Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Bacteriologist

First Title value, for Searching Barratt, John Oglethorpe Wakelin (1862 - 1956)

2024-05-07T16:37:21Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-01-15 2016-08-17
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004800-E004899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377067377067
Occupation Bacteriologist Pathologist Tropical medicine specialist
Details Born on 11 May 1862 at Birmingham, the son of Oglethorpe Wakelin Barratt MRCS, he was educated at University College, London. Although he took the Fellowship soon after qualifying, Barratt never practised surgery but spent his life in research, producing valuable work in a variety of fields. While making postgraduate study at Göttingen and Munich he contributed papers to the German journals of physiology and bacteriology. He worked in the physiology and pathology departments at University College 1893-96, was a research scholar in neuropathology in the London County Council's asylums 1897-99 and pathologist to the West Riding Asylum at Wakefield 1899-1903. He held a British Medical Association research scholarship 1903-05 and then, after a year as assistant bacteriologist to the Lister Institute, spent a year (1906-07) in the Cytology and Cancer Research Department of Liverpool University. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine sent him to Nyasaland in 1907 as senior member of its Blackwater Fever Expedition. His valuable findings were published between 1909 and 1911, while he was director of cancer research at Liverpool. He came back to the Lister Institute in 1913 with a Beit memorial fellowship to research on blood plasma and serum reactions. This work was interrupted by his service in France during the war of 1914-18 as a Captain RAMC with the 1st City of London Sanitary Company. Wakelin Barratt was Master of the Society of Apothecaries in 1933-34. He married Dr Mary Muter Gardner of Stonehouse, Lanark, in 1913, and she survived him. He lived at 56 Alfriston Road, Clapham Common, and died on 1 December 1956 aged 94.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004884
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Gardner, Arthur Duncan (1884 - 1978)

2024-05-07T16:37:21Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-12-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006500-E006599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378710378710
Occupation Bacteriologist
Details Arthur Duncan Gardner was born on 28 March 1884 at Rugeley, Staffordshire. He was educated at Rugby School, University College, Oxford, and St Thomas's Hospital. He had a distinguished academic and athletic career. As an undergraduate he read law and represented Oxford at hockey. Changing to medicine, he qualified in 1911 and in the following year obtained the FRCS. At St Thomas's he won the Hadden and Beaney Prizes, and was a lecturer in pathology. At Oxford he was elected to the Radcliffe Travelling Fellowship in 1914 and in 1923 was awarded the Radcliffe Prize for medical research. During the first world war he was a surgeon with the Red Cross in France. His main life's work was in two subjects, bacteriology and administration. He was in turn lecturer, reader and Professor of Bacteriology at Oxford. From 1915 to 1936 he was director of the Medical Research Council's standards laboratory. He did important work on the antigenic properties of the cholera vibrio and Haemophilus pertussis, which led to greatly improved vaccines for cholera and whooping cough. He handled the bacteriological side of the early work by Florey and Chain on penicillin. As well as numerous papers, he published a book on microbes and ultramicrobes and a successful textbook *Bacteriology for medical students and practitioners*, which reached its fourth edition in 1953. In 1948 he made a complete change in his career when he became Regius Professor of Medicine, a post which he held for six years. He was confronted with many problems arising from the aftermath of war, the question of the continuation of the clinical school, the advent of the NHS, and the relationship of the university to the hospitals and the health service. These he faced with equanimity, sound judgement, and a capacity to smooth agitated personalities. He left the clinical school in a much better state than he found it. An honorary fellowship at his old college gave him pleasure. He was Rede lecturer at Cambridge and Litchfield lecturer at Oxford. Gardner was a many-sided man of great charm, but a kind and gentle exterior covered decided views. Although a dedicated scientist, he could recite more of Shakespeare and Milton than most of us. He was modest almost to a fault. Interested in everything, he once remarked that if he were young again he would certainly volunteer to go to the moon. A delightful sense of humour, unobtrusive kindnesses, and generous hospitality were other endearing traits. He married Miss Violet Newsam and had three children, two of whom predeceased him. His surviving son is a surgeon at Torquay. He died on 28 January 1978 aged 93 years.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006527
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Colebrook, Leonard (1883 - 1967)

2024-05-07T16:37:21Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-10-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006200-E006299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378411378411
Occupation Bacteriologist
Details Leonard Colebrook was born on 2 March 1883, son of May Colebrook and his wife Mary Gower, and was educated at three schools: Guildford Grammar School, The High School at Eastbourne, and Christ's College at Blackheath. He was admitted as a student to St Mary's Hospital Medical School during the South African war in 1900 and qualified as a doctor in 1906. He was attracted to that remarkable intellect, Sir Almroth Wright, and he was one of the group of brilliant disciples of this great man which included Sir Alexander Fleming, Major Douglas, John Freeman, John Matthews ("honest John"), R M Fry, Ronald Hare, A B Porteous "Proteus", and many others who became famous in their time. He was greatly attached to Almroth Wright, went with him to Boulogne in the first world war and worked with him in the old casino there. He advocated for war-wounds of that war, not to use antiseptics, but to use the inborn powers of nature to overcome the septic wounds by means of the patient's own resistance, using only hypertonics such as hypertonic saline or magnesium sulphate to draw the patient's own bactericidal serum into the wound, holding that antiseptics did more harm to the patient and his tissues than they did to the germs causing the sepsis. This was sound advice at the time, awaiting the discovery of an antiseptic which would kill the germs without harming the host. This was discovered by Domagk in Germany in 1932, twelve years after Colebrook had returned to St Mary's with Almroth Wright. His great work with Sir Almroth secured his appointment to Queen Charlotte's Hospital in 1930, and during this time he used 'Prontosil' and later its key substance sulphonamide in the treatment of puerperal sepsis and his work brought this disease to an end. It was a triumph of therapeusis ranking with Lister's in 1867, and he can be regarded as having achieved one of the greatest advances in therapeutics which has probably saved a million lives since it was discovered. When the second world war came in 1939 he again entered the Army as a Colonel at the age of 56, became bacteriologist to the Army in France and introduced the dusting of wounds with sterile sulphonamide powder, which caused sepsis almost to vanish. This was his second great contribution to medicine and surgery. His third great contribution came after his return from France in 1940, when he joined a team at the Medical Research Council and worked on the septic element in burns and scalds, and helped to produce their well known Special Report No 240 in 1945. Following this he organised the burns unit at the Accident Hospital at Birmingham. Possibly the tedious course of his burns patients' cure led Colebrook to his great campaign for the prevention of burns by measures such as screening fires and non-inflammable clothing. As a student he was a diffident and little known person. He was tremendously keen on games, but he would always be seen sitting shyly by himself and little known to other players because he was almost always 'twelfth man'. So he remained, quiet and self-effacing all through his life, during which he never lost his devotion to his great master Sir Almroth Wright whose biography he published in 1954, an admiring and loving book about a most remarkable man. Honours in many came to him in due course: Honorary FRCOG in 1944, FRS in 1945, FRCS and Honorary DSc of Birmingham University in 1950. The Blair Bell Medal was presented to him in 1955, and in 1962 the Royal Society of Medicine gave him their Jenner Medal. Colebrook was twice married, first in 1914 to Dorothy Scarlett Campbell, and secondly in 1946 to Vera Scovell. There were no children of either marriage. He never changed from the shy student of the 1900s, and his husky endearing voice and furtive smile was long remembered by all who knew this remarkable man, always self-effacing but a real and lovable genius. As the years pass his medical stature will grow when men remember his conquest of the poignant disease puerperal sepsis, his overcoming of sepsis in wounds by sulphonamide dusting, and his great efforts to reduce the horror and the incidence of burns. To his intimate friends he was always known as "Coli" just as his great friend and colleague Porteous was known as "Proteus". Others may remember him as "Elsie" (from his initials LC), with which name he would sign presentation copies of his great life of his dear friend and master Almroth Wright. He died on 29 September 1967 aged 84. Publications: Prontosil in puerperal infection. *Lancet*, 1936,1, 1289, 1300, 1441. *The prevention of puerperal sepsis*. 1936. *A new approach to the treatment of burns and scalds*. 1950.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006228
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Fleming, Sir Alexander (1881 - 1955)

2024-05-07T16:37:21Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-06-03
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005300-E005399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377552377552
Occupation Bacteriologist Medical Researcher
Details Born on 8 August 1881 at Lockfield near Darvel, Ayrshire, the son of a farmer, he was educated first at the village school and later at Kilmarnock Academy. At the age of 13 he was sent to live with his brother in London and continued his education at the Polytechnic Institute in Upper Regent Street where he displayed no particular interest in science or desire to become a doctor. Following this he worked for four years in a shipping office in Leadenhall Street, but then a small legacy enabled him to escape from the dull routine and, following the lead of his brother who had by now taken a medical degree, he entered the medical school of St Mary's, gaining a senior entrance scholarship in natural science. During his student career he won nearly every prize and scholarship, and finally was awarded a gold medal in the London MB examination. After qualification he began working in Sir Almroth Wright's inoculation department and, having achieved his FRCS in 1909, he decided to take up bacteriology under Wright's stimulating direction. Two more dissimilar men it would be hard to imagine: Wright the brilliant, dialectic Irishman, Fleming the dour, cautious lowland Scot. While employed by the shipping company, he had joined the London Scottish as a private and regularly attended their annual meetings, including, as a competent shot, the meetings at Bisley. In August 1914 he transferred to the RAMC, going to France as a Captain to work in Wright's laboratory situated in the Casino at Boulogne, for which service he was mentioned in dispatches. After the war he returned to St Mary's and was appointed lecturer in bacteriology. Later he became director of systematic bacteriology and assistant director of the inoculation department. In 1928 he was appointed Professor of Bacteriology at St Mary's, retiring as emeritus professor in 1948 but continuing as head of the Wright-Fleming Institute of Microbiology. This appointment he relinquished in 1954, but continued to work in the laboratory up to the time of his death. In 1922 he discovered lysozyme and, in 1928, penicillin while engaged in research on staphylococci. He found, however, that crude penicillin was too weak as a therapeutic agent and attempts at concentration were unsuccessful; as a result its clinical use was not pursued. Fleming's original paper (*Brit J exp Path* 1929, 10, 226) nevertheless was remarkable in appreciating most of the problems and their probable solution. It was left to Sir Howard Florey and E B Chain at Oxford to establish penicillin as a therapeutic agent in 1943. Fleming was knighted and shared the Nobel Prize for medicine with Florey and his collaborator Chain. Fleming was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, was awarded the Moxon medal of the College of Physicians, the honorary medal of the College of Surgeons, the Charles Mickle Fellowship of Toronto, the John Scott medal of Philadelphia, the Cameron prize of Edinburgh University, the Albert gold medal of the Royal Society of Arts, and the Actonian prize of the Royal Institution. Many honorary degrees of British and foreign universities were conferred upon him, and in 1951 he was elected Rector of Edinburgh University. In 1946 he acted as President of the Inter-American Medical Congress in Rio de Janeiro, and was awarded the Brazilian Order of the Southern Cross. He was President of the section of pathology of the Royal Society of Medicine and of the London Ayrshire society. He remained modest, simple and unspoilt, when success finally came to him after years of methodical work, and he gave full credit to the part played by other investigators. In his leisure he was a painter, gardener, motorist and Freemason and a member of the Chelsea Arts Club. In his younger days he was a crack shot and a first rate swimmer. He married first Sarah Marion, daughter of John McElroy of Killala, Co Mayo, who died on 28 October 1949, by whom he had a son, a doctor; and secondly in 1953 Dr Amelia Coutsouris of Athens, who had worked in his department. He died on 11 March 1955 at his home in Chelsea, and his ashes were placed in the crypt of St Paul's. A memorial service was held in St Paul's Cathedral on 18 March and at St James's, Sussex Gardens on 24 March 1955.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005369
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Lowbury, Edward Joseph Lister (1913 - 2007)

2024-05-07T16:37:21Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2007-11-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000400-E000499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372606372606
Occupation Bacteriologist Poet
Details Edward Lowbury was an expert on hospital infection and also a distinguished writer and poet. He was born in London on 6 December 1913, the son of Benjamin William Lowbury, a general practitioner and a great admirer of Joseph Lister, after whom Lowbury was named. His mother, Alice Sarah Hallé, was a member of the family of the founder of the celebrated orchestra. He was educated at St Paul’s School, London, from which a leaving exhibition took him to University College, Oxford, where he won the War Memorial medical scholarship. He read for the honours school in physiology under Sherrington, Le Gros Clark and Howard Florey, and then went up to the London Hospital Medical College, where his teachers included Russell Brain and Donald Hunter. After qualifying he completed house jobs at the London and LCC sector hospitals, before training as a bacteriologist at the Emergency Public Health Laboratory Service in Cambridge. In 1943 he joined the RAMC as a specialist in pathology with the rank of major, and served in the UK and East Africa. Whilst in Kenya he took a particular interest in witch- doctoring and folk medicine. He returned to join the staff of the Medical Research Council, was a bacteriologist at the Common Cold Unit for three years, and then, in 1949, went to the MRC Burns Unit at the Birmingham Accident Hospital as head of bacteriology. Here he set up the Hospital Infection Research Laboratory, Dudley Road Hospital. He was also senior clinical lecturer in the pathology department of the University of Birmingham. During this period Lowbury confirmed Coleman’s suggestion that closed ventilated burns dressing rooms would reduce air-borne infection, a discovery that was to be applied widely, especially in orthopaedics, where, together with Owen Lidwell and others, he organised a huge MRC controlled trial in joint replacement surgery. He was especially interested in the mechanism and prevention of antibiotics resistance, and discovered the plasmid in pseudomonas aeruginosa that renders it resistant to carbenicillin and other antibiotics. He developed tests to measure the efficacy of hand disinfection, and chaired the MRC subcommittee that published the seminal *Aseptic methods in the operating suite* (1968). He wrote over 200 papers, chapters and articles, and, among his books, *Drug resistance in antimicrobial therapy* (Springfield, Illinois, Thomas, c1974) and *Control of hospital infection: a practical handbook* (London, Chapman and Hall, 1975). He retired from medicine in 1979, but continued to work, travelling the world to lecture. He was the recipient of many honours and awards, but, as a published poet, perhaps the distinction he prized most was that of being the John Keats memorial lecturer in 1973, jointly with Guy’s Hospital, our College and the Society of Apothecaries. He had won the prestigious Newdigate prize at Oxford as an undergraduate, published 14 volumes of poetry, and edited *Apollo, an anthology of poems by doctor poets* (London, Keynes, 1990). His notebook had ideas for poems at one end and for medical ideas at the other. They met in the middle, he said, for mutual enlightenment. Short, slim, quietly spoken, Lowbury had enduring love of steam-engines, whose noises he could imitate perfectly. He married Alison Young, with whom he was to write biographies of the poet and physician Thomas Campion (*Thomas Campion: poet, composer, physician*, London, Chatto and Windus, 1970) and his father-in-law, the poet Andrew Young (*To shirk no idleness: a critical biography of the poet Andrew Young*, Salzburg/Oxford, University of Salzburg Press, 1997). Alison was a professional pianist, and together they founded the Birmingham Chamber Music Society. He developed glaucoma, went blind, and after his wife died in 2001, he went into a nursing home. He died on 10 July 2007, leaving three daughters.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000422
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Hayden, Arthur Falconer (1877 - 1940)

2024-05-07T16:37:21Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-07-03 2022-11-03
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004100-E004199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376361376361
Occupation Anaesthetist General surgeon Pathologist Military surgeon Bacteriologist
Details Born 24 August 1877 at Frogmoor House, High Wycombe, Bucks, in the house where his grandfather, William Hayden, LSA 1837, MRCS 1856, and his father, William Gallimore Hayden, MRCS 1863, had successively practised medicine. His mother was Elizabeth Matilda, daughter of William Falconer, who founded the Union Castle line to South Africa, and he was the fourth child of the marriage. Educated at the Grammar School, High Wycombe, when George Peachell was headmaster, he entered St Mary's Hospital, London, with the entrance scholarship and acted as a prosector at the Royal College of Surgeons. He served as house surgeon and assistant anaesthetist at St Mary's Hospital and as pathologist at the County Asylum, Winwick, Lancashire. He was gazetted lieutenant in the Indian Medical Service on 1 September 1905, and during his course in the Army Medical School won the Montefiore medal for military surgery and the Martin gold medal. Proceeding to India he was promoted captain on 1 September 1908, but was placed on temporary half pay on 23 January 1910 after an attack of poliomyelitis, which obliged him ever afterwards to use a mechanical chair for locomotion. He retired on 23 January 1912. Returning to England he undertook work at St Mary's Hospital as pathologist to the venereal disease department and as an assistant in the inoculation department. He married Ruth Lacey on 14 April 1912; she survived him with two sons and a daughter. He died on 8 March 1940 at 4 Graham Road, Hendon, NW4. Publications:- An inquiry into the influence of the constituents of a bacterial emulsion on the opsonic index. *Proc Roy Soc Lond*. 1911, B, 84, 320. Relative value of human and guinea pig complement in the Wassermann reaction. *Brit J exper Path*. 1922, 3, 151. **See below for an expanded version of the original obituary which was printed in volume 2 of Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows. Please contact the library if you would like more information lives@rcseng.ac.uk** Arthur Falconer Hayden was a surgeon in the Indian Medical Service who, after contracting polio, later joined the inoculation department at St Mary’s Hospital, London, where he worked under the influential immunologist Sir Almroth Wright. Hayden was born on 24 August 1877 at Frogmoor House in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Both his father, William Gallimore Hayden, and paternal grandfather, William Henry Hayden, were doctors. William Gallimore Hayden trained at Charing Cross Hospital, qualified in 1863, and became the medical officer at the Little Marlow District and Workhouse Wycombe Union. William Henry Hayden was a medical officer for the 12th District Wycombe Union. Hayden’s mother was Elizabeth Matilda Hayden née Falconer. Hayden was educated locally in High Wycombe and then studied medicine at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School with an entrance scholarship. He was a prosector at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He qualified with the conjoint examination in 1900, and subsequently gained a MB degree with honours in materia medica and forensic medicine, and a BS in 1904. He was an assistant demonstrator of anatomy, chemistry and pathology and a prosector in anatomy at St Mary’s, and went on to become a house surgeon at Newport and Monmouthshire Hospital and an assistant medical officer and pathologist at the County Asylum, Winwick. He was subsequently an assistant anaesthetist and house surgeon back at St Mary’s. He joined the Indian Medical Service on 1 September 1905 as a lieutenant. During his studies at the Army Medical School he won the Montefiore medal and prize for military surgery and the Martin gold medal for tropical medicine. He gained his FRCS in 1906 and became a specialist in advanced operative surgery. On 1 September 1908 he was promoted to captain. His military career came to end when he caught poliomyelitis. He was placed on half pay on 23 January 1910 and retired from the Indian Medical Service two years later. He returned to St Mary’s, where he was recommended for a job in the inoculation department by his friend Alexander Fleming. In 1917 Hayden became a pathologist in the newly opened venereal diseases department at St Mary’s, taking over from Fleming who had returned to military service. Hayden wrote ‘An inquiry into the influence of the constituents of a bacterial emulsion on the opsonic index’ *Proc Roy Soc Lond* 1911 B 84 320 and ‘Relative value of human and guinea pig complement in the Wassermann reaction’ *Brit J Exper Path* 1922 3 151. In 1939 he wrote ‘Acute conjunctivitis caused by a gram-negative diplococcus resembling the gonococcus’ *Brit J Vener Dis* 1939 Jan; 15(1):45-54 with his son. Hayden died on 8 March 1940 in Hendon, Middlesex. He was 62. He was survived by his widow Ruth Campbell Hayden née Lacey, originally from New Jersey, whom he had married in 1912, and their sons Arthur Falconer and Roger Keith, who both qualified as doctors. Hayden and his wife also had a son, William John, who died in 1916 aged just one month. Sarah Gillam
Resource Identifier RCS: E004178
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Watkins-Pitchford, Wilfred (1868 - 1952)

2024-05-07T16:37:21Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-06-16
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005400-E005499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377667377667
Occupation Bacteriologist Pathologist
Details Born at Tattenhall, Cheshire on 4 June 1868 the fourth son of the Rev J Watkins-Pitchford, Vicar of St Jude's, Southwark, and his wife Louisa Read of Westbury, Wilts, he was educated at St Olave's Grammar School, Southwark and St Thomas's Hospital, where he served as house surgeon. By the time he took the Fellowship in 1897 he had already become interested in public health, and was being employed as an expert bacteriologist by the Natal Government to report on European bacteriological laboratories. His elder brother Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Watkins-Pitchford was chief veterinary officer in Natal and subsequently government bacteriologist there. In 1898 he was special plague officer for the Government of Bombay to report on disinfectants. He served as a civil surgeon in Natal and the Transvaal with No 7 General Hospital during the Boer war. Coming back to England, he took the Oxford Diploma in Public Health 1901 and the London MD in State Medicine 1902, and acted as consultant to the LCC and to Holborn Borough during a smallpox epidemic. He returned to Natal as assistant government bacteriologist in 1903, was appointed public analyst in 1907, and in 1911 transferred to Johannesburg on his appointment as government pathologist and bacteriologist for the Transvaal, public analyst to the Municipality, and pathologist to the General Hospital. During the Zulu rebellion of 1906 he was adjutant to the Natal Medical Corps. The South African Institute for Medical Research was founded at Johannesburg in 1912, with Watkins-Pitchford as its first Director. He held the post till 1926, and established the Institute on the right lines and with the highest standards; he was also editor of the publications of the Institute. During the war of 1914-18 he was acting editor of the *Medical Journal of South Africa*. He established the Miners Phthisis Medical Bureau in 1916 with Dr Louis Irvine, and was its chairman till 1926; this was the first of its kind in the world. He served on the Council of Public Health of the Union of South Africa and on its Leprosy Advisory Commit-tee, and was chairman of the South African Chamber of Mines Medical Committee on Tuberculosis. At the University of the Witwatersrand he was a member of the executive committee and honorary Professor of bacteriology and pathology. He was active in the British Medical Association in South Africa, as secretary of the Pietermaritzburg division 1906 and chairman 1910, secretary of the Natal branch 1908 and President 1911, and President of the Witwatersrand branch 1917. After his return to England he served on the Central Council of the Association 1928-38 and on its Dominions committee, and was elected a Vice-President in 1923. Watkins-Pitchford retired in 1926 at the age of 58 owing to ill-health. He settled at Littlebrug, Bridgnorth, Salop, where with improving health he became a magistrate, a member of the council of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, and chairman of the Bridgnorth Playing-fields Association. He married in 1905 Olive Mary, third daughter of the Rev T B Nicholl, rector of Llanegwad, Carmarthenshire, who survived him with a son John Watkins-Pitchford MD and a daughter. He died in the Queen Victoria Nursing Institution, Wolverhampton on 29 September 1952 aged 84. He had made an outstanding contribution to scientific medicine in South Africa. He concealed a character of noble generosity and friendly helpfulness to sincere workers behind a facade of unsmiling reserve. Publications: A case of rapidly fatal diabetes mellitus in a boy aged ten. *Brit med J*. 1892, 1, 1136. An alcohol bath for burns. *Lancet* 1899, 1, 335. The treatment of dysentery. *Brit med J*. 1900, 2, 1370. Abscess of the lung; operation; recovery. *Brit med J*. 1901, 1, 842. Intussusception in convalescence from typhoid fever, death, necropsy. *Brit med J*. 1902, 2, 703. On Indian snake-stone, with H Watkins-Pitchford. *Brit med J*. 1904, 1, 438. The relations of meteorological conditions to the prevalence of enteric fever in Natal *Transvaal med J*. 1907, 2, 7. An unusual case of oesophageal obstruction. *Transvaal med J*. 1908, 3, 252. Light, pigmentation, and new growth; an essay on the genesis of cancer. *Transvaal med J*. 1909, 4, 239. The industrial diseases of South Africa. *Med J S Afr*. 1914, 9, 196 and 222. On the nature of the doubly refracting particles seen in microscopic sections of silicotic lungs, and an improved method for disclosing siliceous particles in such sections, with J Moir. *Pub S Afr Inst med Res*. 1916, 7. The prevalence of cancer amongst the native races of Natal and Zululand during the four years 1906-1909, with a note on the nature of cancer. *Med J S Afr*. 1925, 25, 257. The silicosis of the South African gold mines and the changes produced in it by legislative and administrative efforts. *J industr Hyg*. 1927, 9, 109.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005484
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Pugh, William Thomas Gordon (1872 - 1945)

2024-05-07T16:37:21Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-10-04 2015-06-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004400-E004499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376671376671
Occupation Bacteriologist General surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Born 9 April 1872 at Hadley, Kerry district, Montgomeryshire, the second child and eldest son of William H Pugh, a civil servant, and Annie Grant, his wife. He was educated at Ardwyn School and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He entered the Middlesex Hospital as a scholar in 1889, won the Governor's scholarship in 1893, was senior Broderip scholar in 1894, the year in which he took the Conjoint qualification, and in 1895 at the London MB, BS examination he took honours in medicine and obstetrics and first-class honours in surgery. He served as house physician and house surgeon at the Middlesex and as resident medical officer at the Hackney Road Children's Hospital. In 1897 Pugh entered the fever service of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and in 1907 was superintendent of Gore Farm, later the Southern Hospital, at Dartford, Kent. In 1909 Pugh was appointed the first superintendent of the Children's Hospital at Carshalton, Surrey, which as Queen Mary's Hospital for Children he made a most important centre for the treatment of surgical non-pulmonary tuberculosis, with 1,300 beds. In 1930, when the functions, of the MAB were transferred to the London County Council, Pugh became chief medical superintendent of the LCC children's and surgical tuberculosis services. He was elected a Fellow of the College as a member of twenty years' standing in 1935, and retired in 1937. Pugh was consulting surgeon to the King Edward VII Welsh National Memorial for the treatment of tuberculosis. He served as president of the section of orthopaedics at the Royal Society of Medicine in 1926. He was also an active member of the British Orthopaedic Association. He had served on the LCC departmental committee on hospital standards. Pugh made some mark as a bacteriologist, but the life-work which won him a wide reputation as "Pugh of Carshalton" was in the progressive organization of a large-scale service for the treatment and after-care of non-pulmonary tubercular children. His career ran parallel to that of Sir Henry Gauvain. As early as 1909, the year of his appointment to Carshalton, he showed the need for open-air treatment, and later made use of open-air heliotherapy and actinotherapy. In 1912 he organized the education of the children in his charge, at the Carshalton Hospital School. He designed and perfected, through a series of modifications based on practical experience, the "Pugh" frames and carriage for patients with tuberculosis of spine and hip, which allow facility in nursing with a minimum of intervention. They also allow the patient free exercise of limbs and lungs, and make sun and ray treatment easy. He organized a series of special units at Carshalton: for children suffering from marasmus, for non-tuberculous orthopaedic conditions such as poliomyelitis, cerebral palsy, and osteomyelitis, and for congenital malformations. The unit for juvenile rheumatism, which he established in collaboration with his deputy Sir Norman Gray Hill in 1926, had 390 beds when he retired in 1937. Pugh had width of vision and knowledge. Though a strict disciplinarian he was genial and affable, and took infinite pains in teaching and helping his assistants and nurses, and followed their careers with care. His book on *Practical nursing*, written with H E Cuff and his sister Alice M Pugh, went through fourteen editions, the later issues being the product of his leisure in retirement. His recreation was travel. Pugh married in 1909 Elaine, only daughter of David Edmond Hobson of Shaftesbury, Fort Beaufort, and St Laurence, Adelaide, South Africa. Mrs Pugh survived him with a son, Surgeon-Lieutenant Patterson David Gordon Pugh, RNVR, and a daughter, the wife of a doctor. He died at Greyholme, 6 Browning Avenue, Boscombe, Bournemouth, on 22 July 1945, aged 73. Publications: Method of staining B diphtheriae. *Lancet*, 1905, 2, 1901. Spinal caries in children; a method of fixation. *Lancet*, 1921, 1, 1071. Method of treating hip disease; traction by suspension. *M A B Reports*, 1926. *Practical nursing, including hygiene and dietetics*, with H E Cuff and A M Pugh. 14th edition, Edinburgh, 1944.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004488
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset