Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: General surgeon - Gynaecologist

First Title value, for Searching Taylor, Joseph (1928 - 1997)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-07
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008900-E008999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381148381148
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist Missionary Ophthalmologist
Details Joseph Taylor was a former medical missionary in Tanzania. He was born in Czechoslovakia in 1928. In 1938 his parents brought him and his twin brother to England as the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia. He studied medicine at St Bartholomew's. After qualifying, he made ophthalmology his career, and went to Tanzania with the Bible Churchmen's Missionary Society in 1953. He spent the first 18 years in various hospital appointments and in 1971 moved to Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, where he was medical superintendent and senior ophthalmologist. He worked closely with the Tanzanian government and the Tanzania Christian Medical Association to develop a national medical programme. In addition to his work in ophthalmology, he did postgraduate work in gynaecology to learn how to repair vesicovaginal fistulae and other types of incontinence following obstructed labour. In 1979, he was the first medical consultant for the Christian Blind Mission, applying the lessons learned in Tanzania to the development of rural health services in other African countries, teaching, writing and lecturing extensively on all these matters. He was awarded the OBE in 1980 for this work. His work on low cost spectacles and eye drops is now part of the literature of the World Health Organization. He died on 21 November 1997 in Halton Hospital, Runcorn, survived by his wife, Joan, children and grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008965
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Jones, Arthur Webb ( - 1917)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-05-23
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002300-E002399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374557374557
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Educated at Malvern College and at St Thomas's Hospital. After taking the Fellowship he engaged in active practice in Egypt and at the same time worked for the degrees of the University of London. As the subject of his MD thesis he selected "Bilharziosis in Women", and on this question he was able to write authoritatively owing to his wide experience in gynaecological surgery in Alexandria. From 1900-1904 Webb Jones served in the Egyptian Army in the Sudan, and at the end of his period of five years left it to settle in private practice and received the thanks of the Sirdar and Governor-General of the Sudan for his services. He started practice at 8c Rue Stamboul, Alexandria, and was appointed Surgeon and Gynaecologist to the Government Hospital and Medical Officer to the Egyptian State Railway, Alexandria District. The medical and surgical resources of Egypt were taxed to the uttermost during the Gallipoli Campaign, and Webb Jones volunteered and did yeoman service with the British troops from May, 1915, to December, 1916. He had not been out of Egypt since 1913, and when an epidemic of typhus broke out in Alexandria, in the spring of 1917, it found him fatigued and somewhat out of health, though keen as ever upon his duties. He was called upon to give an intravenous injection of saline solution to a brother practitioner dying from typhus, and was infected. In about ten days the disease showed itself, and he succumbed on the eleventh day. Webb Jones was a sound diagnostician and a careful and skilful operator. His judgement was good and his successes were notable. He made careful notes of his cases, and was in the habit of adding subsequent impressions and investigations to the account of each, thus continually striving to perfect his knowledge and technique, and so to crystallize his experiences. He was a desirable colleague, a good friend, winning and reliable. He was survived by a widow and young family. His name is in the College Roll of Honour (*Calendar*, 1918). Publications: "Lumbar Hernia." - *Lancet*, 1902, ii, 747. "Two Cases of Gynaecomastia." - *Ibid*, 1904, i, 865.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002374
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Oldfield, Carlton (1879 - 1945)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-09-11
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004300-E004399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376582376582
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Born 15 July 1870 at Hall Bower, Denby Dale, near Huddersfield, third child and second son of Joshua Oldfield and Emma Davison, his wife. He was educated at a Grammar School and Leeds Medical School, taking the Conjoint qualification in 1893 and the London MB in 1895 BS in 1896. He proceeded to the MD in 1905 and the FRCS in 1909 and was elected FRCP in 1928. After working as assistant to Mayo Robson, Oldfield settled in general practice in his home town and later, specializing in gynaecology, was appointed surgeon to the Leeds Maternity Hospital and the Leeds Hospital for Women. He was subsequently elected gynaecological surgeon to the General Infirmary, retiring in 1939 as consulting gynaecological surgeon. Oldfield was also gynaecologist to the Batley and District Hospital, the Dewsbury General Infirmary, the Coronation Cottage Hospital at Ilkley, the Skipton and District Hospital and the Clayton Hospital at Wakefield. Oldfield was also active as a teacher. He succeeded John Benjamin Hellier, MRCS, as professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at University in 1919, and retired in 1932 with the title of emeritus professor (For obituary of Professor Hellier see *Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology*, 1925, 32, 558.) Oldfield had examined in his specialty at Oxford. He took a generous interest in the welfare of his students and nurses. He was a member of the Leeds and West Riding Medico-chirurgical Society, served as secretary of the section of gynaecology at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in London in 1910, and served the office of president of the North of England Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society. Oldfield married on 30 June 1903 Emma Gertrude Whitaker. He practised at 25a Park Square, Leeds, and died at his country house Moor Hill, Harewood, on 27 May 1945, aged 74. Mrs Oldfield survived him, with two sons and two daughters. One son, Michael Whitaker Carlton Oldfield, MBE, is a Fellow of the College, and was assistant surgeon at the General Infirmary, Leeds, but serving abroad, as were his brother and both brothers-in-law, at the time of Carlton Oldfield's death. Oldfield's recreations had been hunting, farming, and golf, which he often played with Lord Moynihan. Publications: Septic infections, in Eden and Lockyer *The new system of gynaecology*. London, 1917, 1, 525-66. G E Herman *Difficult labour*, 7th edition revised by C Oldfield. London, 1929. Pernicious vomiting of pregnancy. *Brit med J* 1922, 1, 789.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004399
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First Title value, for Searching Mackenzie, Kenneth (1885 - 1942)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-09-30
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/376604376604
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Born 1 May 1885 in London, son of Sir Thomas Mackenzie, High Commissioner for New Zealand and a former Prime Minister of the Dominion, and Ida Nantes, his wife. He was educated at the City of London School and in New Zealand at Balclutha, Robin Hood Bay and Otago Boys' High School, and after a year at Otago University went to Edin-burgh where he graduated in 1908, proceeding MD 1911 with a gold medal, and winning the Gunning Victoria jubilee prize for this thesis on pituitary gland function. He took the English Fellowship in 1912 and the Edinburgh MCh in 1913. Returning to New Zealand he settled in practice at Auckland, and was appointed surgeon to the Auckland Hospital in 1914. During the war he served with the New Zealand Medical Corps. After the war he inaugurated clinical teaching in the hospital and continued to lecture till his death. He had been examiner in physiology at Otago University from 1914 to 1916, and was examiner in gynaecology 1926-28. He was a member of council of Auckland University College 1921-35 and president 1933-35, and for several years a senator of the University of New Zealand. He was an excellent teacher, and did much to improve medical education in New Zealand. In 1923 he founded the Auckland Clinical Society, of which he was president in 1924. He was at one time president of the British Empire Cancer Campaign in New Zealand, and was president of the Auckland branch of the British Medical Association in 1929 and a member of the editorial committee of the *New Zealand Medical Journal* (BMA). He was a charter member of the Auckland Rotary Club and its president 1924-5; and an honorary serving brother of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. Mackenzie was an accomplished general surgeon, with a special interest in gynaecological surgery. He kept elaborate and carefully analysed notes, and was a frequent contributor to professional congresses and journals. He married on 28 April 1913 Flora Honor Macdonald, who survived him with a son and three daughters. His younger brother, Hector Bruce Mackenzie, MB, practised as a radiologist at Auckland, and died there in 1950. He practised at 27 Princes Street, Auckland, and had a country place in the forest, high in the Waitakere mountains. He died at Auckland on 15 January 1942 after three weeks' illness, aged 57. Publications:- An experimental investigation of the mechanism of milk secretion. *Quart J exper Physiol* 1911, 4, 305. The repair of large abdominal herniae by muscle transplantation. *Brit J Surg* 1924, 12, 28. Hyperadrenalism. *Aust NZ J Surg* 1937, 7, 175. Hyperparathyroidism. *Ibid* p 256.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004421
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First Title value, for Searching Wilson, Thomas (1861 - 1950)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-12-18
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/376989376989
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Born on 8 May 1861 at Cumnock, Ayrshire, the eldest child and only son of James Wilson, post office mail contractor, and his wife Agnes Vallance. He was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School, University College, London, which he entered in 1878, and University College Hospital. He was a contemporary and friend of Harry Littlewood, who became a surgeon at Leeds. Wilson won medals in pathology and hygiene, and qualified in 1883; he took the London MD in 1885. He had completed his midwifery courses at the Rotunda in Dublin, and was a resident at the Royal Eye Hospital. From 1886 to 1888 he was resident medical officer at the National Hospital, Queen Square, serving under such famous men as Sir David Ferrier, Hughlings Jackson, and Sir Victor Horsley. Then after a year as a ship's surgeon in the Peninsular and Oriental Line, he settled in general practice at Cannock, Staffordshire. Here he married Miss Loxton, who died in 1947 after nearly sixty years of married life; they had no children. Wilson now determined to specialize in gynaecology and in 1890 was appointed gynaecological surgeon to the Wolverhampton and South Staffordshire General Hospital. Three years later, in 1893, he became assistant obstetric officer at Birmingham General Hospital, and took the Fellowship at the end of the year. He became gynaecological surgeon there in 1903, and consulting gynaecological surgeon on his retirement in 1922. He was also gynaecological consultant to hospitals at West Bromwich, Sutton Coldfield, Nuneaton, and Dudley, and to the Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham. Wilson became surgeon to the Birmingham Lying-in Charity in 1895, and by his efforts developed it to become the Birmingham Maternity Hospital in 1907. For many years he had a nursing-home at 87 Cornwall Street, Birmingham in partnership with Sir Gilbert Barling. He held the rank of captain, RAMC. At Mason College (Birmingham University) Wilson was lecturer and examiner in midwifery and gynaecology. He was appointed professor of midwifery and the diseases of women by the University in 1912, and was made emeritus professor on his resignation in 1924. Although a professor and an FRCS he always preferred to be called Dr Wilson. He retired in 1927 to Braeside, Wyche Road, Malvern, where Mrs Wilson died in 1947. He died there on 23 March 1950, aged 88. Wilson succeeded to the great tradition of gynaecological surgery built up at Birmingham by Lawson Tait and Edward Makins, and was himself succeeded by the brilliant Beckwith Whitehouse, whom he outlived. He made valuable contributions to the operative treatment of malignant disease of the uterus, and in 1906 delivered the Ingleby lectures on pelvic inflammation in the female. His sturdy physique and good looks were matched by strength of character and balanced intelligence. His outlook was keenly progressive and pioneering, and his clinical work careful and sound. Wilson never cared for sports or games. He was a learned geologist and a skilled gardener.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004806
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First Title value, for Searching Hodder, Edward Mulberry (1810 - 1878)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-04-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002200-E002299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374424374424
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Born on December 30th, 1810, at Sandgate, Kent, the son of Captain Hodder, RN. He entered the Navy as midshipman in 1822 under his father, but stayed on board only a year. He then went to school in Guernsey and at St Servans, France. He was next a pupil for five years of Mr Amesbury in London. Having qualified in 1834, he spent two years in Paris studying medicine and afterwards attended hospital practice in Edinburgh. He began practice on his own account, first in London for two years, and then at St Servans in Brittany. He paid a visit to Canada in 1835, and after a return to St Servans definitely left for Canada and began to practise in the neighbourhood of Queenstown, near Niagara Falls. In 1843 he removed to Toronto, where he gained a practice as a surgeon and gynaecologist. In concert with Dr Bovell he started in 1850 the Upper Canada School of Medicine, which for several years represented the Medical Department of Trinity College. Hodder became a Member of the Faculty and in 1870 Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, which he held until his death. An Act incorporating the Medical School was passed in 1877. From 1852-1872 Hodder was a leading member of the acting staff of the Toronto General Hospital as well as of the Burnside Lying-in Hospital. He was especially known for his experience in ovariotomy and ovarian cysts, and in 1865 he was elected a Fellow of the Obstetrical Society of London. He was a member of the Ontario Medical Council and of the Canada Medical Association, of which he was elected President at the Halifax Meeting in 1875. He had been ailing for some time before his death, and showed signs of cerebral degeneration of which he was fully aware. Soon after Christmas, 1877, he was seized with paralysis of speech and deglutition, with rigidity of the right arm; aphasia persisted, he gradually became weaker, and died at his house in Toronto on February 20th, 1878. Publications: Hodder was joint-editor of the *Upper Canada Med Jour* in 1851, to which he contributed a number of articles.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002241
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First Title value, for Searching Allen, Harold Sandeman (1895 - 1960)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-12-20
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/377016377016
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Born in 1895 one of the four sons of Sir John Sandeman Allen (1865-1935), general manager and afterwards vice-chairman of the Union Marine Insurance Company and MP for the West Derby division of Liverpool; his mother was Amy Spencer, he was educated at Gresham's School and King's College, Cambridge, where he had one term in 1914. He was then commissioned in the Liverpool Scottish, saw active service in France and was several times wounded. He was at King's again 1919-20 and played Rugby football for the College. He took his clinical training at St Thomas's where he later held resident posts, after a house surgeoncy at the Royal Northern Hospital. Sandeman Allen went into practice at Cheltenham in 1930 and joined the staff of the General Hospital in 1933. He was also on the staff of the hospitals at Cirencester, Bourton-on-the-Water, Moreton-in-Marsh, and Evesham. When war broke out again in 1939 he went on active service in France and afterwards was attached to the Eighth Army in the Western Desert, as a Lieutenant-Colonel RAMC in command of a casualty clearing station. He was created OBE for his war service. After his return to Cheltenham he took up his large gynaecological practice and was appointed consultant gynaecologist to the North-East Gloucester area under the South-Western Regional Hospitals Board. Sandeman Allen married in 1930 Margaret Sylvia Harries, who survived him with their two daughters. He died a week before he was due to retire from his official appointments on 30 June 1960 aged 64. He was an energetic sports-loving man of open-hearted, honest and punctilious character, with highly skilled hands. He was a cabinet-maker and conjurer, and out of doors enjoyed shooting, swimming and golf. In younger days he had been a fine Rugby player. He held high rank in Freemasonry, was an honorary Lieutenant-Colonel in the Territorial Reserve, and was senior medical officer to Cheltenham race-course. Publications: Variation in the female pelvis, with C Nicholson. *Lancet* 1946, 2, 192. Haematometra caused by disappearance of the cervical canal after labour. *J Obstet Gynaec Brit Emp* 1947, 54, 377.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004833
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First Title value, for Searching Woo, Arthur Wai-Tak (1887 - 1964)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-06-23
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005500-E005599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377689377689
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Born in Hong Kong, Woo qualified from the Middlesex Hospital in 1913. He was particularly interested in gynaecology, and was house surgeon and assistant to Victor Bonney at the Middlesex and at the Chelsea Hospital for Women. During this time he designed the Reverdin-Woo needle. He served in a military hospital in England during the first world war, and then went with a Rockefeller scholarship to New York and Baltimore, where he worked with Howard Kelly and came under the influence of W S Halsted. He also met the future head of the department of gynaecology of the Peking Union Medical College, Preston Maxwell, whose first assistant he became. Early in the 1920s the PUMC had been rebuilt by the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. In Arthur Woo's own department Maxwell, Miles, and he worked on osteomalacia. They showed that, as had previously been suspected, osteomalacia was a de-ficiency disease related to rickets. When he returned to Hong Kong he established a clinic and organised the Babington Hospital, which became the centre of his large practice. His interests included opium addiction, leprosy, and cancer. Many distinctions came to him; the one that pleased him most was the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, awarded through his old teacher Lord Webb-Johnson. He was an Honorary Fellow of the International College of Surgeons, Honorary Visiting Professor at Lin Nam University, and consultant to the Cancer Clinic in Macao. He lectured in gynaecology and obstetrics and was an internal examiner at Hong Kong University. In his last illness he returned to the Middlesex Hospital for treatment. Woo lived at 55 Conduit Road, Hong Kong, and died in February 1964, aged 77, survived by his wife, with their son and five daughters. His humour, courage and faith lasted to the end.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005506
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Bishop, Edward Stanmore (1848 - 1912)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2010-03-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000800-E000899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373074373074
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Educated at the Pine Street Royal School of Medicine in Manchester, which was also known as Mr Turner’s School, and gained the Turner Scholarship in three successive years – 1868-1869, 1869-1870, and 1870-1871. He settled in the Ardwick District of Manchester, where he was in general practice until his appointment as Surgeon to the Ancoats Hospital. He qualified himself for this appointment by coming to London and taking out courses of anatomy and physiology at the London Hospital and of surgery at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and thus passing the Fellowship examination. Returning to Manchester, he devoted himself to the surgery of the abdomen and to gynaecology. He was appointed Operating Surgeon to the Jewish Memorial Hospital. At the time of his death he was President of the Manchester Clinical Society and Vice-President of the Manchester Medical Society. He died at 3 St Peter’s Square, Manchester, on July 25th, 1912, and his remains were cremated. Bishop was a man of great energy, somewhat reserved in manner, and a lover of music. He had at heart the best interests of Ancoats Hospital, and did much to place it in the position which it now occupies both as a hospital and as a centre of medical teaching. His resources in the technique of abdominal operations were very considerable. Publications:- Bishop’s publications, which were well known both here and in America, include:- *Enterorraphy*, 8vo, Manchester, 1885, from *Med. Chron*. *Lectures to Nurses on Antiseptics in Surgery*, 12mo, 11 plates London, 1891. *The Etiology of Chronic Hernia, with Special Reference to the Operation for Radical Cure, with Additional Tables*, 12mo, 1894, from *Lancet*. “A New Operation for Vesico-vaginal Fistula.” – *Med. Soc. Trans*., 1897, xx, 123. *Sealing of Operative Wounds about the Abdomen versus Treatment by Dressing*, 8vo, Manchester, 1899, from *Med. Chron*. *Uterine Fibromyomata; their Pathology, Diagnosis, and Treatment*, 8vo, 49 illustrations, London, 1901. The book is full of information, though somewhat biased towards operative surgery. “Changes observed in Uteri the seat of Fibromyomata.” – *Brit. Gynaecol. Jour.*, 1901, xvii, 286. *The Essentials of Pelvic Diagnosis, with Illustrative Cases*, 1903. This is an attempt to clarify the mental processes necessary in deducing disease from the absence or presence of symptoms. “Evolution of Modern Operations for Hysterectomy.” – *Practitioner*, 1908, lxxxi, 776. *Lectures on Surgical Nursing*, 1909. “Points in Gastric Surgery.” – *Surg. Gynecol. and Obst*., 1909, viiii, 559. “Address on Surgical Gastric Disorders” delivered before the Blackburn Medical Society, 1911. – *Lancet*, 1911, ii, 743.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000891
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First Title value, for Searching Miller, William Henry (1881 - 1951)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-11-21 2014-08-07
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004600-E004699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376864376864
Occupation Gastrointestinal surgeon General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on 16 March 1881, the eldest child of Henry Septimus Miller, a timber merchant, and Annie Elizabeth Potts, his wife. His childhood was spent in Canada, but his parents came back in 1893 and he was educated in London at William Ellis's school and Guy's Hospital, where he won the Durham and Hilton scholarships. He qualified in 1906, took honours at the London MB in 1907, and first-class honours with the gold medal in gynaecology at the MD in 1911, the same year that he took the Fellowship. He was house surgeon at Guy's, and clinical assistant at the Soho Hospital for Women, and then assistant medical registrar and surgical registrar at the Samaritan Hospital. After a period in general practice at Enfield he went into partnership with A C Hartle MD, at Bedford, and ultimately became senior partner in this large practice. Soon however he went on active service during the war of 1914-18, as a surgical specialist in the RAMC. After his return to Bedford he took an increasing part in the profession life of the district. He was appointed assistant surgeon at the Bedford General Hospital in 1924, became senior surgeon in 1932 in succession to W G Nash, and was elected consulting surgeon on his retirement in 1948. He continued to work at the Hospital till March 1951, when he finally retired on his seventieth birthday. He had at first been chiefly a gynaecologist, but in the second half of his career preferred to practise gastric surgery. He was a good teacher of surgery. During the second war, 1939-45, he was chairman of the local medical war committee, and he was a medical referee for the Ministries of Pensions and Labour, surgeon and agent for the Admiralty, and referee for the National Fire Service and the Royal National Hospital at Ventnor. He was a member of the Association of Medical Officers of Schools. He was medical adviser to the Bedfordshire Hospital Services Association, and a member of the Bedford Group Hospital Management Committee. Miller married in 1904 H M Zimmerman, who survived him with a son and daughter. Their elder son had been killed in 1940. He died suddenly in his surgery at 4 De Parys Avenue, Bedford, on 31 December 1951, aged 70. Miller was a man of strong and decisive character. His charm and friendliness made him a tower of strength to the many people who turned to him successfully for sound advice and practical help.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004681
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First Title value, for Searching Grice, John William Hawksley (1891 - 1976)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-12-11
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/378724378724
Occupation General practitioner General surgeon Gynaecologist Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Born on 7 April 1891 at Tonbridge, Kent, John William Hawksley Grice was educated at Yardley Court School, Tonbridge School and Guy's Hospital Medical School. During the first world war he left his medical studies at Guy's and went to France as a dresser; later he returned to Guy's and qualified in 1917. After a surgical house job he joined the RAMC and went to Mesopotamia. Remaining in the RAMC after the war, he specialised in orthopaedics until he went to North China in 1922. He looked after the British community in Tientsin as a general practitioner and general surgeon and gynaecologist at the Victoria Hospital. During the Tientsin floods he organised a large Chinese refugee camp at the British Race Club. In the second world war he was interned in a Japanese camp at Weihsien, Shantung province. He brought surgical instruments and drugs into the camp, where a hospital was started. He was appointed OBE for his work there. After the war he returned to Tientsin. Surgical instruments were in short supply and he used tools from an Italian marble works for mastoid operations. Following the Communist occupation he remained in Tientsin, finally leaving China in 1952. In 1954 he was elected FRCS for his work for the British community in China. He went into general practice at Bognor Regis in 1954 and retired in 1973. Grice was interested in Chinese antiques and collected jade, pewter and bamboo carvings, highly prized by the Chinese, but little known in the West. He wrote numerous articles on these, published in *Chinese art*, *Country life* and *The Field*. A representative part of his bamboo collection is in the Victoria and Albert Museum and an exotic ivory woven bed mat, said to have been used by one of the Chinese emperor's favourite concubines, is in the Ethnography Department of the British Museum. He also had a lifelong interest in ornithology. In 1920 he married Kathleen Kilbride, whose father and two brothers were medical men. There were two daughters of the marriage, one of whom took up medicine as a career. Grice died on 12 November 1976, at Bognor Regis, aged 85 years.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006541
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First Title value, for Searching Spanton, William Dunnett (1840 - 1922)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-03-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003600-E003699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375863375863
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Born on September 27th 1840, at Castle Street, Holborn. He was educated at Loughborough Grammar School, where his father was master of the modern side. He entered the school early in 1854, and left in 1855 to be apprenticed to Josiah Pritchard, a surgeon in Loughborough. He then served as an unqualified assistant at Saffron Walden, and became a student at the Middlesex Hospital in October, 1859. Here he was an out-patient dresser to W H Flower (qv) and a clinical clerk to Dr Charles Coote, living first with his parents at Hampstead, and afterwards with Henry John Brown, of Wilmington Square, Clerkenwell, under whom he had the care of the casual or tramp ward at the Workhouse. He returned to the Middlesex Hospital in the autumn of 1861, and acted as dresser under Campbell de Morgan (qv) and clerk to Dr Goodfellow and Sir William Priestley. He was also a Prosector at the Royal College of Surgeons, and acted as assistant to Dr William Squire at a time when the best-class general practitioners still had their surgeries and dispensed their own drugs. He was appointed to the newly formed post of Resident Obstetric Assistant at the Middlesex Hospital in 1862. Spanton served as House Surgeon at the Buckinghamshire Infirmary at Aylesbury until he was appointed to a similar post at Sheffield in 1863. In March, 1864, he was elected House Surgeon at the North Staffordshire Infirmary, and thus began his life-long connection with the Potteries. He was elected Medical Officer to the Infirmary in June, 1867, and Surgeon in 1868 after a severely contested election on the resignation of Joseph Walker. He held office until 1903, when he became Consulting Surgeon. During this period he did much to improve both the buildings and the organization of the Infirmary, which was made a model among modern provincial hospitals. In addition to his work as a surgeon he conducted a large general practice, and undertook an unremunerative enterprise in the Isle of Man for obtaining iodine from seaweed. At the British Medical Association he was a member of the Parliamentary Bills Committee in 1900, and a Member of the Council from 1901-1908. For some years he was a Member of the Executive Committee of the North Staffordshire Division, of which he was President in 1912. He was Vice-President of the Section of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Sheffield Meeting in 1908, and of the Section of Surgery at the Birmingham Meeting in 1911. He was the last President of the British Gynaecological Society before it was absorbed as a section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and as a gynecologist he presented many obstetrical instruments to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was President of the Staffordshire Nurses' Institution, and the Founder and President of the North Staffordshire Field Club, as well as Consulting Surgeon to the Longton Hospital. He married in 1867 Ellen Victoria Bates (d 1916), and by her had issue three sons and three daughters. The daughters survived him; the three sons died before him; one, John Spanton, an officer in the Rifle Brigade, was killed during the European War. He retired in 1909 and lived at Ripon Lodge, Hastings, where he died on May 13th, 1922. Spanton was an eminently practical surgeon, who is remembered by his strenuous advocacy of his subcutaneous operation for the cure of hernia. He read a paper at the Cork Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1879, on "The Immediate Cure of Hernia by a New Instrument" (*Brit Med Jour*, 1879, ii, 323), namely, torsion of the sac by means of a corkscrew. It was used for a short period, but was replaced by the open incision and removal of the sac. He was a man of genial character, gregarious, and a regular attendant at the various medical congresses of his day.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003680
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Tait, Robert Lawson (1845 - 1899)

2024-05-18T10:07:12Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-11-28
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003100-E003199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375374375374
Occupation General surgeon Gynaecologist
Details Born at 45 Frederick Street, Edinburgh, on May 1st, 1845, the son of Archibald Campbell Tait, of Dryden, a Guild Brother of Heriot's Hospital, and of Isabella Stewart Lawson, of Leven. From the age of 7 Lawson Tait was educated at Heriot's Hospital School, Edinburgh, until he entered the University with a scholarship in 1860. He began the Arts course but abandoned it after his first year, and never graduated. He was apprenticed to Alexander McKenzie Edwards, the Extramural Lecturer on Surgery, and for six years acted as his assistant after he qualified in 1866. During his student career he became a favourite with James Syme (qv) and Sir William Fergusson (qv), and for some time lived in Sir James Simpson's house. He left Edinburgh in 1866, visited Dublin and other schools of medicine, and was appointed House Surgeon to the Wakefield Hospital in 1867, a post he held for three years, performing his first ovariotomy there on July 29th, 1868. He performed five similar operations before he removed to Birmingham in 1870, and these seem to have directed his attention specially to what became the work of his life. He took the practice of Thomas Partridge in September, 1870, and settled in Birmingham at the corner of Burbury Street, Lozells Road, where be soon made a name for himself as a bold surgeon, an original thinker, and an aggressive enemy. He was Lecturer on Physiology at the Midland Institute from 1871-1879, where his advocacy of the Darwinian theory of evolution excited considerable opposition. In July, 1871, he was appointed Surgeon to the newly founded Hospital for Diseases of Women, and held the post until 1893, when he was elected a member of the Consulting Staff. In 1873 he was awarded the Hastings Gold Medal of the British Medical Association for his essay "On Diseases of the Ovaries", and in 1890 he received the Cullen and Liston Triennial Prize at Edinburgh for his services to medicine, especially in connection with his work on the gall-bladder. This prize, which was afterwards exhibited in the Art Gallery at Birmingham, consisted of a silver bowl of seventeenth-century London workmanship. He performed two operations of historic importance in 1872: the first on February 2nd, when he removed a suppurating ovary; the second on August 1st, when he extirpated the uterine appendages to arrest the growth of a bleeding myoma. He did his first hysterectomy for uterine myoma in 1873, following, with slight modifications, Koeberlé's technique, and in June, 1876, he removed a haematosalpinx and thus made the profession familiar with the pathology of the condition. In 1878 Tait began to express doubts as to the value of the Listerian carbolic acid spray then generally employed by surgeons in abdominal operations, but adopted no aseptic method except that of general cleanliness. In 1879 he did his first cholecystotomy, an operation which marked the beginning of the rational surgery of the gall-bladder. On January 17th, 1883, he first performed the operation for ruptured tubal pregnancy and saved the patient. A series of thirty-five cases with only two deaths speedily followed, and the operation took its place as a recognized method of treating a condition which had previously been looked upon as desperate. Lawson Tait was instrumental in organizing the Birmingham Medical Institute, of which he was an original member in 1874, and was one of the founders of the British Gynaecological Society, serving as President in 1885. He became Professor of Gynaecology at Queen's College in 1887, and was appointed Bailiff of the Mason College in 1890. He was the chief mover in causing the transfer of Queen's College to the Mason College in 1892, and thus smoothed the way for the foundation of the University of Birmingham. Tait performed many of the duties of a citizen in Birmingham. Elected a member of the City Council in 1876, as a representative of the Bordesley Division he became Chairman of the Health Committee and a member of the Asylums Committee. He contested the Bordesley Division of the City in the Gladstonian interest in 1886, but was easily beaten by Jesse Collings. In the British Medical Association Tait was a Member of Council, President of the Birmingham Branch and of the Worcestershire and Herefordshire Branch, and delivered the Address on Surgery at the Birmingham Meeting in 1890. He was President of the Medical Defence Union and raised the Society to a position of considerable importance. In 1876 he was President of the Birmingham Natural History Society, and in 1884 President of the Birmingham Philosophical Society. He was also Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Society of Artists and Birmingham School of Design, and was a founder of the Midland Union of Natural History Societies. He took a leading part in establishing coffee-houses in Birmingham. The University of the State of New York conferred upon him honoris causa the degree of MD in 1886, and in 1889 he received a similar tribute from the St Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons, whilst in 1888 the Union University of New York gave him the honorary degree of LLD. At the time of his death he was an Hon Fellow of the American Gynaecological Society and of the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. The last five years of Tait's life were marked by almost continuous ill health, which caused him to relinquish much of his operative work and seek repose at Llandudno, where he had bought a house. He died there from uraemia on June l3th, 1899: his body was cremated at Liverpool and the ashes were buried in Gogarth's Cave, an ancient burial-place in the grounds of his Welsh home on the west side of Great Orme's Head. He married in 1871 Sybil Anne, a daughter of William Stewart, solicitor, of Wakefield, Yorkshire, but had no children. Alban Doran (qv), a contemporary of Tait, who was himself a distinguished gynaecologist, summed up his work in the following words: "Tait's special merits as a surgeon cannot be lightly dismissed. He, no doubt, placed too low a value on scientific research; his statistical methods, well fitted for earlier days, when Clay, Spencer Wells, and Keith had to prove the bare justifiability of ovariotomy, were already antiquated when he so largely employed them; and he, in the opinion of many surgeons of repute, laid too little stress on after-treatment. Nevertheless, it is easy to recognize that, without doubt, he was a very great surgeon. "Lawson Tait began, as all abdominal surgeons had to begin in the days when he entered into his professional career, by ovariotomy. He advocated a small abdominal incision, and confirmed the superiority of complete intraperitoneal ligature over the clamp. It is not necessary to dwell on his long disputes with other operators, nor on his statistics, nor on his persistent opposition to antiseptics. He relied on his good right hand, an excellent principle for any surgeon, provided that, as in the case of Tait, his right hand be really good. He, on the whole, distrusted hysterectomy, but it is in the surgery of the appendages that he gained the most renown. By this term he understood, as all have since understood, the removal of the ovary and Fallopian tube for diseases due not to new growths, but to inflammation. Though no doubt operative interference for hydrosalpinx, pyosalpinx, and chronic oöphoritis was grossly abused at first, it cannot be denied that Tait threw a bright flood of light literally and figuratively on the nature, course, and treatment of tubo-ovarian inflammation. To understand his views thoroughly it is necessary to study the clear statements which he boldly makes in his *Diseases of Women and Abdominal Surgery*, 1889. The very headings of the pages, 'Heavy Mortality of Pyosalpinx', 'Pyosalpinx resulting from Uterine Tinkering', etc, are characteristic and most suggestive. Thus the first heading has been gravely disputed, but Tait knew how to act as counsel for the prosecution of a suppurating tube. The second implies the most just surgical censure. We know but too well that it is not only tubes that suffer from therapeutical tinkering and timid palliative measures. "At an early period of his career as an abdominal surgeon Lawson Tait distinguished himself by advancing, in an operative sense, beyond the limits of the female organs. He was an advocate of timely interference in disease of the gallbladder at a date when ovariotomy was hardly generalized and when hospital surgeons were as suspicious of any attempts at operation in the upper part of the abdomen as twenty years earlier they had been suspicious of ovariotomy itself. He carried his principles into practice, and so his name is chronicled in the history of our art as one of the pioneers of the surgery of the liver and gall-bladder. Just thirty years ago Lawson Tait opened up a sinus which discharged through the umbilicus and communicated with a suppurating gall-bladder, so that he was enabled to remove some gall-stones. Nine years later Dr Marion Sims boldly performed cholecystotomy on a patient whose health was already impaired by long-standing obstruction of the bile-ducts. Relief was immediate, but the patient sank a week later. For Marion Sims, Lawson Tait had the deepest admiration, and dedicated to the great American gynaecologist his *Pathology and Treatment of Diseases of the Ovaries* 'as an acknowledgment that much of the new work described in it was the outcome of his ingenuity'. As an outcome of Sims's ingenuity beyond the area of the uterus and its appendages, Tait successfully performed a cholecystotomy in 1879, one year after Sims's operation. A living authority on hepatic surgery, Mr Mayo Robson, justly observes that 'to Mr Tait undoubtedly belongs the credit of having popularized the operation with the profession'. "Tait's renown and experience caused many others to bring to him patients with abdominal affections which baffled their powers of diagnosis. In 1887 he recorded a large series of operations for cystic collections of fluid in the anterior and inferior part of the abdomen. He treated them, as a rule successfully, by incision and drainage, and believed that the cysts had developed in the urachus. There is reason to suspect that some of these cases were simply encysted dropsies due to tuberculous disease, and their true pathology was in no instance verified by dissection or post-mortem examination. Still there can be little doubt that in more than one instance the tumour was urachal. What is more important, Tait established, by the publication of this series, the correct principles for the treatment of this rare disease. Hence, in the surgery of tumours of the urachus, Tait once more appears as a pioneer whose claims will not be forgotten. "Perhaps the most original and at the same time most valuable innovation which surgery owes to Lawson Tait is the washing of the peritoneum, after an operation, with large quantities of water for the purposes of cleansing and haemostasis. Many other terms have been applied to this method, but his original contribution on this subject in the third volume of the *British Gynaecological Journal* [1887-8, iii, 185] is named 'Methods of Cleansing the Peritoneum', and the only other term in this remarkable essay besides 'cleansing' is 'washing'. Whatever it should strictly be called in accordance with the science of hydraulics, this cleansing of the peritoneum has proved of the greatest benefit, and, although it has been much abused and often applied when unnecessary, though harmless, it has been found by later observers to act favourably on the patient in certain ways quite unrecognized by its famous inventor. Tait avowedly claimed cleansing and haemostasis as the aim of washing of the peritoneum. Within a few years it was found that it was also a process of transfusion. Later, it was shown that when some of the water was left behind in the peritoneal cavity it ensured the rapid removal of poisonous products from the peritoneum. It has further been discovered that the addition of salt greatly increases the transfusing and antiseptic value of the water used for cleansing the peritoneum. Such remarkable development of a new surgical practice greatly redounds to the credit of its inventor. Lawson Tait was, in respect to washing of the peritoneum, once again a bold projector who successfully carried an original design into practice. He did so on the sound surgical principle that the less the surgeon fears the peritoneum and the more thoroughly he cleans it and checks bleeding and oozing, the better it will be for the patient. "Enough has been said to show that Lawson Tait will always be remembered as a bold surgeon of unusual originality. His merits, widely recognized in his lifetime, will not be forgotten after his death, for he made a name for himself in the glorious history of British surgery." As a man Tait was a sound antiquarian, a good raconteur, and an admirable public speaker who kept the attention of his audience. In person he was short, broad-chested, and had a very large head from which fell long hair. His face was severe and plebeian in character, but gave the impression that he had a large fund of common sense. He listened carefully to what was told him and replied in the fewest possible words, his lips hardly moving. Publications: *The Pathology and Treatment of Diseases of the Ovaries* (the Hastings Prize Essay, 1873), London, 1874; 4th ed, 1883. *An Essay on Hospital Mortality based on the Statistics of the Hospitals of Great Britain for Fifteen Years*, 8vo, London, 1877. *Diseases of Women*, 8vo, London, 1877; 2nd ed, 1886. It appeared in New York in 1879; in Philadelphia in 1889; and was translated into French by Dr Olivier in 1886 and by Dr Bétrix in 1891. *The Uselessness of Vivisection upon Animals as a Method of Scientific Research*, 8vo, Birmingham, 1882; reissued in America in 1883, and translated into German, Dresden, 1883. It is full of fallacies. *Lectures on Ectopic Pregnancy and Pelvic Haematocele*, 8vo, Birmingham, 1888.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003191
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset