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

2024-05-03T18:38:20Z

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 Durham, Herbert Edward (1866 - 1945)

2024-05-03T18:38:20Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-05-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004000-E004099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376185376185
Occupation Medical Researcher
Details Born 25 March 1866, third child and second son of Arthur Edward Durham, consulting surgeon to Guy's Hospital, and his wife Mary, daughter of William Ellis (see *DNB*), economist and founder of the Birkbeck secondary technical schools. He was thus born into a remarkable family. The only brother who, with him, survived their father, Colonel Frank Rogers Durham, after a distinguished career as a civil and military engineer, became (1926) secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society. Of his sisters, Mary Edith Durham, FRAI (1863-1944), made her name first as an artist, and later as Balkan traveller and anthropologist, and champion of Albania; another sister became Mrs Hickson and her daughter Joan Durham Hickson was the wife of W H Trethowan, FRCS; the third sister, Caroline Beatrice (who died 13 April 1941), married William Bateson, FRS, the famous geneticist, and wrote the classic life of her husband. H E Durham was educated at University College School, London, and King's College, Cambridge, of which he was Vintner exhibitioner 1885; he took first-class honours in part 1 of the Natural Sciences Tripos 1886 and a second-class in part 2, 1887. He then worked for two years as John Lucas Walker student in the University laboratories of zoology and physiology. His medical training was at Guy's, where his father was the leading surgeon, and he qualified from Cambridge in 1887. He took the Fellowship, though not previously a Member, in 1894, but did not practise surgery. He served as resident obstetric officer and assistant in the throat department at Guy's, and was Gull research student there 1894. He was also medical officer to the North Eastern Fever Hospital at Tottenham. In 1894 he went to work under Max Gruber (1853-1927) in the Hygienisches Institut at Vienna. With his master he recognized the practical potentialities for diagnosing infectious diseases available from the effect, already observed by others, of agglutination of pathogenic organisms by the serum of animals immunized against those particular organisms. Durham reported this suggestion to the Royal Society of London on 3 January 1896. But it was first applied clinically in enteric fever by Fernand Widal (1862-1929), of Paris, in June and July of the same year (*Bulletin, Société médicale des Hôpitaux de Paris*, 1896, 13, 561) and by A S F Grünbaum (afterwards Leyton) (1869-1921), of Liverpool, during September-December (*Lancet*, 1896, 2, 806 and 1747). Gruber's communication is in *Münchener medizinische Wochenschrift*, 1896, 43, 285. The reaction is variously known by the names Widal, Gruber, and Durham. In 1896 Durham served on the Royal Society's tsetse-fly commission in Africa, and the following year was appointed Grocer's Company Research Fellow at Cambridge. He reported his observation of a common group agglutinating reaction between closely allied bacteria, and also introduced the "Durham tube", the small inverted test-tube placed in bacterial media to collect gas produced by fermentative organisms (*Brit med J*. 1898, 1, 1387), which was very generally adopted. In 1900 he took to Brazil the yellow-fever expedition, sponsored by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He and his colleague, Walter Myers (1872-20 January 1901), both contracted yellow-fever, and Myers died of it at Para. The expedition's results were published as the School's *Memoir* No 7, 1902. From 1901 to 1903 Durham headed the London School of Tropical Medicine's beriberi expedition in Malaya and Christmas Island, where he lost the sight of one eye. Durham was the first to bring back to England from Malay the poisonous plant *Derris elliptica*, which came into wide use as a horticultural insecticide. He described it in J D Gimlette's *Malay poisons*, 3rd edition, 1939. He was also associated with Sir Ronald Ross in his researches on malaria. Durham was hindered by his partial loss of sight from returning to bacteriological research, and therefore readily accepted the invitation of a friend, Fred Bulmer, director of H P Bulmer and Co, cider manufacturers, at Hereford, to superintend their chemical department. The Bulmer family had long been connected with Durham's old college, King's. Durham spent thirty useful years, 1905-35, at Hereford, working on fermentation, and also did much for the improvement of fruit trees and was active in the acclimitization of new plants. He served as president of the Herefordshire Association of Fruitgrowers and Horticulturists, and was also president of the Woolhope Naturalists Club. He lived at Dunelm, Hampton Park, Hereford. In 1935 he retired to Cambridge, where he continued his active horticultural work particularly in raising rare culinary plants, of which he contributed accounts to the *Dictionary of Gastronomy*. He was, too, a draughtsman of talent and a skilled woodworker, who designed ingenious modifications of his lathe. He was a medallist of the Royal Photographic Society in 1927. He was a retiring, modest man, though of adventurous originality and much charm. Durham married on 25 September 1907 Maud Lowry, daughter of Captain Harmer, 81st Regiment. Mrs Durham survived him, but without children. He died at 14 Sedley Taylor Road, Cambridge, on 25 October 1945, aged 79, having been well and happy the previous day. He left, subject to his widow's life-interest, bequests to the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund, King's College, Cambridge, and the Schools of Tropical Medicine in London and Liverpool. His outstanding publications are mentioned above.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004002
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Medical Researcher

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

First Title value, for Searching Durham, Herbert Edward (1866 - 1945)