Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Physiologist

First Title value, for Searching Dragstedt, Lester Reynold (1893 - 1975)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-26
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006400-E006499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378635378635
Occupation Physiologist
Details Lester Reynold Dragstedt was born in Anaconda, Montana, of Swedish parents on 2 October 1893 and after his early schooling in that town he entered his medical training at the University of Chicago where he qualified in 1916. His main interest was in physiology, a subject in which he was appointed Assistant Professor in 1917, rapidly becoming an expert on gastric secretions. In 1923 he was made Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology in the North-Western University Medical School until 1925 when he joined Dr Phemister, then Professor of Surgery until 1959. Thereafter until his death he worked in Berne, Vienna and Budapest, but with his immense knowledge of physiology he became the leading figure in research and treatment of duodenal ulcer, finding that removal of the duodenum was compatible with life in 1918, isolating the hormone Lipocaic secreted by the pancreas in 1936 and establishing the value of vagotomy in 1943. He was a most successful and popular teacher, and a citation was given by Mr Norman Tanner when he received the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1964. He married in 1922 and had four children, one of whom trained as a surgeon. He died on 16 July 1975.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006452
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Ardill, Bertram Leslie (1937 - 1977)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006300-E006399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378496378496
Occupation Community medicine specialist Medical Officer Physiologist Vascular surgeon
Details Bertram Leslie Ardill was born on 5 November 1937 in Ballywalter, County Down. His father was a bank official. He was educated at the Methodist College, Belfast, and the Queen's University, where he had a distinguished academic career, obtaining the BSc with honours in physiology in 1959 and proceeding to honours MB BCh BAO in 1962. After a year as assistant lecturer in physiology he was awarded a Beit Memorial Research Scholarship in 1964 and worked in the physiology department of St Mary's Hospital Medical School for three years. During this time he published many papers on peripheral vascular surgery and proceeded MD in 1967. He returned to Northern Ireland to develop a long held interest in vascular surgery and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1970. A promising career was cut short by illness in 1973, and he decided to turn to medical administration. He became a consultant in community medicine and in 1975 was appointed administrative medical officer to the North and West Belfast District, a position he served with great ability until his untimely death on 26 September 1977.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006313
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Leathes, John Beresford (1864 - 1956)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-04-02
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005200-E005299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377390377390
Occupation Biochemist Physiologist
Details Born in London on 5 November 1864, second son of the Rev Stanley Leathes DD, he was educated at Winchester, New College and Guy's Hospital. Very soon after obtaining his FRCS he forsook a surgical career and devoted himself to the study of physiology and biochemistry. Between 1895 and 1897 he worked in Berne and Strasbourg, and in 1899 he was appointed lecturer in physiology at St Thomas's Hospital, working at the Lister Institute at the same time. In 1909 he was appointed to the chair of pathological chemistry at Toronto and in 1915 to that of physiology in Sheffield from which he retired in 1933. A man of outstanding intellect, he had taken a first in Greats before taking up medicine; he was a brilliant and stimulating teacher, and at the same time modest, kindly and approachable. His wife was a talented musician and they both did much to stimulate an interest in music at the University. He was the author of numerous papers in medical and scientific journals, and at the Royal College of Physicians was a Croonian lecturer in 1923, Harveian Orator in 1930, served on the Council 1930-32, and was an examiner 1932-36. He was an Honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford. He died at Montreux on 14 September 1956 at the age of 91.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005207
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First Title value, for Searching Barry, David Thomas (1870 - 1955)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-01-15
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/377069377069
Occupation Physiologist
Details Born in 1870 at Kildorrery, Co Cork, son of Thomas Barry, he was educated at Queen's College, Cork, a constituent of the old Royal University of Ireland. In 1900 he went into general practice in Cheshire and continued his researches in physiology at the University of Liverpool. He then went to Germany, working at Heidelberg and Berlin, and took the Fellowship in 1907. In 1907 he was appointed professor of physiology at Queen's College, Cork, whose constitution and name were changed in 1908 to University College in the new National University of Ireland. This post Barry held with distinction till 1942, when he retired at the age of 72 and was granted the title of Emeritus Professor. Besides being an excellent teacher, he produced much sound new work of his own, particularly on heart perfusion and related topics. He married Yvonne, daughter of Felix Boiret of Paris, in 1908. After the war of 1914-18 he worked at the Maritime Laboratories in Dinard. He kept more closely in touch with French scientific research than most of his British and Irish colleagues. At the end of his life Barry settled at 7 Lancaster Gate, London W2, and died in the London Clinic on 15 April 1955, aged 84, survived by his wife and their two sons. Publications (selected): On the path of conduction between auricle and ventricle in the amphibian and reptilian heart. *J Physiol* 1921, 55, 423. Mitral insufficiency. *J Physiol* 1924, 58, 362. The formation of the V wave in the venous pulse. *J Physiol* 1924, 59, 293. The functions of the great splanchnic nerves. *J Physiol* 1932, 75, 480. The course of cardiac nerve fibres in the pulmonary plexuses. *J Physiol* 1935, 84, 263.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004886
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Sikes, Alfred Walker (1869 - 1948)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-11-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004500-E004599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376776376776
Occupation General surgeon Medical Officer Physiologist
Details Born on 9 July 1869 at Ballycogley Castle, Co Wexford, the second son of Richard Cherry Sikes, of Cork, and Susannah Lecky Jacob, his wife; he was educated privately. He received his medical training at St Thomas's Hospital, where he won an entrance scholarship and the Tite and Peacock scholarships. He won gold medals at the intermediate and final MB examinations, and won the Treasurer's gold medal, the Bristowe medal, and the medal in medicine. He served as medical registrar at the Hospital in 1900. Sikes was particularly interested in physiology and made postgraduate studies at St Bartholomew's and at Marburg University. He took the Fellowship and the London MD in 1898, and in 1900 the Membership of the College of Physicians. He was for several years lecturer in physiology at King's College, Strand, and published some valuable physiological papers. He took the DSc London in 1906. Sikes became a part-time assistant medical officer in the newly formed school medical section of the public health department of the London County Council, under Dr James Kerr, in 1908; he was appointed one of the original whole-time divisional officers in 1912, and was in charge of the north-western division until his retirement in 1935. During the war of 1914-18 he was surgeon to an ambulance train in France. Sikes married in 1902 Mary Maitland, eldest daughter of Thomas Townshend Somerville, a descendent of two distinguished Co Cork families. While working in London he lived at Moat House, Langley, Bucks, but retired to Porthcurnick, Portscatho, Cornwall, where he was able to indulge his taste for gardening. He died there on 25 May 1948, aged 78, survived by his wife and one son; their other son had died before him. Mrs Sikes died at Truro on 10 May 1952. Sikes was renowned among his friends for his mordant Irish wit.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004593
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First Title value, for Searching McCarthy, Jeremiah (1836 - 1924)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-07-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002500-E002599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374776374776
Occupation General surgeon Physiologist
Details Born in Dublin, and traced his descent from the McCarthys, Kings of Kenmare. From a private day school he entered Trinity College in 1854 as a rough inconspicuous young Irishman. In 1855 he became Classical Master at the Royal School of Dungannon, where he had the future Lord Justice Collins among his pupils. Subsequently he won a scholarship and was able to graduate MA in 1863. In 1865 he entered as a student at the London Hospital and there gained a University Scholarship and a Gold Medal for Chemistry. In 1868 he was Resident House Surgeon at the Sea-Bathing Hospital, Margate; in 1869 House Surgeon at the London Hospital. Then followed his election as Assistant Surgeon, and for years he was Lecturer on Physiology, subsequently on Surgery. Early in his time at the hospital there occurred a cholera epidemic, and for his important work he received a vote of thanks with an honorarium from the Governors. In spite of roughness of manner to nurses and patients, and of sarcastic remarks to students, he was a popular teacher in the out-patient room and later in the wards. He appears to have been the original of the story that when one of his class, usually dumb, answered correctly, the lecturer raised his eyebrows sardonically and looked pointedly at him. "You seem surprised, sir," said the man. "So was Balaam on a similar occasion," was the immediate retort. At the College of Surgeons he served on the Board of Examiners in Anatomy and Physiology from 1880-1883, and as an Examiner in Physiology for the Fellowship from 1885-1889. From 1889-1899 he was a Member of the Court of Examiners, and from 1895 of the Board of Dental Examiners. Unfortunately, the slow onset of locomotor ataxia had advanced so far as to compel his resignation of the post of Surgeon in 1898, and then of the examinership. For the following twenty-six years the disease progressed, very slowly. Ten years before his death he walked from his house, 1 Cambridge Place, to the College, a distance of nearly four miles. He had in Mrs McCarthy a devoted companion, like himself Irish, an accomplished linguist, and the two read together Greek and German classics, and walked in Kensington Gardens. Their summer holidays were spent at Parknasilla, near Kenmare. His portrait is in the Council Album. Publications:- "Report on Cholera." - *London Hosp Rep* 1866, ii, 443. "Remarks on Spinal Ganglia and Nerve Fibres." - *Quart Jour Micros Sci*, 1875, NS xv, 377. "Diseases of the Testes" and "Varicocele" in Quain's *Dictionary of Medicine*. "Diseases of the Rectum", "Impotence", "Sterility", and "Tetanus" in Heath's *Dictionary of Surgery*.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002593
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Coxon, Robert Victor (1914 - 1980)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006400-E006499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378601378601
Occupation Physiologist
Details Robert Victor Coxon was born 14 November 1914 and educated at St Dunstan's College, Catford. He entered Guy's Hospital as a War Memorial Scholar in arts, qualified in 1938, and after house appointments at Guy's took both the FRCS and the MRCP in 1940. After two years as a medical registrar he joined the RAMC as a medical specialist and served for three years in India, where he investigated the therapeutics of malaria and dysentery. In India he met and married his wife, Mary, also a doctor in the RAMC. After the war he went to Oxford as Betty Brookes Fellow and worked on carbohydrate metabolism of the brain under Sir Rudolf Peters for his DPhil. He worked for a year in the USA with Van Slyke, and always retained academic contacts, especially with San Francisco, after his return to England. He was appointed reader in human physiology at Oxford in 1951, and later fellow and lecturer and then Professorial Fellow at Exeter College. He continued the interest aroused by Van Slyke, Baird Hastings and Chaikoff in his work on brain metabolism, notably on CO2 transfer using radio-active markers, on diuresis in dogs and in critical accounts of the reliability of various physical instruments in physiological use. He was a member of the General Board of Faculties for over 20 years, served on the Nuffield Committee and as Chairman of the Board of the Faculty of Medicine, and was adviser to preclinical students. He was twice acting Professor of Physiology between permanent appointments and his advice and experience were much valued on these occasions. He admitted to being conservative, even Blimpish in his views. Understandably he had little time for administrators, but his distaste for anatomists was less comprehensible. He had high standards in research, the field in which he was most liked and admired, and felt that with the increase in quantitative values in physiology he would benefit from a degree course in mathematics which he took with the Open University at the age of 60. He died suddenly on 2 June, 1980 leaving a wife, two daughters, and one son who is a doctor.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006418
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Spurrell, Walter Roworth (1966 - 1966)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-10-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006100-E006199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378288378288
Occupation Physiologist
Details Spurrell was born in Carmarthen on 24 June 1897, educated at Llandovery College and entered Guy's Hospital Medical School in 1914 at the age of 17. As soon as he was old enough he enlisted in 1915 in the Royal Field Artillery, was commissioned and went on active service till the first world war ended in 1918. Re-entering Guy's he won many prizes and took a science degree with first class honours in physiology in 1922 before proceeding to the Conjoint Diploma in 1924, the London MB BS, in which he took honours in surgery and won the gold medal, in 1925, and both the Fellowship and the MS in 1926. He was naturally modest and friendly, so that his brilliance aroused no jealousy, and he appeared set for a successful surgical career. He was a house surgeon and demonstrator of physiology, and became surgical registrar at Guy's in 1927, but within a year suffered a long and severe illness, which forced him to seek less strenuous work. He was appointed lecturer on physiology at Leeds under Professor McSwiney in 1929, but when Professor M S Pembrey retired from Guy's in 1933 Spurrell was invited back as reader in physiology. In one course he became Professor, and was ultimately Emeritus Professor and a governor of the Medical School and of the Hospital. For twenty-nine years he worked there with great success, for he was a lucid teacher and a wise counsellor, always ready to help and encourage colleagues and students; he was fully equipped as scientist and clinician, and was interested in a wide range of research. While adopting the advantages which new technology offered in recording machines and laboratory instruments, he always emphasised the value of simple observation, and manipulation. During the second world war he directed the pre-clinical departments of Guy's Medical School at Sherwood Park, Tunbridge Wells and was commanding officer of the local Home Guard. He served on the Whitley Council and on the Army Personnel Recruitment Committee, and was an active member of the Physiological Society for many years. Spurrell married in 1927 Dorothy Gwynne Griffith. He retired in 1962 and settled in Dorset, where he died on 7 June 1966, a fortnight before his sixty-ninth birthday, survived by his wife with their son and two daughters. A memorial service was held in Guy's Hospital chapel on 17 July.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006105
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Pye, Walter (1853 - 1892)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-10-17
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003000-E003099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375198375198
Occupation General surgeon Physiologist
Details The son of Kellow Pye, a well-known physician; was sent to Magdalen College School, Oxford, where he was a chorister in Magdalen College Chapel. His Magdalen College period imbued him with a love of art and literature which characterized him throughout life. After school he wandered and learnt abroad, as assistant in Professor Young's Expedition to the South of Spain, to observe the corona during an eclipse of the sun; then in China among brothers and friends he became acquainted with Manson, who aroused in him an interest which led him to become a medical student. He therefore entered St Bartholomew's Hospital and, having qualified in 1876, acted as House Physician to Dr Reginald Southey and House Surgeon to George Callender and William Savory. His articles on the "Development of the Kidney" in the *Journal of Anatomy*, 1875, ix, 272, and on the "Action of Erythrophleum guinense" (with T LAUDER BAUNTON) (*Phil Trans*, 1877, clxvii, 627), attracted much notice. The marked attention which he paid to physiology led to his appointment as Lecturer on Physiology at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, whilst recommendation from the St Bartholomew's Surgeons led to his election upon the surgical staff of St Mary's Hospital at the age of 24, a year before becoming FRCS. He was for a time Clinical Assistant at the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields. In 1878 he was appointed for a year Anatomical Assistant in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and during that period he revised the catalogue of surgical instruments, getting help from a surgeon's cutler of long experience in the firm of Messrs Weiss & Sons. Haynes Walton (qv) was much impressed by the excellence of some dissections made by Pye, and supported his advancement at St Mary's Hospital. Pye resigned his lectureship on physiology in 1879, becoming Tutor and then Lecturer on Practical Surgery. He was Surgeon to Out-patients at the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children from 1880-1891, when his health failed, and he was never elected Surgeon. His work in the College of Surgeons Museum, continued with his surgical appointments, supplied him with the means of writing the book which has perpetuated his name - *Surgical Handicraft* (208 illustrations, London, 1884), continued in many editions (8th ed, 1919) after his death. As Hunterian Professor of Surgery and Pathology at the College in 1890 he lectured on "Growth-Rates of the Body and Especially of the Limbs in their Relation to the Natural and Surgical Processes of Rectification of Deformity". This is primarily an orthopaedic subject, and Pye had developed the Orthopaedic Department at St Mary's Hospital. He also published *The Surgical Treatment of the Common Deformities of Children* (8vo, illustrated, Bristol, 1890). He was besides Surgeon to the Metropolitan Convalescent Institute and Lecturer for the London University Extension Society. At one time he was Examiner in Surgery at the University of Glasgow. He had suffered from influenza in two successive winters, and had not recovered health; preparation for his lectures at the College of Surgeons, also for the third edition of his *Handicraft*, all led up to a breakdown in September, 1890; he obtained three months' leave of absence, and went to Cairo. He returned with signs of organic nervous disease, which progressed during the following two years, and he died on Sept 2nd, 1892. One marked sign of the disease was that he entirely lost a sense of time and would come to his out-patient room at nine o'clock at night thinking that it was only one-thirty. He married but left no children; his wife survived him. He practised at 4 Sackville Street, Piccadilly, W.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003015
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Buckmaster, George Alfred (1859 - 1937)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-04-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003900-E003999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376105376105
Occupation Physiologist
Details Born at Wandsworth, London, on 7 February 1859, the second son and second child of John Charles Buckmaster, JP and Emily Ann Goodliffe, his wife. His father, who was in the Science and Art department at South Kensington, was one of the pioneers as a departmental lecturer. The family achieved a distinguished record. The eldest son was an assistant master at Magdalen College School, Oxford; the third son, Sidney, became Lord High Chancellor of England, and was created Viscount Buckmaster of Cheddington; the fourth son, C A Buckmaster, was chief inspector under the Board of Education; the fifth, Martin A Buckmaster, principal examiner under the Board of Education, was well known as an authority on architecture and as an artist. George Buckmaster was educated under his eldest brother at Magdalen College School and matriculated at the University of Oxford on 16 October 1877 as a Demy of Magdalen College. He graduated BA with first-class honours in the school of natural science in 1881, gained the Burdett Coutts university scholarship in geology in 1882, and was awarded the Radcliffe travelling Fellowship in 1883. As Radcliffe travelling Fellow he did research work in physiology in the laboratories at Leipzig, Kiel, Gottingen, and Berlin. He received his medical education at St George's Hospital where he continued his research work until 1900, when he went to India as a member of the commission appointed to investigate leprosy. In 1904 he succeeded Henry Power, FRCS as professor of physiology at the Royal Veterinary College and became assistant professor of physiology at University College, London. In 1919 he was elected professor of physiology in Bristol University in succession to Stanley Kent, and held office until 1929. He was for many years an examiner in physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons and in that capacity had visited India, New Zealand, and Australia, with William Wright, FRCS as his colleague. The secretary of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons recorded "the sorrow felt in Australia and New Zealand at his death", in a letter to the *Brit med J*. 1938, 1, 650. He married Amy Elizabeth Brooks, daughter of Charles Brooks of Milton Green, Cheshire on 14 August 1889 at Worsley Parish Church, Lancs. She survived him with a son and a daughter. He died after an attack which left him aphasic on 21 December 1937 at 6 Victoria Square, Clifton, Bristol. Buckmaster had much of the family talent and good looks. He was an excellent conversationalist, a first-rate teller of stories, and a great friend. His memory was prodigious and he had an extensive acquaintance with the general literature of his day. Scientifically he was especially interested in the morphology of the blood, more particularly in connexion with the vexed question of the origin and nature of blood platelets, and in the blood gases in anaesthesia.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003922
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First Title value, for Searching Koch, Arthur Cecil Elsley (1903 - 1969)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-08-26
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005800-E005899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378053378053
Occupation Pharmacologist Physiologist
Details Arthur Koch was born in Colombo on 20 November 1903 into a family distinguished for public service in Ceylon. He was educated at the Royal College, Colombo, and in 1922 entered the Ceylon Medical College where he had an outstanding undergraduate career, winning 5 medals in the course of study for the qualification of LMS Ceylon which he took in 1927. After several resident appointments at the General Hospital, Colombo, he became a demonstrator in physiology in the Ceylon Medical College in 1935, being promoted to assistant lecturer in physiology and pharmacology in 1940, and lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ceylon in 1945. In 1948 he came over to Oxford to work with Professor C G Douglas in the department of human physiology, and since he was precluded by University regulations from taking a DPhil he presented a thesis for the BSc and was granted this research degree. On returning to Ceylon he was appointed Reader, and in 1952 Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology. From 1954 till 1969 he acted as the local examiner in physiology for the Primary FRCS examinations held in Ceylon, and also for the Dental and Anaesthetic Primaries. For these services to the Royal College of Surgeons he was elected to the Fellowship in 1966. He retired from his Chair in 1968, and was made Emeritus Professor. This brief outline of his remarkable career, which omits the honours he received from various professional and scientific bodies, is yet sufficient to indicate why he was greatly respected by his colleagues in the Faculty of Medicine, and loved by his students. He was a great teacher, and his work was his life. That his reputation as a physiologist extended beyond his native land is shown by his election to the Physiological Society of Great Britain in 1957. It is also noteworthy that he was the first from the Far East to examine in the Primary at Queen Square, in the same year. He was interested in music, literature and the theatre, but his chief interest outside his work was in photography, and he received several awards at International Exhibitions held in Ceylon, and during the second world war built his own photographic enlarger. In 1941 he married Doris Christobel Mary, daughter of Dr A C A Fernando, and when he died on 7 August 1969 his wife and their son and daughter survived him.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005870
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First Title value, for Searching Black, Sir James Whyte (1924 - 2010)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-22 2015-12-16
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008500-E008599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380687380687
Occupation Pharmacologist Physiologist
Details Sir James Black was a leading physiologist and pharmacologist whose development of drugs to block beta receptors in the heart and histamine receptors in the gastro-intestinal tract led to a revolution in the treatment of patients with heart disease and ulcers. He was awarded a Nobel prize for his work. He was born in Fife, Scotland, one of five sons of a mining engineer and colliery manager. He was educated at Beath High School, from which he gained the Patrick Hamilton residential scholarship to study medicine at St Andrews. He graduated in 1946. He immediately entered a career in physiology and pharmacology. After junior appointments at St Andrews, where he worked under R C Garry, and in Malaya, he was appointed as senior lecturer and head of the department of physiology at the Glasgow Veterinary School, where he developed a prosperous department. At that time he worked closely with Adam Smith on the suppression of gastric secretion by serotonin and developed his ideas on the role of histamine in acid secretion, which would come to fruition later in his career. In 1958, he joined the Imperial Chemical Industries' (ICI) department of animal physiology at Alderley Edge, where he studied catecholamine receptors, and identified the existence of beta receptors on heart muscle cells to which the stress hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline bind. He developed beta blocker drugs to suppress the action of the receptors. In 1964 he was appointed head of biological research at Smith Kline and French, where he produced drugs to block H2 receptors and control acid secretion in the gastro-intestinal tract. He returned to academic life as Professor of Pharmacology at University College, London, in 1973, and continued his work on receptors. He was appointed director of therapeutic research at the Wellcome Research Laboratories in 1978, a post he occupied for six years, before returning to academic pharmacology as Professor of Analytical Pharmacology at the Rayne Institute, King's College of Medicine in London. He retired in 1989. Sir James returned to Scotland, being appointed chancellor of the University of Dundee in 1991. Among innumerable awards and medals, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976. He was knighted in 1981 and was awarded the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 1988, sharing the prize with Gertrude B Elion and George H Hitchings. He met Hilary Vaughan at a student ball and they married in 1946. She predeceased him in 1986. They had one daughter, Stephanie. He married Rona Mackie in 1994. Sir James died on 21 March 2010.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008504
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Yeo, Gerald Francis (1845 - 1909)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-03-06
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/375854375854
Occupation General surgeon Physiologist
Details Born in Dublin on January 19th, 1845, the second son of Henry Yeo, of Ceanchor, Howth, JP, clerk of the rules, Court of Exchequer, by his wife Jane, daughter of Captain Ferns. Educated at the Royal School, Dungannon, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated Moderator in natural science 1866, proceeding MB and MCh in 1867. He gained the Gold Medal of the Dublin Pathological Society in 1868 with an essay on renal disease. He then studied for a year in Paris, a year in Vienna, and a year in Leipzig and Berlin, took the MD at the University of Dublin in 1871 and the LRCSI in the following year. He first acted as Demonstrator of Anatomy at Trinity College, Dublin, and then taught physiology in the Carmichael School of Medicine in Dublin from 1872-1874. In 1877 he was appointed Professor of Physiology at King's College, London, and Assistant Surgeon to the Hospital. Here he did excellent work in conjunction with Sir David Ferrier - then Professor of Neuropathology - on the cerebral localization in monkeys. The experiments were done using the antiseptic measures of Lister, and were in that respect an advance in cerebral surgery. They were later noted by Victor Horsley (qv). Yeo was elected in 1889 a FRS. He resigned his chair in 1890 and received the title of Emeritus Professor. At the Royal College of Surgeons Yeo was Arris and Gale Lecturer on Anatomy and Physiology, 1880-1882; a Member of the Examining Board of Anatomy and Physiology for the Fellowship, 1884-1885 and 1887-1892; and a Member of the Examining Board in England, 1884-1885. The subjects of his Arris and Gale Lectures were: (1) "Application of the Graphic Method to the Study of Muscle Contraction", and (2) "Relation of Experimental Physiology to Practical Medicine". He retired to Totnes, Devonshire, in 1889, and later to Fowey, where, having a competence, he devoted himself to yachting, fishing, and gardening. He married: (1) In 1878 Charlotte, only daughter of Isaac Kitchin, of Rock Ferry, Cheshire, who died in 1884 without issue; (2) In 1886 Augusta Frances, second daughter of Edward Hunt, of Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, and by her had one son. He died at Austin's Close, Harbertonford, Devonshire, on May 1st, 1909. Yeo was a fluent speaker with a rich brogue, good-natured, impetuous, generous, and full of common sense. Although he was appointed Assistant Surgeon to King's College Hospital, he never took the duties seriously, for his whole interests were centred in the physiological laboratory. He was an experimentalist and acknowledged Karl Ludwig as his master. In conjunction with Professor Krönecker, of Berne, he inaugurated the international physiological congresses which were held triennially, the first meeting being in Berne in 1891. He did good service to English physiologists by founding the Physiological Society in March, 1876. It was at first a dining club with a carefully chosen and limited membership, Yeo being the Secretary. He conducted the affairs with tact and energy until his resignation in 1889, when he was presented with a valuable souvenir of plate. A small woodcut, which is a good likeness, is inserted in the Supplement to the *Journal of Physiology* for December, 1927, p 32. Publication: *Manual of Physiology for the Use of Students of Medicine*, London, 8vo, 1884; 2nd ed, 1887. It was a useful and popular text-book.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003671
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Slome, David (1906 - 1995)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-02
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008300-E008399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380535380535
Occupation Physiologist
Details David Slome was born in the village of Maitland, near Cape Town, on 24 November 1906, the second eldest of the nine children of East European immigrants. His father had interests in the hotel trade and the canning industry, and this entailed frequent moves, so that David changed school several times, but always excelled. He matriculated at 15 and won an entrance scholarship to the University of Cape Town. He started reading law, following in the footsteps of his elder brother, but soon changed to study medicine. He went on to win both the first and second year medical scholarships, and the graduated BA with medals in anatomy, physiology, zoology and pharmacology. This was the beginning of an outstanding academic career. During the next two years as senior demonstrator in the department of anatomy he began his long and productive research in anatomy and anthropology, graduating MA in anatomy with distinction and being awarded a further scholarship. In 1930 his experimental work with Lancelot Hogben on the chromatic function of the *xenopus* toad gained him a PhD with distinction. After clinical studies at Groote Schuur Hospital he qualified MB ChB in 1931 with honours and distinctions, gaining medals in pathology, public health, surgery, medicine and obstetrics and gynaecology. He won the gold medal and scholarship for the most distinguished medical graduate of the year, and also the coveted 1851 Science Research Exhibition of South Africa, a prize which commemorated the Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1931 Hogben moved to London and invited Slome to join him at the London School of Economics. He had brought some *xenopus* toads with him, whose descendants were used for the first pregnancy tests in the UK. In March 1933 Slome took the primary FRCS examination, won the Hallett Prize and was awarded the Leverhulme Research Scholarship. Between 1936 and 1939 he was a demonstrator in physiology at St Bartholomew's Hospital and held a research scholarship at the College which he spent working at the Buckston Browne Surgical Research Farm. In 1937 he gave an Arris and Gale lecture entitled *The Nervous Factor in Traumatic Shock*. Much of his research at this time was with Laurence O'Shaugnessy, a cardiothoracic surgeon who did much pioneering work in open chest surgery, and David assisted him in operations at Lewisham Hospital. His publications during this period reflect his main interests at the time - aetiology of traumatic shock, revascularisation of the myocardium and the use of haemoglobin solution as a substitute for blood. In 1939 he was commissioned captain in the RAMC, and spent the war years training ambulance crews in Leeds. Subsequently he returned to the Middlesex Hospital as lecturer, and later reader, in physiology, and at the request of Professor Samson Wright helped to coach the many Australian postgraduates there. This was the beginning of a phenomenal career in teaching. Until 1950 he had intended to return to Cape town, but was appointed to the new chair in applied physiology at the College in charge of research at the Buckston Browne Farm, which he held until his retirement in 1975. With the formation of the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the College in 1954, David became head of the department of physiology, and in 1970 was appointed Gresham Professor of Physic at the City University. He never sat the final FRCS but was awarded a Fellowship by election in 1962 by Sir Arthur Porritt and in 1969 an honorary Fellowship of the Faculty of Anaesthetists. Under Slome's direction, research at the Buckston Browne Farm was mainly involved with wound healing, the physiology of joints, dental research, the effects on renal function of the absorption of urine from the bowel mucosa, the viscosity of blood and the erythrocyte sedimentation rate. It was David's help and encouragement that enabled the young Roy Calne to show that transplant rejection could be controlled by a pharmacological agent. David, his wife Betty and their daughter Liz lived at the Farm from 1953 to 1968. In 1970, together with Earl Owen (who later became President of the International College of Surgeons) David introduced the novel idea of a surgical workshop, the first one being on microsurgery. On retirement from the College in 1975 he was elected Emeritus Professor. David's aim was always to inspire interest in physiology and to get students through their examinations. Around 1952 he realised that there were prospective surgeons in the UK who could not take time off for full-time courses at the College, so with Frank Stansfield he offered evening classes, initially at Frank's house. Their popularity led to the expansion of these courses after David's retirement to cope with 100 students at a time. His outstanding skills as a teacher will long be remembered with gratitude by the thousands whom he launched on their surgical careers. He died on 4 June 1995, his wife having pre-deceased him in 1984. He left one married daughter, Liz Beckman, who graduated in electrical engineering and has devoted much of her professional work to the field of radiology.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008352
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Bazett, Henry Cuthbert (1885 - 1950)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-04-10
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003800-E003899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376006376006
Occupation General surgeon Physiologist
Details Born at Gravesend, Kent, on 25 June 1885, the third child and only son of Henry Bazett, MRCS and his wife Eliza Ann Cruickshank. He was educated at Dover College and at Wadham College, Oxford. He took his clinical training at St Thomas's Hospital, where he served as demonstrator of physiology in 1910, and in the following year as house surgeon, casualty officer, and clinical assistant in the throat and ear department. This year, 1911, he took the Fellowship five months after passing the Conjoint board. He now won the Radcliffe travelling Fellowship for 1912-15, which took him to Harvard for a year. But on the outbreak of war in August 1914 he immediately joined the RAMC and served in France till the end of the war in November 1918. In 1912 he had been elected a Fellow of Magdalen till 1920, and was appointed demonstrator of pathology at Oxford for 1913-15. He was utterly fearless but never reckless in war or in peace, and was endowed with complete moral and physical courage. During the retreat from Mons in autumn 1914 he served with a field ambulance, and thereafter was a battalion medical officer in front of Ypres. He was three times mentioned in despatches, won the Military Cross, and was created an OBE. He returned to Oxford as Christopher Welch lecturer in clinical physiology 1919-21, and was already interested in aviation problems and high-altitude physiology, a subject which only came fully forward twenty years later in the second world war. He took the Oxford doctorate in 1920. Bazett became professor of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1921, and held the chair till his death. Although he thus made his home in America for the second half of his life, he retained his British citizenship and loyalty, while entering fully into the circle of American academic medicine. His main interest was in the application of physiological research to clinical problems. He perfected an exact technique for studying temperature changes in circulating blood, and showed the importance of the venal comites in the pre-cooling of the arterial blood by the returning venous blood. When war began again he was given leave of absence from Philadelphia to devote himself to work for Canada and Britain. After the tragic death of Sir Frederick Banting, FRCS, in 1941, Bazett was visiting professor of medical research at the University of Toronto 1941-43 in charge of aviation research. He served on the clothing sub-committee of the American National Research Council's committee on aviation medicine 1943-45, was consultant to the quartermaster-general of the American Army 1943-44, and in 1943 worked in England with the Canadian staff of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. During these years he was an extra member of the Medical Research Council, working also for the Admiralty, and being sent on a commission of investigation to India in 1944. He was promoted CBE in 1946. After the war he returned to his chair at Philadelphia, and in 1950 was president-elect of the American Physiological Society. Bazett died on board the liner *Queen Mary*, bound for Southampton, on 12 July 1950, aged 65, and was buried at Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, after service at St Peter's in the East, Oxford. He married in 1917 Dorothy Rufford Livesey, who survived him with their son and daughter. They lived at 629 Haydock Lane, Haverford, Pennsylvania. Bazett was a remarkable man not only by his intellectual attainments, but by his sincere and delightful character. He had an enthusiasm for the young and for new ideas, and was a stimulating talker teeming with fresh ideas; witty, wise, and courageous. Bazett undertook many heroic experiments upon himself; he was a skilled painter and model-maker; enjoyed swimming and horse-riding, car-driving and travel. Publications: Shock and haemorrhage, in Barling and Morison's *Manual of war surgery*, 1919. Circulation, in Macleod's *Physiology in modern medicine*, 8th edition, 1937.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003823
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Keeling, James Hurd (1832 - 1909)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-05-31
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002400-E002499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374598374598
Occupation General surgeon Obstetrician and gynaecologist Physiologist
Details Born in Malta, the son of the Rev John Keeling, a well-known Wesleyan minister at that time residing in the island. He returned to England with his family and was sent to the Wesleyan School at Woodhouse Grove, near Leeds. He entered the University of Edinburgh in 1848, and after graduating MD pursued his medical studies in London, Paris and Vienna. He became an assistant to George Bower Thorpe (qv), of Staveley, but on the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 he went out as Surgeon to the second regiment of the Turkish contingent. For his services he was awarded the decoration of Officer of the Order of the Medjidie. He returned to Staveley and in 1858 settled at Sheffield, acquiring the practice of Joseph Cheetham at Crow Tree House, Broomhall Street, then a country house in a big garden. He lived here with his sister till he removed in a few years' time to Glossop Road. In 1858, while at Staveley, he applied unsuccessfully for the post of House Surgeon at the then Sheffield General Infirmary. In 1860 he became Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence at the Sheffield Medical School, and thus began "an association with the teaching of Medicine in Sheffield which lasted nearly forty years. When he accepted this office he made the stipulation that toxicology should be taught by a chemist, and Dr Allen accordingly undertook this part of the subject." In 1862 Keeling was elected Surgeon to the Public Hospital and Dispensary, now the Royal Hospital, Sheffield, and retained office for twenty-five years, when he became Consulting Surgeon. In 1864 Keeling was appointed Lecturer on Physiology in the Medical School, of which the affairs were then so far from satisfactory that it had been proposed to close it. Partly owing to his efforts it became possible to reconstruct the school in 1865. Resigning his physiology lectureship, he was then appointed Lecturer on Midwifery and the Diseases of Women in conjunction with Dr James H Aveling. He held this post for thirty-two years. Keeling, Aveling, and Edward Jackson were the first appointed Medical Officers of the Hospital for Women, founded in 1864. Later the Jessop Hospital for Women was erected through the generosity of Thomas Jessop. Keeling was deeply interested in this hospital, subscribing largely to its funds, and obtaining further substantial sums which were required for its extension in 1902. "The position attained by the Jessop Hospital as one of the leading medical charities of Sheffield was largely due to his efforts, and when he retired in 1906 the board elected him Honorary Consulting Medical Officer, and placed on record its high appreciation of his valuable and disinterested work. It was proposed to present him with a testimonial on this occasion on behalf of his colleagues, but he characteristically vetoed the gracious suggestion. "Reserved in disposition, Keeling delighted to do good by stealth and to labour for others in secret. It is recorded how at hospital meetings he was noted for the rebukes he administered to local orators who 'indulged in too much flattery about his own and other medical men's services' to the medical institutions. In a speech to the Jessop Hospital governors in 1898 he is reported to have said 'that doctors serve on the honorary staffs of hospitals simply and solely for the personal benefit they can derive thereby…that the patients also simply attend hospitals for what selfish benefit they can get, and that the rich keep up hospitals principally at the dictation of an enlightened self-interest which tells them that it is the best way of securing good doctors for themselves when ill, and in some small degree for the satisfaction, also selfish, which comes by being benevolent'. For all this seeming cynicism he was one of the most generous of men, and long after his official connection with the Medical School of Sheffield had ceased, he continued to take a keen interest in its welfare. It was he who under the veil of 'A Sheffield Citizen' equipped at a very considerable cost a new pathological department, and his contributions to the building and endowment fund of the University were most generous." He was the Hon Local Secretary in association with A Jackson at the Sheffield Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1876. He was for many years active in the work of the Sheffield Medical Society, and contributed many papers to it, though he does not appear to have published any. He was able, experienced, and well versed in the literature of his profession. He practised for a very long period at 267 Glossop Road, and, after some years of failing health, died there on March 14th or 15th, 1909.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002415
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Washbourn, John Wickenford (1863 - 1902)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-01-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003400-E003499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375617375617
Occupation Pathologist Physician Physiologist
Details Born at Gloucester in 1863, son of William Washbourn, a descendant of Sir Roger Washbourn, of Knight's Washbourn (*temp* 1370), went to King's College, Gloucester, then studied at Guy's Hospital, winning the Entrance Scholarship in 1881 and greatly distinguishing himself as well by taking prizes at the Hospital as by the scholarships and medals he won at the University. After his resident appointment he worked under von Baumgarten at Königsberg and Grüber in Vienna on bacteriology and bacteriotherapy. On his return in 1889 he was appointed Assistant Physician at Guy's Hospital, where he initiated the Department of Bacteriology. In 1891 he became Joint Lecturer on Physiology, and Lecturer on Bacteriology in 1892, Physician to the London Fever Hospital in 1897, and Physician to Guy's Hospital. Commenced in Germany, Washbourn carried on up to the time of his death researches on the pneumnococcus in relation to pneumonia, the varieties and life history of the Diplococcus pneumoniae, with an estimation of the virulence of the various strains. He sought to obtain from horses an antipneumonic serum, potent enough to influence cases of acute pneumonia, and he recorded his results in the *British Medical Journal* (1897, i, 510; ii, 1849). He studied the clinical applications of antidiphtheritic serum and published his observations in conjunction with Drs E W Goodall and J H Card. In 1897 he investigated the Maidstone typhoid epidemic and found the source of contamination in the water from the Tutsham-in-Field spring. With G Bellingham Smith he investigated the infective sarcomata of dogs in 1898. In February, 1900, Washbourn went out as Consulting Physician to the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital in South Africa, and served for sixteen months, first at Deelfontein, then in Pretoria. He organized the medical work of the Hospital with great success, was gazetted Consulting Physician to the Forces and made a CMG. Soon after his return, when President of the Section of Pathology and Bacteriology at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, he took as the subject of his opening address "Some Pathological Notes from South Africa" and related "Observations on Infective Diseases Prevalent in the South African Army" (*Brit Med Jour*, 1901, ii, 699). He had acted as Examiner in Physiology for the Royal College of Physicians, and he was appointed Croonian Lecturer for 1902. He devoted the winter of 1901-1902 to the preparation of the subject of his lectures, "The Natural History and Pathology of Pneumonia". The lectures were delivered from his notes by Sir William Hale-White after Washbourn's death, and included a survey of the subject, the varieties and virulence of the coccus, the modes of its growth, and the preparation of an antipneumonic serum. He had carried out with Dr M S Pembrey a series of experiments on the channels taken by dust inhaled into the lungs. Washbourn had an infinite capacity for taking pains, a keenly critical appreciation of the relative value of his results, tempered with a scepticism which refused to accept the apparently obvious until after an accumulation of confirmatory evidence. As a teacher he was luminous, and at Guy's Hospital made his mark in the physiological and bacteriological departments and generally by his powers of organization. He was popular alike with his colleagues and with students, interested in sports and amusements, himself a good tennis player and skater. He combined a fair controversialist in a staunch friend and a strong partisan. At the time of his death he was Hon Secretary of the Epidemiological Society and of the Metropolitan Counties Branch of the British Medical Association. He had suffered in South Africa from dysentery complicated by thrombosis. After the winter's work, including the preparation of his Croonian Lectures, he had an attack of influenza. After partial recovery he again fell into ill health, and was removed for a change of air to Tunbridge Wells. There miliary fever was diagnosed, and he died on June 20th, 1902. He married in April, 1893, Nellie Florence, daughter of William Freeland Card, of Greenwich Hospital School; she died after giving birth to a daughter, who survived her father. Good portraits accompany his obituary in the *British Medical Journal* (1902, i, 1627; 85). A portrait is also included in Wale's *List of Books by Guy's Men* (1913, 65). Eulogies were pronounced by many, including one by Alfred Willett, President of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society (*Trans Med-Chir Soc*, 1903, lxxxvi, p. cxvii), and by Dr E W Goodall (*Trans Epidemiol Soc*, 1901-2, xxi, 151). Publication: *A Manual of Infectious Diseases* (with E W Gooneys), 8vo, London, 1896; 2nd ed, 1908.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003434
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Rack, Peter Michael Horsman (1928 - 1994)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-01
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008200-E008299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380472380472
Occupation Neurosurgeon Physiologist
Details Peter Rack was born in Grimsby of Quaker stock on 27 October 1928. His father, Ralph Skinner Rack, was a chemical engineer, and his mother Elsie, née Horsman, was a marine biologist. His early education was at Society of Friends Schools in Wigton, Ackworth and Bootham between 1936 and 1946, following which he went up to Clare College, Cambridge, to read medicine, taking his BA in 1949 and graduating in 1952. While at medical school he won the Anderson prize in 1949. After a period as house physician at the London Hospital, he spent two years doing his National Service with the RAMC between 1954 and 1956. During that time he decided that surgery was where his future lay and from 1956 he set about learning the necessary skills in periods at various hospitals, gaining his FRCS in 1959. It was then that an interest in neuroscience began to emerge and as a junior doctor he worked with three of the leading neurosurgeons of the day - Douglas Northfield at the London, Walpole Lewin in the Army Head Injuries Unit and Brodie Hughes at Birmingham. He had been a registrar in Cardiff but it was as senior registrar at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, that the time came that most influenced the direction of his career. The group in Birmingham, under the direction of Professor Brodie Hughes, was pioneering the use of surgical techniques to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease. Rack was struck by the lack of physiological knowledge regarding the way the brain controlled muscles and movements. He then spent six months in Oslo with Professor Jan Jansen conducting physiological experiments and possibly building on his experiences as a Part II student in the neurophysiological heyday of the Cambridge department of physiology. His experiments showed for the first time how, by using precisely quantified and applied movements, the control of muscles was modified by the brain. It was at the age of 37, on the threshold of a highly promising career as a consultant neurosurgeon, that he took a major step which was highly unusual, becoming a lecturer in the department of physiology in the Medical School at Birmingham in 1965. In 1975 he was made reader in experimental neurology and in 1983 his distinction in research and teaching led to the award of a personal chair. He retired in 1992. In 1972 he had been awarded a Royal Society Travelling Fellowship, enabling him to take a sabbatical year of studying at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Here he worked with Professor Robert Porter, studying the way the brain responded to unexpected movements, the measurement of the physical properties of muscles and tendons and the nervous control of muscles. All this provided a key insight into the origin of tremor in both normal and in Parkinson's Disease patients. Remarkably, he had the skill to construct precision machinery when this was not available to make the necessary measurements, and his manual skill was further put to good use in one of his hobbies, which was the making of beautiful furniture and clavichords to a professional standard. He was also a keen amateur flautist. A keen mountaineer, in the 1950s he was one of a British group which began to climb the harder Alpine routes, and he climbed intensively in the British Isles and in the Alps up to the highest standard of the time. He was a member of the Climbers' Club and he and his family spent much time in the Lake District. It was through his love of music that he came to meet Brenda, whom he married in 1956. She survives him, together with their four daughters - Mary, an anthropologist, Jane, a nurse, Lucy, a social administrator and Eleanor, a computer consultant. Peter Rack was killed in a climbing accident in the Lake District on 18 July 1994. There is a list of 39 publications with which he was associated, mainly on neuroscience subjects.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008289
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Lowne, Benjamin Thompson (1839 - 1925)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-07-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002500-E002599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374756374756
Occupation Botanist Ophthalmic surgeon Physiologist
Details The son of Benjamin Thompson Lowne, who practised at 17 Bartlett's Buildings, BC. He was educated at St Bartholomew's Hospital, assisted his father for some years after qualifying, and then entered the Navy as Assistant Surgeon, but resigned before 1867. In January, 1864, he received a grant from the Royal Society, travelled in Palestine with the Rev H B Tristram, and published a paper on the Flora of the South of the Dead Sea. He had already published in 1861 a paper on "The Natural History of Great Yarmouth". In 1867 he was living in Hatton House, Hatton Gardens, was Surgeon to the Foresters' Club, and was working upon the anatomy of the blow-fly, issuing a monograph on the subject in 1870. He was living in Colville Gardens in 1873 when he gained an Actonian Prize awarded by the Royal Institution with an essay on "The Philosophy of Evolution". He was appointed Lecturer on Physiology and General Anatomy at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in 1871 in succession to Sir David Ferrier, and resigned in 1895. In October, 1874, he was elected Junior Surgeon to the Great Northern Hospital, a post he exchanged in 1876 for that of Ophthalmic Surgeon. About this time, too, he had become President of the Quekett Microscopical Society and had published a *Student's Guide to Physiology*. At the Royal Veterinary College in Camden Town, Lowne was appointed Lecturer on Botany in 1885 in succession to E S Shave, and he also lectured on helminthology in succession to Dr Spencer Cobbold until February, 1888. He had applied to be appointed Lecturer on Physiology in 1881 when Henry Power (qv) was invited to take the post. At the Royal College of Surgeons he edited the *Teratological Catalogue* of the Museum in 1872. He was Arris and Gale Lecturer on Anatomy and Physiology from 1876-1880, taking as his subjects "Teratology", "The Physiology of Nerve Stimulation", "The Physiology of Sensation", and "The Development of Sensory Organs". He gave the Hunterian Lectures from 1890-1893 on "The Embryology and After-development of Insects"; "The Structure and Development of the Skeleton of the Head, the Nervous System and Sensory Organs of Insects in Relation to Recent Views on the Origin of Vertebrates, and Some Recent Views on the Development of the Embryo"; and "The Relation of the Parablast to the Blastoderm as exemplified in the Development of Insects in the Egg and Pupa"; and finally "Respiration and Circulation in some Invertebrates". He was a Member of the Board of Examiners in Anatomy and Physiology, 1879-1883, of the Board of Examiners for the Fellowship 1886-1896, and of the Examining Board in England from 1887-1892. About 1896 he left London and was appointed Medical Officer of the Crondall District of the Hartley Wintney Union, but shortly afterwards moved to 7, Modena Road, Hove, and finally to 34 Portland Road, Hove, where he died in obscurity on February 8th, 1925, the news of his death not being received at the College until four years later. His wife died many years before him. Lowne was wholly unsuited for the position allotted to him in life, but would have done admirable work as a student and life-long investigator in a biological or physiological institute. Mean-looking, with a shaggy beard, a raucous voice, and an inability to pronounce the letter 'r', he could not maintain order in his lecture-room, or hold his own against a class of medical or veterinary students. As an examiner he was just and painstaking, but often failed to make the examinee understand the question he was asking. In general practice he was equally lacking in the qualities which make for success, as he often appeared unsympathetic and was inclined to argue. He had a vast fund of general knowledge, indomitable patience, and was a master in minute dissection, as is shown in his classic work on the blow-fly. He was, too, a skilful draughtsman and drew his illustrations directly on the copper plate. He was a loyal friend and was ever ready to acknowledge his debt to fellow-workers. Publications: *Natural History of Great Yarmouth*, 1861. "On the Vegetation of the Western and Southern Shores of the Dead Sea." - *Jour Linnean Soc* (Botany), 1867, NS ix, 201 *The Anatomy and Physiology of the Blow Fly*, 8vo, illustrated, 10 plates, London, 1870, John van Voorst, of Paternoster Row. This was elaborated and appeared as *The Anatomy, Physiology, Morphology and Development of the Blow Fly*, 2 vols, London, 1890-2 and 1893-5, published for the author by R H Porter, 15 Princes Street, Cavendish Square, W. *The Philosophy of Evolution: An Actonian Prize Essay*, 8vo, 1873. *A Sketch of Scientific Medicine, being the introductory lecture delivered at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School*, Oct 1st, 1875, 8vo, London, 1875. *A Manual of Ophthalmic Surgery*, 12mo, plates, London, 1876. "Some Phenomena of Vision." - *Proc Roy Soc*, 1876, xxv, 487. "On the Relation of Light to Sensation." - *Jour Anat and Physiol*, 1877, xi, 706. "Modifications of the Simple and Compound Eyes of Insects." - *Phil Trans*, 1878, clxix, 577; *Proc Roy Soc*, 1878, xxvii, 261. "Physiology of Arthropod Vision." - *Trans Linnean Soc*, 1884, 2nd ser. (Zoology), 389. *Teratological Catalogue of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England*, 1872 and 1893. *Aids to Physiology*, 1884. A full bibliography of Lowne's works appears in the *Catalogue of Scientific Papers* published by the Royal Society, 1879, viii; 1894, x; and 1918, xvi.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002573
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Amoroso, Emmanuel Ciprian (1901 - 1982)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-10-31
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/378435378435
Occupation Physiologist
Details Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad on 16 September 1901, Emmanuel Ciprian Amoroso was the third oldest of twelve children. He came from an exemplary Roman Catholic family. His father, Thomas Amoroso, had been a book-keeper on an estate in Trinidad and later owned estates of his own, until a slump in the cocoa market caused many estates to fail. Thomas Amoroso then returned to book-keeping. Thomas' wife, Juliana Centeno, was of Venezuelan (Spanish) descent, a small charismatic woman to whom Amo, as he became known, was deeply devoted. He was educated at St Thomas's Preparatory School and St Mary's College, Trinidad. He had to leave school early because of a severe attack of typhoid fever that temporarily affected his vision and although one eye recovered, the other was permanently damaged. Amo enrolled in University College of the National University of Ireland in 1921. He was awarded 1st class honours and came first in all of the examinations in science and medicine. He graduated BSc with honours in anatomy in 1926 and MB BCh BAO cum laude, in 1929. After resident appointments at Jervis Street Hospital, Dublin, he was awarded a travelling studentship for his thesis entitled *Myelination of the cranial nerves of the pig* and he went to the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Zellforschung in Berlin, where he learned histological techniques and tissue culture methods under Professors Trendelenberg, Krause and Erdmann. In 1933 he became demonstrator in histology and embryology at University College, London and he was awarded his PhD in 1934 for his work *Observations on the development of the urogenital system of the rabbit, with special reference to the development of the Müllerian ducts*. He became senior assistant in charge of histology and embryology at the Royal Veterinary College, Camden Town in October 1934, but his first years there were not happy as his intelligence, commanding presence and brilliance as a teacher aroused great envy among his colleagues. In 1936 he married but his wife left him soon afterwards and, because of his beliefs he could not divorce her. On the outbreak of war in 1939, the Royal Veterinary College was evacuated to the University of Reading and Amo had a Nissen hut as his laboratory. He took 'digs' with Mrs Howes, the housekeeper at the University Halls. Mrs Howes' husband had died in 1934 leaving her with three children and Amo became a second father to them. One of the girls, May, was later to type his work for him and Kay, her sister, was his lifelong friend and confidante. When the Royal Veterinary College returned to London after the war, his research career flourished. He had collaborated with A E Barclay, K J Franklin and M L Prichard in their studies on the foetal circulation, during the war years, and with S J Folley, FRS, and A S Parkes, FRS, at Reading and Mill Hill. In 1947 he became a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and in 1948, Professor of Physiology in the Royal Veterinary College, a post he held until his retirement in 1968. He was a founder member of the Society of Endocrinology and was later treasurer and Chairman from 1961 to 1966. During his chairmanship, the Society was host to the Second International Congress of Endocrinology, in London in 1964, and his great organising ability led to his election to the Chairmanship of the Executive Committee of the International Society of Endocrinology from 1964 to 1967, in preparation for the Congress later held in Washington, DC. His greatest scientific achievement was the publication in 1952, of his masterly article on placentation in Marshall's *Physiology of reproduction*. It was this publication that made his international reputation and led to his election as Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1957. He was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in England in 1960 and became Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1965, of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1966, and of the Royal College of Pathologists in 1973. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons made him an honorary associate in 1959. He became a Fellow of the Institute of Biology in 1957, of the Royal Veterinary College in 1969, and of University College, London in 1970. He was awarded an honorary DSc, National University of Ireland, at a ceremony in Dublin Castle in 1963, on the occasion when one of the other recipients was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States of America. He was made honorary DSc by the University of Illinois 1967, the University of Nottingham 1970, the University of the West Indies 1971 and the University of Guelph, Ontario, in 1976. An honorary Doctorate of Veterinary Science was conferred by the University of Chile in 1966. 'Amo' was a big man in every way, physically, and intellectually, he was head and shoulders above his companions, but dominating all was his great sense of fun, he enjoyed life to the full. His sense of humour was exemplified by an account of an invitation to dinner with a rich widow in New York, with Professors Wislocki and Dempsey, two anatomists who hoped to obtain funds for their research. The lady was carving a turkey when she asked Amo which type of meat he liked. His reply 'breast please' shocked her and she gently advised him that one should refer to white meat or dark meat. On the eve of his return to England, he sent the lady a beautiful orchid, expressing the hope that she would pin it to her white meat in honour of the occasion. He died on 30 October 1982 and a memorial Mass was held at the church of St Anselm and St Cecilia in London. Lord Zuckerman, OM KCB FRS, representing the Duke of Edinburgh, Patron of the Royal Veterinary College, delivered the memorial address.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006252
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Thompson, Sir William Henry (1860 - 1918)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-12-20 2013-08-12
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003200-E003299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375445375445
Occupation Physiologist
Details Born in Granard, Co Longford, and was educated at the Dundalk Institution, whence he passed on to Galway College in 1879, where he carried off all the available scholarships in mathematics and medicine, finally graduating with the highest honours and a 1st class exhibition in the Royal University of Ireland in 1883. Subsequently he was appointed a Demonstrator of Anatomy in Trinity College, Dublin, was engaged for four years in private teaching, and thought of practising surgery. Taking up the study of physiology, he held the chair of Dunville Professor of Physiology in Queen's College, Belfast, from 1893-1902, and was made a Member of the Physiological Society January 20th, 1894. In 1902 he was elected to the chair of the Institutes of Medicine in the School of Physic, Trinity College, Dublin, and continued to hold this position to the time of his death. His outlook had been widened by a long course of post-graduate study at Galway, Dublin, London, Leipzig, Paris, Marburg, Heidelberg, and under Pavlov at St Petersburg. His studies had been concerned with food metabolism and nutrition, and to these subjects he accordingly devoted himself at Trinity College. He was an honorary member of the Imperial Military Academy of Medicine, St Petersburg. Soon after the outbreak of the European War, having made provision for the discharge of his duties in Trinity College by the appointment of a substitute, he offered his services and took up asylum work in Scotland in order to set free a medical practitioner of military age. Later on he was brought to London as scientific adviser to the Ministry of Food. In this capacity his knowledge of food values and the experiments he carried out in connection therewith helped him to give advice of great national importance to the Food Controller in the drafting of schemes for rationing the food of the nation. In recognition of his services the King decorated him in January, 1918, a Knight Commander of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. In 1902 he was appointed Examiner in Physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons, and held office for many years. In 1914 he resigned the Fellowship of the College, writing to the Council on October 20th to say that he resigned "in consequence of his having been elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, and thereby having become subject to a by-law of that College forbidding him to be a Fellow of any College of Surgeons." At the same time he enclosed a cheque for ten guineas, the amount of the fee payable by a Fellow on resignation in accordance with Section XVIII of the by-laws. At their meeting on Thursday, November 12th, 1914, the Council resolved to accept the resignation, which, so far as we know, is unique in the annals of the Fellowship, and to deliver to him an "Instrument declaratory of his having ceased to be a Fellow of the College". Early in 1916 he read a paper before the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, in which he gave a detailed survey of the food-supply of Great Britain on the lines of the Eltzbacher report brought out in Germany a year earlier. Sir William Thompson met with an unusual death. The news of the sinking of the *Leinster* by a submarine in the Irish Sea reached Dublin, on October 9th, 1918, and considerable anxiety was felt for the safety of Thompson, who was one of three medical men on board. He had dined at Commons in Trinity College on the evening preceding the disaster; and had stated that it was his intention to sleep on board the mail boat that night and cross to London on the following day. About a fortnight later it became known that he had gone down with the ship, and that at the time of the disaster he had probably not left his berth and had no means of escape. He was survived by Lady Thompson - who was the eldest daughter of Professor Peter Redfern (qv), whom he had married in 1894 - a son and four daughters. His Dublin addresses were at 14 Hatch Street, and Trinity College. Publications: Thompson contributed numerous papers on physiological subjects to the medical journals. Translation of Pavlov's *The Work of the Digestive Glands*, 8vo, illustrated, London, 1902; 2nd ed, with bibliography, 1910. "Descending Degenerations from Lesions of the Superior Temporal Convolution in a Monkey." - *Brit Med Jour*, 1892, i, 817. "Descending Degenerations from Lesions of the Occipital Lobe" (with Dr C Shaw). - *Ibid*, 1896, ii, 630. "Anaesthetic and Renal Activity." - *Ibid*, 1906, i, 608, etc. "Die Vaso-motorischen Nerven der Glieder Venen." - *His u du Bois-Reymonds Arch*, 1893, Phys Abth, 102. "Nature of the Work of the Kidney, as shown by the Influence of Atropine and Morphine upon the Secretion of Urine," First communication, 8vo, London; reprinted from *Jour of Physiol*, 1894, xv, 433. "Physiological Effects of Peptone when Injected into the Circulation." - *Jour of Physiol*, 1896, xx, 435; 1899, xxiv, 374; 1899-1900, xxv, 1; 1905, xxxii, 137. "Die physiologische Wirkung der Protamine and ihrer Spaltungsprodukte." - *Zeits f Physiol Chem*, 1900, xxix, 1. "Systematic Food Production: What could be done in Ireland." - *Irish Times*, 1915, Aug 30. *The Food Value of Great Britain's Food-supply*, 8vo, with bibliography, Dublin, 1916.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003262
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Crile, George Washington (1864 - 1943)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-06-20
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004100-E004199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376300376300
Occupation Physiologist
Details Born 11 November 1864 at Chili, Coshocton County, Ohio, US son of Michael Crile and Margaret Dietz, his wife. He was educated at Ohio Northern University at Ada, Ohio, and Wooster (now the Western Reserve) University, Cleveland, Ohio, where he took his M.D. in 1887 and served as an intern at the Lakeside Hospital. After his travels to the clinics of Vienna, Paris, and London he became demonstrator and lecturer in histology at Western Reserve and then successively professor of physiology 1890, of surgical propaedeutic 1893, of clinical surgery 1900 and of surgery 1911, when he was appointed visiting surgeon to Lakeside Hospital. During the Spanish-American war of 1898 he served in Puerto Rico and Cuba, becoming brigade surgeon. In 1917-18 he served in France as director of the Lakeside unit at base hospital No 4 with the rank of colonel, United States Army Medical Corps, and was decorated by the allies. From 1924 when he retired from his professorial chair he devoted himself as director of research to the service of Cleveland clinic, of which he was one of the founders in 1921, and made one of the best in the world. Crile was elected an honorary Fellow of the College at the last International Medical Congress in London in 1913. He appears in the group of honorary Fellows photographed on the steps of the College, which also includes Harvey Cushing and William Mayo He was president of the American College of Surgeons in 1916. Crile married in 1900 Grace McBride, who survived him with two sons and two daughters. With his wife he was a hospitable host at Cleveland and at the country house, where his chief recreation was riding. He was particular friendly to British surgeons, and his friendships were coloured by the enthusiasm which activated him in all his work. He was a man of dynamic vitality and marked intellectual originality. With Mrs Crile he undertook late in life a game-hunting expedition to Africa to collect a variety of species for comparative study of their endocrine organs. Mrs Crile described the adventure in her book *Skyways to a jungle laboratory*, New York, 1936. He died at the Cleveland clinic on 6 January 1943, aged 78. Crile was one of the outstanding surgeons who, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, put the latest advances of physiological discovery to successful clinical use. He was himself both surgeon and physiologist, and turned his researches in the mechanism of shock and the functions of the endocrines to practical surgical ends. He ranked as a scientific surgeon with Moynihan, who revolutionized the surgery and physiology of digestive dysfunction, and with Cushing, who was outstanding both as surgeon and as neurologist. Crile's prize essay on surgical shock (1897) stated his realization of the patient's unconscious reflex responses to pain stimuli when under anaesthetic. He devised a method of shockless operation, fully developed in the two editions (1914 and 1920) of his famous book *Anoci-association*, allaying the patient's apprehension by preliminary sedative (scopolamine and morphine), securing general anaesthesia with nitrous oxide and oxygen, and cutting off the afferent impulses from the area of operation by local anaesthetics. The field of operation was blocked by infiltration with novocaine, and every division of sensitive tissue was preceded by injection of novocaine. Postoperative discomfort was minimized by injection of quinine and urea hydrochloride solution at distance from the wound. He was a pioneer in the surgery of the thyroid and with a similar purpose elaborated his method of "stealing" the thyroid: placing each patient in a private room, going through the early stages of general anaesthesia ritual on several successive days till on the selected day, unknown to the patient, anaesthesia was completed and the operation performed in the patient's room. On that day Crile would do many such operations consecutively, hurrying from room to room. His work on anoci-association, the blunting of harmful association-impulses, was made in collaboration with W S Lower, and was based on W H Gaskell's researches on the sympathetic nervous system. Crile took a leading part in the revival of blood-transfusion, and devised the practical method of making direct connexion between the arteries of the donor and the veins of the recipient. His book on the subject appeared in 1909. During his service with the American army in France in the first world war he became interested in the study of the suprarenals. Adrenalin had been isolated by Takamine in 1901, and Langley had shown that this secretion of the medullary part of the suprarenal gland had the same effect on the organism as artificial stimulation of the sympathetic. Crile applied Langley's discovery to the direct stimulation of the accelerator nerves of the heart in cases of collapse under anaesthesia. He was essentially a scientist and in American phrase "a savant", closely following the work of the "pure" physiologists and himself experimenting in its application; for instance, he tried to control the peripheral circulation by wearing a rubber suit, and he wrote on the physiology of emotion. At the same time he was a surgeon of ambidextrous facility and the deviser of brilliant and simple operations. He taught the most convenient way of fulfilling Butlin's doctrine that the corresponding lymph-nodes must be removed in operating for malignant disease of the tongue, and Crile's method was universally adopted. In later years he became much interested in the surgical physiology of hypertension, and was the first to advocate sympathectomy for its treatment. His conception of the integration of the endocrines and of their relation as a system to the phenomena of shock was his most original and germinal contribution to medical science. From his studies in nervous and endocrine physiology Crile was led to examine the phenomena of living processes, and elaborated his radioelectric interpretation in several books. He suggested that the acid nucleus of the cell is the positive component of oxidation, the cytoplasm the negative agent, with the cell-membrane as condensor, and the brain and liver as positive and negative poles. Publications:- *An experimental research into surgical shock*, Cartwright prize essay 1897. Philadelphia, 1899. *Experimental research into the surgery of the respiratory system*, Senn prize essay, American Medical Association 1898. Philadelphia, 1899. *An experimental and clinical research into certain problems relating to surgical operations*, Alvarenga prize essay, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 1901. *Blood pressure in surgery*. Philadelphia, 1903. *Haemorrhage and transfusion*. New York,1909. *Phylogenetic association in relation to certain medical problems*. Boston, 1910. *Anoci-association*, with W. S. Lower. Philadelphia, 1914; 2nd edition: *Surgical shock and the shockless operation through anoci-association* 1920, *Anemia and resuscitation*. New York, 1914. *The origin and nature of the emotions*. Philadelphia, 1915. *A mechanistic view of war and peace*. New York, 1915. *Man an adaptive mechanism*, New York, 1916, *The kinetic drive, its phenomena and control* (Carpenter lecture, New York Academy of Medicine 1915). Philadelphia, 1916. *A physical interpretation of shock, exhaustion, and restoration, an extensional kinetic theory*. London, 1921. *The thyroid gland*. Philadelphia, 1927; two editions in the year, published from the Cleveland clinic, anonymously, *Bipolar theory of living processes*. New York, 1926. *Problems in surgery* (University of Washington graduate medical lectures 1926), Philadelphia, 1926. *Diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the thyroid gland*. Philadelphia, 1932 (portrait). *Diseases peculiar to civilized man; clinical management and surgical treatment* New York, 1934. *The phenomenon of life; a radio-electric interpretation*. New York, 1936. *The surgical treatment of hypertension*. Philadelphia, 1938. *Intelligence, power, and personality*. New York, 1941.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004117
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Sherrington, Sir Charles Scott (1857 - 1952)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-06-24
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/377727377727
Occupation Physiologist
Details Born at Islington on 27 November 1857 eldest of the three sons of Dr James Norton Sherrington of Yarmouth who died young; his widow married Caleb Rose FRCS of Ipswich, and Charles was educated at Ipswich Grammar School, Edinburgh University and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was a pupil of Michael Foster and Frank Balfour and worked with J N Langley and W H Gaskell as demonstrator of physiology. He trained at St Thomas's Hospital, qualified in 1885, and was lecturer in physiology at the medical school for nearly ten years. He was sent by the Royal Society to study Asiatic cholera in Spain (1886) and southern Italy (1887); he made himself known to the leading physiologists Santiago Ramon y Cajal in Spain and Camillo Golgi in Italy, and also studied in France and Germany. He succeeded Victor Horsley in 1892 as superintendent of the Brown Institute of Animal Pathology and Brown Professor of Pathology in the University of London. Here he worked on antitoxins, rabies, and the comparative anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. In old age he wrote a vivid description in *Nature* (1948, 161, 266) of his successful injection of the first antidiphtheritic toxin in the supposedly fatal illness of a boy cousin. At St Thomas's he was working on the histology of scar-tissue, on the changes in the blood which accompany local inflammation, and on the metabolism of the body in cancer. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1893. Sherrington succeeded Francis Gotch as Holt Professor of Physiology at Liverpool in 1895. He held this chair for eighteen years and published much fundamental work on the nervous system. The young American surgeon Harvey Cushing came to Sherrington's laboratory in 1900 for comparative study of anthropoid brains; his subsequent achievement in brain surgery was deeply influenced by Sherrington's teaching. Sherrington gave the Silliman lectures at Yale in 1904 on *The integrative action of the nervous system*, maintaining that the role of the nervous system is correlation of the individual activities of all the cells of the body whereby results a new entity, the animal itself. The lectures were published as a book by the Harvard University Press in 1906 and effected a revolution in neurological thought. He made no similar summary of his later work, but his complete achievement was surveyed in the *Selected Writings* com¬piled under his guidance by D Denny-Brown in 1939. Denny-Brown pointed out that Sherrington's papers published through fifty-five years contain "a mass of systematic observation, faithfully recorded, forming both a classical example of scientific method and a monumental contri-bution to the literature of the nervous system", essentially and always "clinical physiology". Sherrington was much interested in the physiology of vision, and his work influenced the discoveries of J A W Magnus and Ragnar Granit (see *Brit J Ophthal* 1948, 32, 57). Sherrington was Waynflete Professor of Physiology at Oxford 1913-36 and he was elected a Fellow of Magdalen. He was President of the Royal Society 1920-25, was created a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of The British Empire in 1922 and admitted to the Order of Merit in 1924. He shared the Nobel prize in physiology with E D Adrian in 1932. The list of his honorary Fellowships fills 22 lines in the Royal Society's *Year Book* for 1939 and he was an honorary Doctor of 23 universities. He was an ardent collector of books, and continuously presented valuable and unusual books to numerous libraries. Between 1935 and 1948 he found no less than 58 fifteenth-century books for the already unrivalled collection in the British Museum; he was particularly generous to this College library. While PRS he promoted the compilation of the *World List of Scientific Periodicals*, an invaluable research tool which has continued to flourish. He took a full share of public duties for the Royal Society, the British Association and various Government committees. He served long on the Medical Research Council and was chairman of the Industrial Fatigue Research Board in 1918. His Rede lecture at Cambridge *The Brain and its Mechanism*, which emphasised his belief in the duality of mind and matter, his Gifford lectures at Edinburgh in 1937-38 concerning *Man on his Nature*, which compared the philosophical background of biology at the renaissance and today, and his Vicary lecture at the College, *The Endeavour of Jean Fernel*, which pursued the same theme, were widely read. Slight, modest and unimpressive, he exerted a stimulating fascination and won affection as well as admiration. His writing was original in style and he coined a number of technical terms such as "synapse" and "proprioceptor" which were readily accepted. He also wrote poems. Sherrington married in 1892 Ethel Mary younger daughter of John Ely Wright of Preston Manor, Suffolk. Lady Sherrington died at 9 Chadlington Road, Oxford on 13 May 1933, and he died at Eastbourne on 4 March 1952 aged 94, survived by his only son. Sherrington's recollections of his early years were published in *Science, Medicine, and History: essays in honour of Charles Singer* (Oxford 1953, 2, 545). A series of informal photographs of Sherrington was taken by Professor John Beattie in the Librarian's room at the College in 1938 when he was talking with old friends, Harvey Cushing, Arnold Klebs and D'Arcy Power; they are preserved in the library; one was reproduced in Fulton's *Harvey Cushing* and another in the memoir of Sherrington in the College *Annals* 1952, 10, 266. A bibliography compiled by J F Fulton and D Denny-Brown is appended to his *Selected Writings*, 1939.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005544
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Power, Henry (1829 - 1911)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-10-10
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002900-E002999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375169375169
Occupation Anatomist Ophthalmic surgeon Physiologist
Details Born on September 3rd, 1829, the son of John Francis Power, a Captain in the 35th (Royal) Sussex Regiment, by his second wife, Hannah, the youngest daughter of Henry Simpson, a banker at Whitby, Yorkshire. His father, who received his commission at the age of 14, had served through the Peninsular and Baltic campaigns as a Cornet in the 3rd Dragoons, King's German Legion, and is mentioned in the regimental history as having been beaten black and blue with sabres at the Sahagun skirmish in 1808. He was also present at Waterloo as a Lieutenant in the 3rd Regiment of Hussars in the King's German Legion. Henry Power was born at Nantes when the service companies of the 35th Regiment were under orders for Barbadoes, and narrowly escaped death in the great West Indian hurricane of August 11th, 1881, when two sergeants and five privates were killed, the baby being buried unhurt in its cradle. The same hurricane nearly killed Haynes Walton (qv), who afterwards became Ophthalmic Surgeon to St Mary's Hospital. Captain Power retired on half-pay as a Major in 1833, and led a wandering life in England until he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the depot of the British Foreign Legion at Shorncliffe in August, 1855. Henry Power, therefore, had a desultory education at several schools, amongst others at Cheltenham College, which he entered as a day-boy at Easter, 1842, the College having been opened at Bays Hill Terrace with 100 boys on July 29th, 1841. There he remained until he was apprenticed in 1844 to Thomas Lowe Wheeler, the son of Thomas Wheeler (1754-1847), Apothecary to St Bartholomew's Hospital and one of the great field botanists of his generation. Henry Power learned nothing from his master, who soon died, when he was transferred to his son Thomas Rivington Wheeler, but formed a boyish friendship with "Thomas Wheeler the old gentleman", then aged 90. From him he learnt some Latin and Greek and the field botany which enabled him to win the Galen and Linnean Silver Medals at the Society of Apothecaries in 1851. Power seems to have drifted into medicine by accident. His father, his father's father, and his great-grandfather had all been in the Army, and they knew of only two classes of doctors, the regimental surgeon and the man who kept an open shop. There was, at any rate, no money to buy a commission, and Major Power had not sufficient influence to obtain one for his son as had been done in his own case. In October, 1844, he entered St Bartholomew's Hospital and soon became intimate with William Scovell Savory (qv), who like himself was a friendless lad without introductions. At Savory's instigation Power was induced to matriculate at the University of London. He was, however, under pledge to return to his master's house as soon as the early morning lecture was finished, and consequently never saw much of the clinical side of the hospital work. He spent his spare time in reading Shakespeare and such poets as were on the shelves of the Wheelers' library. He married on December 21st, 1854, his first cousin and playmate Ann Simpson, the youngest daughter of Thomas Simpson, of Meadowfield, Whitby, Yorkshire, on the strength of becoming a Demonstrator of Anatomy at the Westminster Hospital. The marriage proved a great success, and with his wife he survived to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the wedding. A living was made at 3 Grosvenor Terrace (now 56 Belgrave Road), SW, by coaching and taking resident pupils, and the London University Scholarships which produced £100 for two years "were a godsend". The hard work and strain led to a severe attack of pleurisy in 1855, for which he was nursed at Shorncliffe Camp under the supervision of William S Savory, who sent him to convalesce at St Helier's in Jersey. In June, 1855, he was elected Assistant Surgeon to the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital, where he came under the notice of G J Guthrie (qv), who dissuaded him from accepting the post of assistant in the anatomical department of the University of Edinburgh, which was subsequently filled by Sir William Turner. He retired from the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital in 1889 and was then elected Consulting Surgeon and a member of the Board of Management. In 1857 he became Assistant Surgeon to the Westminster Hospital, where he lectured for ten years, first on comparative anatomy and afterwards on human anatomy and on physiology. His teaching was appreciated by the students, who presented him with an address and a silver salver at the end of the session 1859-1860. He remained an Assistant Surgeon until 1867, by which time he had determined to devote himself entirely to ophthalmology. He was elected Ophthalmic Surgeon to St George's Hospital in 1867, and on July 27th, 1870, he was appointed to the newly made post of Ophthalmic Surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital, with Bowater J Vernon (qv) as his junior. The two colleagues worked together in the greatest harmony for twenty-four years and raised the department to a state of high efficiency. During the whole of this time they had but one Ward Sister - Miss Mary Davies - known to many generations of house surgeons and students as 'Sister Eyes'. Power also acted for twelve years as Ophthalmic Surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital, Chatham, leaving London every Wednesday at two o'clock and returning by the boat train at six - visits which he enjoyed because he always made friends with his fellow-passengers on the journey, many of whom were returning from service abroad. An original member of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom, Power was Vice-President from 1882-1885, Bowman Lecturer in 1887, and President from 1890-1893. He also served as one of the Vice-Presidents of the Section of Ophthalmology at the Seventh International Congress of Medicine held in London in 1881. At the Royal College of Surgeons Power was a member of the Board of Examiners in Anatomy and Physiology from 1875-1880, again from 1881-1884, and as an Examiner in Physiology from 1884-1886. He was a Member of Council from 1879-1890 and Vice-President in 1885. He delivered the Arris and Gale Lectures on anatomy and physiology in 1882-1883; was Hunterian Professor of Surgery and Pathology, 1885-1887; Bradshaw Lecturer in, and, like Paget, Savory, Butlin, and Moynihan, delivered the Hunterian Oration without a note in 1889. He was active as an examiner in physiology at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Durham, having as his colleagues Rolleston, Michael Foster, Huxley, and Hare Philipson, with all of whom he long maintained the most friendly relations. At the Royal Veterinary College in Camden Town he served as Professor of Physiology from 1881-1904, and the students treated him as a trusted friend and adviser. His former pupils in England presented him with a testimonial on his retirement, whilst those practising in South Africa sent him a handsome silver lamp. At the Harveian Society of London he was elected for two consecutive terms of office as President in 1880 and 1881. He was a Vice-President of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1892-1893, and was several times a Member of the Council and of the Library Committee. At the British Medical Association he was President of the Home Counties Branch, and held office as Secretary, Vice-President, or President of the Sections of Ophthalmology, Physiology, and the combined Section of Ophthalmology and Otology at various periods between 1869 and 1895. He was also President of the Society for employing the blind as masseurs, Surgeon to the Linen and Woollen Drapers' Benevolent Fund and to the Artists' Benevolent Fund. Power was engaged in literary work throughout his life. With a competent knowledge of German derived from his father and from his grandmother, who was a Dutch woman, he did much for the New Sydenham Society. He translated *The Aural Surgery of the Present Day*, by Wilhelm Kramer, in 1863; in 1870 he translated Stricker's *Manual of Human and Comparative Histology*, and from 1865-1874 he was co-editor for the Society of *A Biennial Retrospect of Medicine, Surgery, etc*. From 1879-1899 he carried out in conjunction with Dr Leonard Sedgwick *The Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences based on Mayne's Lexicon*. It was planned on too large a scale and the editors only finished to the letter O, the rest of the alphabet being completed by George Parker, a son of Professor William Kitchin Parker, FRS. Power also translated in 1876 Professor Erb's article "On Disease of the Peripheral Cerebrospinal Nerves" for Ziemssen's *Cyclopoedia of the Practice of Medicine* - a particularly difficult piece of work as it was written in involved and provincial German. From 1864-1876 he edited the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth editions of Carpenter's *Principles of Human Physiology* - a perfect mine of information. Each edition had to be literally rewritten, as physiology was then leaving the traditional lines and was becoming a new experimental science. The book was finally displaced by the text-books of Michael Foster and Herman translated by Arthur Gamgee. He also published in 1884 a small but useful *Elements of Human Physiology* which had a widespread popularity and ran through several editions. Having considerable talent as a painter in water-colours, he made many drawings of the interesting ophthalmic cases which presented themselves in the Out-patient Department of the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. These were embodied in his *Illustrations of Some of the Principal Diseases of the Eye* published in 1867. The book was one of the first English text-books containing coloured drawings of the fundus of the eye as seen with the ophthalmoscope. They were reproduced by chromolithography, which did not do justice to the original drawings, and are now preserved at St Bartholomew's Hospital. From 1881 onwards he busied himself in reconstructing Bagdale Hall, Whitby, a house built about 1540, which had long been in the possession of his wife's family. Here he spent his holidays, and here, in 1898, happened the tragedy which threw a shadow over the rest of his life. Whilst watching a summer storm on the unprotected east pier, his artist daughter and a grandchild were swept by a wave into the sea at a time when no boat could leave the harbour. The two girls were drowned though both were expert swimmers, and he himself escaped with the greatest difficulty. He left London shortly afterwards and retired to Whitby, where he cultivated friendships and gave popular lectures to the townspeople on a variety of subjects. In November, 1910, he strained his heart one Sunday morning whilst mounting the 199 steps to the parish church, which is situated on the edge of the cliff close to the Abbey. The effects never passed off, he suffered many distressing attacks of dyspnoea, and died at Bagdale Hall on January 18th, 1911, survived by his wife, four sons, and three daughters out of a total family of eleven children. He was buried in the cemetery which lies between the sea and the high moors, the town showing its sympathy by closing the shops, although it was market day. Henry Power was a good instance of heredity. His versatility, friendliness, and courtesy showed his South Irish ancestry; his dogged perseverance in the production of such monumental undertakings as Carpenter's *Physiology and the Lexicon of Medical Terms* was derived from the Dutch and Quaker strain; his agnosticism - for he neither affirmed nor denied - his carelessness of money, and his want of business aptitude were the outcome of several generations of military forbears, who, being always on active service, lived from hand to mouth and accumulated nothing. The business capacity derived from the long line of bankers on his mother's side missed him indeed, but appeared in the person of one of his grandchildren, Mr F D'Arcy Cooper - who became the successful Chairman of Levers, a soap company dealing with many millions of capital. His artistic ability - derived entirely from his father - was markedly transmitted to two of his daughters, one of whom was an excellent portrait painter, the other a beautiful bookbinder. As an ophthalmic surgeon Henry Power was a younger member of the band who made ophthalmic practice a specialty, having first been trained in general surgery like Bowman and Critchett. He was a good and careful operator, more especially in the extraction of cataract; as a clinical teacher painstaking, and as a lecturer fluent and interesting. There are two oil paintings by his daughter Lucy Beatrice Power, both of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy. The earlier one is at Melbourne, Victoria, in the possession of his grandchildren; the other, three-quarter-length, seated with a perimeter, belongs to Sir D'Arcy Power, KBE, FRCS. It was painted by subscription and was engraved. Both are excellent likenesses in a characteristic attitude. A speaking likeness is reproduced in the Centenary number of the *Lancet* (1923, ii, 751), for it reflects the kindliness he always showed to students. Power also appears in Jamyn Brookes's portrait group of the Council in 1884, and the *Brief Sketch* also contains a portrait reproduced by Emery Walker.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002986
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Jones, Thomas Wharton (1808 - 1891)

2024-05-07T09:10:50Z

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/374576374576
Occupation Ophthalmic surgeon Physiologist
Details The son of Richard Jones, born at St Andrews on January 9th, 1808. His father (d1821) was one of the Secretaries of HM Customs for Scotland. He was descended on his father's side from a wealthy Shropshire family and on his mother's side from an old Essex family named Alliston, or Elliston, whose lands were confiscated by William the Conqueror, as well as from the Chesham family of Phillipps. Neither paternal nor maternal wealth came to Wharton Jones, and any money he may have inherited seems to have disappeared. He was educated first at Stirling, then at the parish school at Dalmeny, and afterwards at the Musselburgh Grammar School. He entered the literary classes at the University of Edinburgh in 1822, and did not begin to study medicine until a year or two later. He soon distinguished himself, took the LRCS in 1827, and at the age of 19 was appointed by Robert Knox, the Extramural Lecturer on Anatomy, one of his three demonstrators, the other two being William Fergusson (qv) and Alexander Miller. Wharton Jones held the post from 1827-1829, and thus became involved in the scandal associated with the murders committed by Burke and Hare to supply the school with subjects for dissection. It fell to Wharton Jones to pay Hare the £7 10s demanded for the body of the old pensioner, Donald. Driven from Edinburgh after the trial, he migrated to Glasgow, where he became associated with William Mackenzie, the ophthalmic surgeon, with Professor Harry Rainy, and with John Burns, under whom he studied embryology. He long kept up a correspondence with Mackenzie. He still maintained some connection with Edinburgh, for he published in 1833 a *Manual of Pharmacology*, which exhibits, in its precision, comprehensiveness, and logical method, many of the characteristics of his later work. Whilst working in Glasgow he discovered the germinal vesicle in the mammalian ovum, and published his observations in the *Philosophical Magazine* for 1835 (vii, 209). His second paper on the subject appeared in *The Philosophical Transactions* (1837, cxxvii, 339), and attracted the notice of J E Purkinje, the Professor of Physiology at Prague. Wharton Jones went to Cork about 1835 and began to practise chiefly as a specialist in diseases of the eye and ear; in 1837 he travelled on the Continent, visiting the chief universities, and in 1838 returned to England and began to practise as an ophthalmic surgeon in London, at 35 George Street, Hanover Square. The house is described as being miserably small and has long since been demolished. He was appointed Lecturer on Physiology at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School on May 3rd, 1841, in succession to Henry Hancock (qv), and held the post until 1851. His most distinguished pupils were Thomas Henry Huxley (qv) and Joseph Fayrer (qv). He was admitted FRS on April 30th, 1840, and was appointed Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution. In 1850 he was awarded the Astley Cooper Prize of £300 for his classical essay on "The State of the Blood-vessels in Inflammation as ascertained by Experiments, Injections and Observations under the Microscope". The essay was supplemented two years later by a paper describing the phenomena of inflammation in the wing of the bat, his previous observations having been made on the web of the frog's foot. In this Astley Cooper Prize Essay he incidentally drew attention to the peculiar degeneration which takes place in the distal end of a divided nerve. The condition is now known as the 'Wallerian degeneration', and rightly so, for Waller had previously described it, although there is no doubt that his observations were unknown to Jones. In the year 1852 he showed that the veins of the bat's wing were furnished with valves, were rhythmically contractile, and assisted in the onward flow of the blood. In 1868 he published his observations on the caudal heart of the eel - a lymphatic heart - and on the anterior lymphatic heart of the frog, structures which Johann Muller had made the subject of a paper in the *Philosophical Transactions* as early as 1833 (cxxiii, 89). He also wrote many other papers on the blood; on the healing process; on the contents of the hepatic ducts; on the anatomy of the choroid gland of the fish's eye; and on muscle as a neuromagnetic apparatus. But even these papers did not exhaust his energy, for he was an historian and a genealogist as well as a man of science. In 1851 he won the Actonian Prize for an essay on "The Wisdom and Beneficence of the Almighty displayed in the Sense of Vision", and in 1858, a "Catechism of the Physiology and Philosophy of Body, Sense and Mind". He edited for the Camden Society in 1872 the "Life and Death" of his distinguished ancestral kinsman, Bishop Bedell of Kilmore, who perished in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Lastly, in 1872 he published an interesting volume maintaining that the Darwinian doctrine of evolution is not sanctioned by science. He was elected in 1851 Professor of Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery in University College, and resigned in 1881, when he was given the title of Emeritus Professor. His last years were clouded by poverty until his colleagues realized his condition and hastened unobtrusively to relieve him. The story is told by one of them in the following words: "Sir John, then Mr Tweedy, being present at a staff meeting of the *Lancet*, was asked whether he had got ready his biography of Mr Wharton Jones, as the latter had written to University College to say that he was unable to give his lectures and it was therefore inferred that he was ill. Illness at his age was held to indicate 'the last phase'. Mr Tweedy accordingly called on Mr Wharton Jones during the week of the great blizzard in the winter of 1881, when the snow lay heavily in the streets of London for seven days and all traffic was at a standstill. Wharton Jones occupied a house, where he had given rooms to a poor couple - husband and wife - who looked after him in return for their lodging. To Mr Tweedy's horror, when he entered his old teacher's room, he found him crouched over a fireless grate, his shoulders hunched up under a mass of shawls and shabby wraps, the picture of destitution. He was gnawing a cold and uninviting piece of beef-steak and a crust of bread, the wretched meal being all, as the woman of the house declared, that she and her husband could spare from their own scanty food-supply. Mr Wharton Jones, the distinguished man of science, and teacher of Huxley, was in a perishing condition. He had not a penny of money, he was ill, his food was such as his visitor saw it. Mr Tweedy decided on prompt measures and called on Dr Sidney Ringer to whom he said: 'Do you know that Wharton Jones is dying of starvation?' At once a rescue party was formed. Mrs Sidney Ringer, with much experience as a nurse and a kind heart, started off at once with soup, jelly, and other restoratives. Dr Sidney Ringer sat down and wrote a cheque for £25. Armed with this, Mr Tweedy stepped over to Sir William Fergusson's and told the story. Sir William, as greatly concerned and surprised as Dr Ringer, wrote a handsome cheque. Mr Tweedy paid other calls on leading medical and scientific men and, in a few hours, had collected £140. This sum was paid into a bank for Wharton Jones by Fergusson. The money was paid out in sovereigns so that the beneficiary - Jones - might not suspect to whom he was indebted. His life was saved. "About this time Huxley, on whom Mr Tweedy had called, went to Gladstone and laid the case before him. The Premier said that the Civil List (Pensions) was then made up, but that Jones should head the next list. Eventually he received a substantial pension (£100 or £200). Another pension was granted him by the Royal Society at the instance of the President. Wharton Jones never knew who his benefactors were." Wharton Jones has a double claim to remembrance; he was a great pioneer physiologist and he was also a distinguished ophthalmologist. As a physiologist he marks, with Waller, the beginning of modern scientific physiology in England. He continued the work of Harvey on the lines of the great investigator, and throughout his life was engaged on the problems of the vascular system. As an ophthalmologist he published in 1847 a valuable treatise on ophthalmic medicine and surgery. He suggested, in opposition to Thomas Young, that astigmatism was due to a fault in the curvature of the cornea rather than to an error in the lens. He was the first to observe the frequent association of retinitis pigmentosa with deaf-mutism and other neurotic disorders; he devised an ingenious method of curing cicatricial ectropion, and was probably one of the first to observe the beneficial action of calabar bean applied locally in certain cases of acute glaucoma. As a surgeon he obtained good results from his operations, though he was not dexterous. He was rather a physician than a surgeon in his treatment, and as such was learned, observant, sagacious, full of knowledge and experience. He shone greatly as a teacher, and preferred to teach as a man of science whose maxim was "Let us look, let us see." Huxley says of him:- "I suspect that it was not easy for even his equals in age and station to be intimate with Mr Wharton Jones; and my relations with him, forty years ago, were merely those of a young learner to a greatly respected teacher. From the first I was strongly attracted by Wharton Jones's lectures. Singularly dry and cold in form, they were admirable in logical construction and full of knowledge derived from personal observation and wide reading. The true *lumen siccum* of science glowed in every proposition which fell from the lips of the pale adust little man, as he stood with downcast eyes, and fingering his watch-chain at one corner of the table. He never had any notes, but the lectures would have read perfectly well if they had been printed straight off. I used to wonder at and envy his 'facility', not having learned in those days what price has to be paid for easy speaking of that quality. "Instruction of this kind was something quite new in my limited experience, and I may say that I have rarely met with its match since. It drew me to the subject of physiology and, working hard at it, I fancy my answers in the examina¬tions were better than those of most of my neighbours, and interested Mr Jones. At any rate, he was very kind in his encouragement and readiness to give information; and in 1845 he sent my first attempt at original histological work - a very little one - to the editor of the *Medical Gazette*, who would hardly have published it without such recommendation. "Not infrequently I was invited to take tea in George Street, and used to listen with great interest to Wharton Jones's talk about this or that scientific question of the day, or about the work on the blood-corpuscles in which he was then engaged; and, not rarely, about his griefs against various persons of eminence in the scientific world of that time by whom he considered himself to have been ill treated, and whose conduct he resented with no little vehemence. I am deliberately of opinion that my old master had great ground for complaint; he had seen work which he knew to be worthless, and which all the world now knows to be so, preferred and rewarded in the teeth of his remonstrances, with the effect of discrediting his own valuable labours. Injustice of this kind is hard to bear, and Mr Jones protested against it with more energy than worldly wisdom perhaps. It grievously embittered his life and, I suspect, interfered with his success. "I do not remember ever to have heard Mr Jones say anything about what may be called the human side of his life, except a chance allusion now and then to Germany, which led me to believe he had studied there. You see that my relations with him were almost purely intellectual, except in so far as I have always felt extremely indebted to him for personal encouragement, and for giving me a high conception of what oral teaching should be. On my return to England I saw but little of him; our ways lay very much apart, and we drifted along them, as men do in London, without meeting. The last time I saw Mr Jones was when my wife and I were on a visit to the Isle of Wight, some years ago. Physically and otherwise I was surprised to see how little he was altered ; and I had to listen to some rather sharp tirades against modern physiology in general, and certain excellent friends of mine in particular; indeed, I am not sure but that there were some glances at my own doctrines and misdeeds." There is no doubt that Wharton Jones was a genius, able to look backwards as well as forwards, with many and varied interests. Not very human, for he was absorbed in his work; rather unsociable, so that he had but few friends; ill adapted to make money, and least of all by the practice of a specialty which was as yet hardly recognized; bitter of speech and outspoken in criticism, he made enemies of those who might have done much to help him, yet he founded a school and marks an epoch in the history of English science. He died unmarried on November 7th, 1891, at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, where he had settled down after leaving London in 1881. There is a photograph of him, No 28 in the Fellows' Album, and a poor print from a collodion negative taken by Jabez Hogg about the year 1855. There is also said to be a daguerrotype in the College collection, but it has not yet been identified.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002393
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset