-10-10<br/>Unknown<br/>Asset Path&#160;Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002900-E002999<br/>URL for Files&#160;<a href="https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375169">https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375169</a>375169<br/>Occupation&#160;Anatomist&#160;Ophthalmic surgeon&#160;Physiologist<br/>Details&#160;Born on September 3rd, 1829, the son of John Francis Power, a Captain in the 35th (Royal) Sussex Regiment, by his second wife, Hannah, the youngest daughter of Henry Simpson, a banker at Whitby, Yorkshire. His father, who received his commission at the age of 14, had served through the Peninsular and Baltic campaigns as a Cornet in the 3rd Dragoons, King's German Legion, and is mentioned in the regimental history as having been beaten black and blue with sabres at the Sahagun skirmish in 1808. He was also present at Waterloo as a Lieutenant in the 3rd Regiment of Hussars in the King's German Legion. Henry Power was born at Nantes when the service companies of the 35th Regiment were under orders for Barbadoes, and narrowly escaped death in the great West Indian hurricane of August 11th, 1881, when two sergeants and five privates were killed, the baby being buried unhurt in its cradle. The same hurricane nearly killed Haynes Walton (qv), who afterwards became Ophthalmic Surgeon to St Mary's Hospital. Captain Power retired on half-pay as a Major in 1833, and led a wandering life in England until he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the depot of the British Foreign Legion at Shorncliffe in August, 1855. Henry Power, therefore, had a desultory education at several schools, amongst others at Cheltenham College, which he entered as a day-boy at Easter, 1842, the College having been opened at Bays Hill Terrace with 100 boys on July 29th, 1841. There he remained until he was apprenticed in 1844 to Thomas Lowe Wheeler, the son of Thomas Wheeler (1754-1847), Apothecary to St Bartholomew's Hospital and one of the great field botanists of his generation. Henry Power learned nothing from his master, who soon died, when he was transferred to his son Thomas Rivington Wheeler, but formed a boyish friendship with &quot;Thomas Wheeler the old gentleman&quot;, then aged 90. From him he learnt some Latin and Greek and the field botany which enabled him to win the Galen and Linnean Silver Medals at the Society of Apothecaries in 1851. Power seems to have drifted into medicine by accident. His father, his father's father, and his great-grandfather had all been in the Army, and they knew of only two classes of doctors, the regimental surgeon and the man who kept an open shop. There was, at any rate, no money to buy a commission, and Major Power had not sufficient influence to obtain one for his son as had been done in his own case. In October, 1844, he entered St Bartholomew's Hospital and soon became intimate with William Scovell Savory (qv), who like himself was a friendless lad without introductions. At Savory's instigation Power was induced to matriculate at the University of London. He was, however, under pledge to return to his master's house as soon as the early morning lecture was finished, and consequently never saw much of the clinical side of the hospital work. He spent his spare time in reading Shakespeare and such poets as were on the shelves of the Wheelers' library. He married on December 21st, 1854, his first cousin and playmate Ann Simpson, the youngest daughter of Thomas Simpson, of Meadowfield, Whitby, Yorkshire, on the strength of becoming a Demonstrator of Anatomy at the Westminster Hospital. The marriage proved a great success, and with his wife he survived to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the wedding. A living was made at 3 Grosvenor Terrace (now 56 Belgrave Road), SW, by coaching and taking resident pupils, and the London University Scholarships which produced &pound;100 for two years &quot;were a godsend&quot;. The hard work and strain led to a severe attack of pleurisy in 1855, for which he was nursed at Shorncliffe Camp under the supervision of William S Savory, who sent him to convalesce at St Helier's in Jersey. In June, 1855, he was elected Assistant Surgeon to the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital, where he came under the notice of G J Guthrie (qv), who dissuaded him from accepting the post of assistant in the anatomical department of the University of Edinburgh, which was subsequently filled by Sir William Turner. He retired from the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital in 1889 and was then elected Consulting Surgeon and a member of the Board of Management. In 1857 he became Assistant Surgeon to the Westminster Hospital, where he lectured for ten years, first on comparative anatomy and afterwards on human anatomy and on physiology. His teaching was appreciated by the students, who presented him with an address and a silver salver at the end of the session 1859-1860. He remained an Assistant Surgeon until 1867, by which time he had determined to devote himself entirely to ophthalmology. He was elected Ophthalmic Surgeon to St George's Hospital in 1867, and on July 27th, 1870, he was appointed to the newly made post of Ophthalmic Surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital, with Bowater J Vernon (qv) as his junior. The two colleagues worked together in the greatest harmony for twenty-four years and raised the department to a state of high efficiency. During the whole of this time they had but one Ward Sister - Miss Mary Davies - known to many generations of house surgeons and students as 'Sister Eyes'. Power also acted for twelve years as Ophthalmic Surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital, Chatham, leaving London every Wednesday at two o'clock and returning by the boat train at six - visits which he enjoyed because he always made friends with his fellow-passengers on the journey, many of whom were returning from service abroad. An original member of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom, Power was Vice-President from 1882-1885, Bowman Lecturer in 1887, and President from 1890-1893. He also served as one of the Vice-Presidents of the Section of Ophthalmology at the Seventh International Congress of Medicine held in London in 1881. At the Royal College of Surgeons Power was a member of the Board of Examiners in Anatomy and Physiology from 1875-1880, again from 1881-1884, and as an Examiner in Physiology from 1884-1886. He was a Member of Council from 1879-1890 and Vice-President in 1885. He delivered the Arris and Gale Lectures on anatomy and physiology in 1882-1883; was Hunterian Professor of Surgery and Pathology, 1885-1887; Bradshaw Lecturer in, and, like Paget, Savory, Butlin, and Moynihan, delivered the Hunterian Oration without a note in 1889. He was active as an examiner in physiology at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Durham, having as his colleagues Rolleston, Michael Foster, Huxley, and Hare Philipson, with all of whom he long maintained the most friendly relations. At the Royal Veterinary College in Camden Town he served as Professor of Physiology from 1881-1904, and the students treated him as a trusted friend and adviser. His former pupils in England presented him with a testimonial on his retirement, whilst those practising in South Africa sent him a handsome silver lamp. At the Harveian Society of London he was elected for two consecutive terms of office as President in 1880 and 1881. He was a Vice-President of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1892-1893, and was several times a Member of the Council and of the Library Committee. At the British Medical Association he was President of the Home Counties Branch, and held office as Secretary, Vice-President, or President of the Sections of Ophthalmology, Physiology, and the combined Section of Ophthalmology and Otology at various periods between 1869 and 1895. He was also President of the Society for employing the blind as masseurs, Surgeon to the Linen and Woollen Drapers' Benevolent Fund and to the Artists' Benevolent Fund. Power was engaged in literary work throughout his life. With a competent knowledge of German derived from his father and from his grandmother, who was a Dutch woman, he did much for the New Sydenham Society. He translated *The Aural Surgery of the Present Day*, by Wilhelm Kramer, in 1863; in 1870 he translated Stricker's *Manual of Human and Comparative Histology*, and from 1865-1874 he was co-editor for the Society of *A Biennial Retrospect of Medicine, Surgery, etc*. From 1879-1899 he carried out in conjunction with Dr Leonard Sedgwick *The Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences based on Mayne's Lexicon*. It was planned on too large a scale and the editors only finished to the letter O, the rest of the alphabet being completed by George Parker, a son of Professor William Kitchin Parker, FRS. Power also translated in 1876 Professor Erb's article &quot;On Disease of the Peripheral Cerebrospinal Nerves&quot; for Ziemssen's *Cyclopoedia of the Practice of Medicine* - a particularly difficult piece of work as it was written in involved and provincial German. From 1864-1876 he edited the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth editions of Carpenter's *Principles of Human Physiology* - a perfect mine of information. Each edition had to be literally rewritten, as physiology was then leaving the traditional lines and was becoming a new experimental science. The book was finally displaced by the text-books of Michael Foster and Herman translated by Arthur Gamgee. He also published in 1884 a small but useful *Elements of Human Physiology* which had a widespread popularity and ran through several editions. Having considerable talent as a painter in water-colours, he made many drawings of the interesting ophthalmic cases which presented themselves in the Out-patient Department of the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. These were embodied in his *Illustrations of Some of the Principal Diseases of the Eye* published in 1867. The book was one of the first English text-books containing coloured drawings of the fundus of the eye as seen with the ophthalmoscope. They were reproduced by chromolithography, which did not do justice to the original drawings, and are now preserved at St Bartholomew's Hospital. From 1881 onwards he busied himself in reconstructing Bagdale Hall, Whitby, a house built about 1540, which had long been in the possession of his wife's family. Here he spent his holidays, and here, in 1898, happened the tragedy which threw a shadow over the rest of his life. Whilst watching a summer storm on the unprotected east pier, his artist daughter and a grandchild were swept by a wave into the sea at a time when no boat could leave the harbour. The two girls were drowned though both were expert swimmers, and he himself escaped with the greatest difficulty. He left London shortly afterwards and retired to Whitby, where he cultivated friendships and gave popular lectures to the townspeople on a variety of subjects. In November, 1910, he strained his heart one Sunday morning whilst mounting the 199 steps to the parish church, which is situated on the edge of the cliff close to the Abbey. The effects never passed off, he suffered many distressing attacks of dyspnoea, and died at Bagdale Hall on January 18th, 1911, survived by his wife, four sons, and three daughters out of a total family of eleven children. He was buried in the cemetery which lies between the sea and the high moors, the town showing its sympathy by closing the shops, although it was market day. Henry Power was a good instance of heredity. His versatility, friendliness, and courtesy showed his South Irish ancestry; his dogged perseverance in the production of such monumental undertakings as Carpenter's *Physiology and the Lexicon of Medical Terms* was derived from the Dutch and Quaker strain; his agnosticism - for he neither affirmed nor denied - his carelessness of money, and his want of business aptitude were the outcome of several generations of military forbears, who, being always on active service, lived from hand to mouth and accumulated nothing. The business capacity derived from the long line of bankers on his mother's side missed him indeed, but appeared in the person of one of his grandchildren, Mr F D'Arcy Cooper - who became the successful Chairman of Levers, a soap company dealing with many millions of capital. His artistic ability - derived entirely from his father - was markedly transmitted to two of his daughters, one of whom was an excellent portrait painter, the other a beautiful bookbinder. As an ophthalmic surgeon Henry Power was a younger member of the band who made ophthalmic practice a specialty, having first been trained in general surgery like Bowman and Critchett. He was a good and careful operator, more especially in the extraction of cataract; as a clinical teacher painstaking, and as a lecturer fluent and interesting. There are two oil paintings by his daughter Lucy Beatrice Power, both of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy. The earlier one is at Melbourne, Victoria, in the possession of his grandchildren; the other, three-quarter-length, seated with a perimeter, belongs to Sir D'Arcy Power, KBE, FRCS. It was painted by subscription and was engraved. Both are excellent likenesses in a characteristic attitude. A speaking likeness is reproduced in the Centenary number of the *Lancet* (1923, ii, 751), for it reflects the kindliness he always showed to students. Power also appears in Jamyn Brookes's portrait group of the Council in 1884, and the *Brief Sketch* also contains a portrait reproduced by Emery Walker.<br/>Resource Identifier&#160;RCS: E002986<br/>Collection&#160;Plarr's Lives of the Fellows<br/>Format&#160;Obituary<br/>Format&#160;Asset<br/> First Title value, for Searching Lawrence, Sir William (1783 - 1867) ent://SD_ASSET/0/SD_ASSET:372201 2024-06-26T04:02:25Z 2024-06-26T04:02:25Z by&#160;Royal College of Surgeons of England<br/>Publication Date&#160;2005-07-28&#160;2012-07-19<br/>JPEG Image<br/>Asset Path&#160;Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000000-E000099<br/>URL for Files&#160;<a href="https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372201">https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372201</a>372201<br/>Occupation&#160;Anatomist&#160;General surgeon&#160;Medical Lecturer&#160;Ophthalmic surgeon<br/>Details&#160;Born on July 16th, 1783, at Cirencester, where his father, William Lawrence (1753-1837), was the chief surgeon of the town. His mother was Judith, second daughter of William Wood, of Tetbury, Gloucestershire. The younger son, Charles Lawrence (1794-1881), was a scientific agriculturist who took a leading part in founding and organizing the Royal Agricultural College at Circencester. William Lawrence went to a school at Elmore, near Gloucester, until he was apprenticed in February, 1799, to John Abernethy, who was then Assistant Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Abernethy became Lecturer on Anatomy in 1801 and appointed Lawrence his Demonstrator. This post he held for twelve years, and was esteemed by the students as an excellent teacher in the dissecting-room. He was elected as Assistant Surgeon to the Hospital on March 13th, 1813, and in the same year was elected F.R.S. In 1814 he was appointed Surgeon to the London Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye, in 1815 to the Royal Hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlehem, and in 1824 he became full Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's, a post he did not resign until 1865. In 1829 he succeeded Abernethy as Lecturer on Surgery and he continued to lecture for the next thirty-three years. He had also lectured on anatomy for some years before 1829 at the Aldersgate Street School of Medicine. He became a Member of the College in 1805, a Fellow in 1843, was a Member of Council from 1825-1867, a Member of the Court of Examiners from 1840-1867, Chairman of the Midwifery Board in 1854, Vice-President four times, and President in 1846 and 1855. He obtained the Jacksonian Prize in 1806 with an essay on &quot;Hernia, and the Best Mode of Treatment&quot;, which went through five editions in its published form, and he delivered the Hunterian Oration in 1834 and 1846. From 1816-1819 he was Professor of Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons. At his first lecture in 1816 he criticized Abernethy's exposition of Hunter's theory of life. His views on the &quot;Natural History of Man&quot; (1819) scandalized all those who regarded life as an entity entirely separate from, and above, the material organism with which it is associated. The lectures caused a serious breach between Abernethy and Lawrence, who was accused of &quot;perverting the honourable office entrusted to him by the College of Surgeons to the unworthy design of propagating opinions detrimental to society, and of loosening those restraints on which the welfare of mankind depend.&quot; Lawrence regarded life as the assemblage of all the functions and the general result of their exercise, that life proceeds from life and is transmitted from one living body to another in uninterrupted succession. In his lectures on comparative anatomy he endorsed the views of Blumenbach, and showed that a belief in the literal accuracy of the early chapters of Genesis is inconsistent with biological fact. The lectures on the &quot;Physiology, Zoology, and Natural History of Man&quot; - the beginning of modern anthropology in this country - were republished by Lawrence, but Lord Eldon characteristically refused to protect his rights in them on the ground that they contradicted Scripture. Lawrence valued the work so little that he announced its suppression, and having, in the satire of the day, been ranked with Tom Payne and Lord Byron, he was thereupon vilified as a traitor to the cause of free thought. This form of abuse pursued him still more fiercely when, like Burke, who changed his views after an introduction to the King's Cabinet, he became a Conservative in the College Council Room, after having headed an agitation against the rule of the Council of the College. In 1826 there appeared a &quot;Report of the Speeches delivered by Mr. Lawrence as Chairman at two meetings of Members, held at the Freemasons' Tavern&quot;. On the occasion of his second Hunterian Oration in 1846 a new charter which had lately been obtained failed to satisfy the aspirations of the Members of the College. An audience mostly hostile had assembled, and Lawrence defended the action of the Council and spoke contemptuously of ordinary medical practitioners, thereby raising a storm of dissent. &quot;All parts of the theatre&quot;, says Stone, &quot;rose against him. So great was the storm that Lawrence leant back against the wall, folded his arms, and said, 'Mr. President, when the geese have ceased their hissing I will resume.' He remained imperturbable, displayed his extraordinary talent as an orator, and concluded his address in a masterly peroration which elicited the plaudits of the whole assembly.&quot; Lawrence was at one time much in the councils of Thomas Wakley, the founder of the *Lancet*, with whom he conducted a weekly crusade against privilege in the medical world. This, of course, had not been forgotten when he appeared as the advocate of the College in 1846. As a lecturer on purely medical subjects Lawrence had a long career, during which he was without superior in manner, substance, or expression. He republished his lectures on surgery in 1863, and the work was praised by Sir William Savory and Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, who said of them that, &quot;though superseded by other works, they are still a mine of carefully collected facts to which the student refers with pleasure and profit&quot;. Sir G. M. Humphry (q.v.) and Luther Holden (q.v.) have also borne witness to his powers as a lecturer and to his genius as a clinical exponent. Sir James Paget (q.v.), who attended his lectures, did not at the time, he says, esteem them enough, but when he came to lecture himself he followed their method and thought it the best method of scientific speaking he had ever heard: &quot;every word had been learned by heart and yet there was not the least sign that one word was being remembered. They were admirable in their well-collected knowledge, and even more admirable in their order, their perfect clearness of language, and the quietly attractive manner in which they were delivered.&quot; Brodie described William Lawrence as remarkable for his great industry, powers of acquirement, and inexhaustible stores of information. He had a considerable command of correct language, a pure style of writing free from affectation, was gifted with the higher qualities of mind, and possessed a talent seldom surpassed. He was a vigorous, clear, and convincing writer. In addition to many contributions to the *Lancet*, the *Medical Gazette*, and the *Transactions of the Medical and Chirurgical Society*, of which he was President in 1831, he published in 1833 *A Treatise on Diseases of the Eye*, which embodied the results and observations obtained in his large ophthalmic practice. Lawrence lived to a great age and enjoyed a high degree of physical strength combined with an intense mental activity. On one occasion a friend ventured to congratulate him on looking so well. &quot;I do not know, sir,&quot; replied Lawrence, &quot;why I should not look as well as you do.&quot; At the age of eighty he was photographed by Frank Hollyer, and the picture, now in the College Collection, well displays his magnificent physical qualities. He became Serjeant-Surgeon to H.M. the Queen in 1858, was created a Baronet on April 30th, 1867, and died in harness in July, 1867. As he was mounting the College stairs in his capacity of Examiner, he had a stroke of paralysis, which deprived him of the power of speech. He was helped down to the Secretary's office from the second landing on the main staircase, where the seizure took place, by Mr. Pearson (the College Prosector) and others. &quot;When taken home, he was given some loose letters out of a child's spelling-box,&quot; says his biographer, Sir Norman Moore, &quot;and laid down the following four: B, D, C, K. He shook his head and took up a pen, when a drop of ink fell on the paper. He nodded and pointed to it. 'You want some black drop, a preparation of opium,' said his physician, and this proved to what he had tried to express.&quot; He married Louisa, daughter of James Trevor Senior, of Aylesbury, and left one son and two daughters. His son, Sir Trevor Lawrence, became Treasurer of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, the daughters died unmarried at a very advanced age. His grandson, Sir William Lawrence, was for many years an almoner at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Lawrence died on July 5th, 1867, at 18 Whitehall Place, S.W., where he had lived for many years. His children founded a scholarship and medal in his memory in 1873. The former was increased by his daughter to the annual value of &pound;115 and is tenable at St. Bartholomew's Hospital as the chief surgical prize. The medal was designed in 1897 by Alfred Gilbert, R.A., and is a fine example of numismatic portraiture. A three-quarter-length portrait in oils by Pickersgill hangs in the Great Hall of St. Bartholomew's Hospital; it was painted by subscription and has been engraved. A bust by H. Weekes, R.A., is in the College; it was ordered in 1867 and is placed near the head of the staircase. It is a fine likeness. A crayon portrait by Samuel Lawrence is in the possession of the family. Lawrence was a masterful man who, by virtue of his energy and long life, impressed himself upon the growing Medical School at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where, almost in spite of himself, he carried on the tradition of Abernethy; Paget, Savory, Humphry, and to a lesser extent Sir Thomas Smith and W. Harrison Cripps, fell under his sway and were influenced by him. He was a great surgeon, though not an operator equal to Astley Cooper, Robert Liston, or Sir William Fergusson; but his powers of speech and persuasion far exceeded the abilities of the rest of the profession. It was truly said of him that had he gone to the bar he would have shone as brilliantly as he did in surgery.<br/>Resource Identifier&#160;RCS: E000014<br/>Collection&#160;Plarr's Lives of the Fellows<br/>Format&#160;Obituary<br/>Format&#160;Asset<br/>