Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Public health officer

First Title value, for Searching Dickin, Oswald ( - 1865)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2011-06-07 2013-08-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001200-E001299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373387373387
Occupation Public health officer
Details Was Surgeon Inspector of Factories and Printing Works, External Medical Officer of Oldham Union, and a member of the British Medical Association. He died at Middleton, Manchester, in 1865.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001204
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Heatherley, Francis (1862 - 1932)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

First Title value, for Searching Clarke, David Glyn (1950 - 2004)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2007-02-01
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000300-E000399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372511372511
Occupation Public health officer
Details David Clarke developed multiple sclerosis just before passing his surgical fellowship and never practised as a surgeon. He was able, despite his difficulties, to pursue a career in public health, and became project officer for public health and health policy for London, with the Lambeth, Southward and Lewisham Health Commission. He died of metastatic melanoma on 6 January 2004, leaving a widow, Susan Clarke, also a doctor.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000324
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Godber, Sir George Edward (1908 - 2009)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by John Blandy
Publication Date 2011-06-16
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001200-E001299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373431373431
Occupation Public health officer
Details Sir George Godber was one of the principal architects of the National Health Service. He was born on 4 August 1908, the son of Bessie and Isaac Godber, a nurseryman. From Bedford School he went up to New College, Oxford, where he won a blue for rowing, taking part in two losing boat races. He went on to the London Hospital and did junior jobs there and at Poplar, where he was confronted with large numbers of people who were too poor to go to their GP and too proud to accept charity. He attended the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, became a county medical officer in Surrey and joined the Ministry of Health as a medical officer in 1939, at a time when the outbreak of war forced hospitals to work together. His first task was to organise maternity services for Londoners who had been evacuated to the suburbs. During the Second World War Beveridge published his report and Godber was part of the team that planned the National Health Service. He was appointed deputy chief medical officer in 1950 and chief medical officer in 1960. He later campaigned against smoking and for vaccination against polio and diphtheria. A tall man with a shock of hair and a monocle, Godber had tremendous presence. He married Norma Hathorne Rainey in 1935. She predeceased him in 1999. They had four sons and three daughters, but sadly three of their children died in childhood. He was an honorary fellow of many institutions, including our own College. He died on 7 February 2009.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001248
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Heath, Arthur (1873 - 1934)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-07-03
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004100-E004199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376365376365
Occupation General surgeon Public health officer
Details Born at Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, on 29 December 1873, the fourth child and third son of David William Heath, corn merchant, and Elizabeth Godfrey his wife. He was educated at the Grammar School, Bedford, and at University College, Nottingham. He then proceeded to St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he acted as house physician to Dr Church, 1897-98, and as extern midwifery assistant. In 1894-95 he was house surgeon at the Southport Infirmary and afterwards at the Royal Cornwall Infirmary. He practised at Reepham, Norfolk 1899-1903, at Norwich 1903, at Derby 1904-20. During the war he served in the RAMC, his commission as captain being dated 24 May 1915. From 1917 he was attached to the Ministry of Pensions, and was appointed regional medical officer under the Ministry of Health on 1 September 1920. In this capacity he was successively in charge of Lincoln, Leicester, and Rutland; of Notts and Derby; of Bucks, Herts, and a part of Middlesex. He married Edith Alexander on 8 August 1901; she survived him with one son. He died at Lynwood, Moor Park, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire on 26 October 1934 and was buried at Trinity Church, Northwood, Middlesex.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004182
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Ley, John William (1850 - 1933)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

First Title value, for Searching Linford, Hilda Margaret (1900 - 1980)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-01-28
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006600-E006699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378870378870
Occupation Anaesthetist Public health officer
Details Born on October 9 1900 at Leicester, the second daughter of William Frederick Linford, a marine engineer, and Sarah Elizabeth Basford, Hilda Linford was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School, Leicester and Manchester University, obtaining the University Prize in medicine in 1921. From 1924 to 1926 she was an assistant lecturer in physiology in the University and in 1928 was appointed Dickinson Research Scholar in Medicine of the University which enabled her to spend a year working in neurophysiology at the College de France, Paris. She then set out on a career in anaesthesia and was resident anaesthetist at the Royal Victoria Infirmary at Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 1929 to 1930 and joined the LCC anaesthetic service until 1934. Having achieved her ambition of gaining the Fellowship of the College, she studied maternity at Sheffield for 16 months and in 1936 became the first woman to be appointed to the Isle of Wight Public Health Department with special charge of maternity and child welfare. Hilda Linford never married; she was an inveterate traveller visiting most corners of the globe especially in connection with her interest in the archaeological remains of pre-history. She died on 27 March 1980.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006687
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Dooley, Denis (1913 - 2010)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by R M Kirk
Publication Date 2011-12-13 2013-02-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001700-E001799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373913373913
Occupation Anatomist Public health officer
Details Denis Dooley was Her Majesty's Inspector of Anatomy from 1965 to 1980. He was born on 10 December 1913. He was educated at St Ignatius' College, Stamford Hill, London, and then went on to study mathematics and Latin, gaining a BA degree from London University in 1936. He then returned to his old school as a teacher. In 1938, he developed peritonitis from a burst appendix and was an inpatient at St George's Hospital for three months, after which he decided on a medical career - financed as a wartime fire-watcher. He trained in medicine at St Mary's Hospital, London. He was determined to gain a house post working for the prominent surgeon Arthur Dickson Wright, who he knew appointed only the most outstanding graduates. Denis had no illusions about his place on the list, but noted that Dickson Wright's house surgeons were worked so hard that they almost invariably failed to last the full six-month appointment. Denis decided to wait. Sure enough, the next successful candidate lasted only a few weeks, and Denis stepped into the breach. Sadly, he lasted for an even shorter period, before taking to his bed in the residency. The next morning, the door of his room opened sufficiently to reveal Dickson Wright's nose. He asked: 'Dooley, how soon before you are back at work?' Denis groaned: 'Sir, the way I feel now, I shall never work again.' The nose was withdrawn, the door closed, and the appointment terminated. In 1946 Denis became a house surgeon to Sir Zachary Cope and, a year later, became a research registrar to Sir Alexander Fleming, administering the recently available penicillin to treat a patient suffering from bacterial endocarditis. From 1948 to 1952, he was a resident medical officer at Charing Cross Hospital. He was generous in helping out during busy periods. One day, when the casualty department was busy, he undertook to see the male revisits. Soon the queue had disappeared, but the treatment area was bulging with patients. An anxious nurse emerged, holding a stack of casualty cards. On each was written 'RUS.DD'. When Denis was asked the meaning, he admonished the junior doctors for their lack of Latin, replying: 'Quite simple; *Rep. ut supra* (repeat as above) Denis Dooley'. His role at Charing Cross included the health care of medical students, resident doctors and nurses. At that time most of the newly qualified doctors were ex-servicemen, and they were expected to adhere to pre-war rules, including being banned from living a married life. Denis tried to protect them from the oppressive restrictions, but only with partial success. His support for the juniors brought him into conflict with the governing body and he was warned not to apply to have his appointment renewed. From 1952 to 1954 he was a general practitioner in Barnes and Wimbledon. He then served as a medical officer for the Ministry of Health, becoming a senior medical officer in 1973. By chance, one of his duties was to inspect the London teaching hospitals. He arrived to inspect the governance of Charing Cross Hospital, and he could not help but feel contempt for the unctuous greetings he received from the same people who had in effect sacked him for attempting to protect the resident doctors from authoritarian restrictions. From 1965 to 1980 Denis served as Her Majesty's Inspector of Anatomy. One of his duties was to regulate the use of bodies for dissection in the study of anatomy. Out of this appointment came a series of reports and lectures, including the Arris and Gale lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1972 (published as 'A dissection of anatomy' *Ann R Coll Surg Engl* 1973 July; 53[1]:13-26), a Royal Institution lecture in 1974 ('The rediscovery of anatomy'), and the Medical Society of London annual oration in 1977 ('On the anomaly of anatomy' *Transactions of the Medical Society of London* 92-93;192-208). In 1972, in recognition of his work, he was made a life member of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and in 1979 he was awarded an OBE. He was a devote Roman Catholic. In 1946 he carried a cross 500 miles to Vézelay Abbey in Burgundy, France, as part of a group marching for peace. Friends remember him for his generosity and for his rejection of personal possessions. He was a master of the portentous-seeming entrance, soon to be punctured by a humorous and sly, witty follow-up - the ultimate 'character'. Outside medicine, he enjoyed golf, bridge and scrabble. He met his wife Eileen at St Mary's Hospital. They had a son, Michael, and a daughter, Johanna. Denis Dooley died on 19 May 2010 at the age of 96. His last words were the Lord's Prayer, recited in Latin.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001730
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Ewart, Robert John (1877 - 1923)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2011-11-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001600-E001699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373850373850
Occupation Public health officer
Details Born in Liverpool in 1877, the son of Edmund Brown Ewart, BA, and was educated at Liverpool Institute and University, where he won high distinctions as a student, being Holt Tutorial Scholar, Junior Lyon Jones Scholar, 1894-1896, and Hon Fellow in Pathology at University College, Liverpool. After holding an appointment as Senior House Surgeon at the Royal Infirmary, Liverpool, he gained his public health experience at Ashton-under-Lyne, going on to Middlesbrough as Assistant Medical Officer of Health. He was appointed Medical Officer of Health to the Urban District of Barking, where he was also School Medical Officer and Superintendent of the Isolation Hospital. He showed himself a very active and diligent public health officer, interested both in the preventive and epidemiological side of his work, with a philosophical bias which produced such essays as "Time and the Second Generation" and "Parental Age and Offspring". Ewart lost no opportunity of dwelling upon the importance of the food of the people to the public health, and saw in disease a pathological reaction due to faulty metabolism. No subject was too difficult for him to tackle, and even with imperfect data his originality of mind was able to elaborate the problems before him. Ewart, who resided at The Cottage, Upney, Barking, died in June, 1923, following an operation at the West Ham Hospital. Publications: "Venesection: its Indications from a Physiological Standpoint." - *Manchester Med. Chron.*, 1905, ser. Iv, 67. "Action of Aortic Valves in Health and Disease." - *Lancet*, 1904, ii, 1492. "Some Features of Sewage Pollution of an Estuary." - *Public Health*, 1909, xxiii, 51. "Variations in the Chemical and Bacteriological Compositions of Water considered from a Statistical Point of View." - *Ibid.*, 1910-11, xxiv, 10. "Parental Age and Offspring." - *Eugenics Rev.*, 1910. *A Cause of the Fall of the Death-rate from Phthisis*, 1912. In the *Journal of Hygiene* Ewart also published a series of valuable papers dealing with the statistics of scarlet fever and diphtheria.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001667
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Koop, Charles Everett (1916 - 2013)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by George F Sheldon
Publication Date 2013-03-20 2013-06-19
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003700-E003799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375915375915
Occupation Public health officer
Details C Everett Koop, known as 'America's doctor', was by far the most influential surgeon general in US history. An imposing figure, standing six foot one in his gold-braided dark blue vice admiral's uniform (the rank of the surgeon general), he effectively used his strong personality to advocate for the health of the US public. Koop was born on 14 October 1916 in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of John Edward Koop, a banker and a descendent of 17th century Dutch settlers, and Helen Koop née Apel. His paternal grandparents, cousins and uncles all lived in the same street. Koop's interest in medicine was triggered by watching a family doctor. He practised tying knots, cutting sutures and doing some vivisection on animals in his neighborhood, while his mother gave anaesthesia. He attended Flatbush School and Dartmouth College, where he played football. He then went to Cornell University medical school in Manhattan, where he met and married Elizabeth Flanagan of New Britain, Connecticut, a Vassar student. He completed his residency in general surgery at the University of Pennsylvania under the revered figure of IS Ravdin. Among other skills, Ravdin was known for having a good eye for young talent. On the completion of Koop's residency in surgery, he was offered the position of founding chair of surgery at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He served in that role for 35 years. During that time, he and his colleagues performed thousands of operations to correct birth defects in premature babies. They performed 475 operations alone for oesophageal atresia, a condition which previously had been fatal. He introduced the transposition method for producing gastrointestinal tract continuity between the oesophagus and stomach, and it became a standard procedure. He also did early work on separating conjoined twins. In 1981 he was nominated for the role of surgeon general by President Ronald Reagan. He served from 1982 and, by the time he demitted office in 1989, he had become a household name. During his tenure he defended the rights of children, issued emphatic warnings about the dangers of smoking and prodded the US government into an aggressive posture against AIDS. In the early 1980s, the rights of infants with congenital defects surfaced as an issue. It eventually came before the federal courts, where two cases pitted the rights of parents to withhold treatment for a child who was severely impaired against available medical care. The courts sided with the parents. Koop spoke out against the parents' decision in both cases, noting that the medical and legal establishment had a duty to protect citizens against collective discrimination, regardless of their state of health or age. He alleged that the government's authority to override the rights of parents had been established in truancy law, child abuse legislation and immunisation law. When Koop became surgeon general, 33% of Americans smoked; when he left office it had dropped to 24%, with 40 states and many counties having restricted smoking in public places. Anti-smoking campaigns by private groups like the American Lung Association and the American Heart Association had accelerated. Koop had a major role in educating Americans about AIDS. He believed the nation was slow in facing the virus, which first appeared about the time he became surgeon general. He extolled efforts to identify the HIV virus that causes the disease, and the blood test and research which allowed detection. Koop pushed the government into advocating condom use and public AIDS education and treatments. He was undoubtedly influential in George W Bush's initiative to provide AIDS care and detection in Africa, considered one of the most important achievements of the 43rd President. Koop always believed he had failed to persuade either Reagan or his successor President George HW Bush to make healthcare available to more Americans. He was also disappointed at the lack of influence of the office of surgeon general, a fact he lamented in a later testimony before Congress. Koop was personally opposed to abortion, but believed that a public office such as the surgeon general's should not make policy decisions based on moral grounds. He declared - to the disappointment of the White House - that the evidence did not support the contention that abortions were essentially unsafe. In taking that position he later said he was naïve. In an interview in 1996, he said he did not speak out on abortion because he thought his job was to deal with factual issues like hazards of smoking, not moral issues. Abortion, he argued, presented little health hazard to women. It was a moral and religious matter, not a health issue. Many liberals opposed his nomination, but came to praise him; and the many conservatives who had supported him came, in time, to vilify him. When Koop stepped down as surgeon general in 1989, the *New York Times* noted that: 'throughout, he has put medical integrity above personal judgments and has been indeed the nation's first Doctor'. He was the recipient of many honorary degrees, fellowships and awards around the world, including the French medal of the Légion d'honneur in 1980 and the honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1982. In his later years, Koop established an internet company providing health information on the web (www.drkoop.com), and the C Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth College, founded in 1992. Koop was strong in his Presbyterian faith and credited this with helping him and his wife cope with the death of their 19-year-old son David, who was killed in 1968 when a cliff gave way while he was mountain climbing in New Hampshire. Koop and his wife wrote about the loss of a child in *Sometimes mountains move* (Wheaton, Ill, Tyndale House Publishers), published in 1979. Koop died on 25 February 2013 at the age of 96. He was survived by his second wife, Cora Hogue, whom he married in 2010, by his three children, Allen, Norman and Elizabeth Thompson, and by eight grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003732
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Dyson, Herbert Jekyl (1860 - 1907)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

First Title value, for Searching Wheeler, Edwin Robert (1878 - 1965)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2023-06-05
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010200-E010299
Occupation Missionary doctor General surgeon Public health officer
Details Edwin Robert Wheeler was a medical missionary in China, a professor of surgery at Shantung Christian University, Tsinan and superintendent of the University Hospital. He was born in 1878 in Preston, Sussex, the son of Robert Gidley Wheeler, a minister of the free church, and Rachel Wheeler née Rutty. The family settled at Calne in Wiltshire. Wheeler was educated as a boarder at Monkton Combe College, Somerset and went on to study medicine at King’s College Hospital from 1898. He qualified with the conjoint examination in 1903 and went on to gain his MB BS in 1905. He was an assistant house surgeon and house physician at the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children, Southwark and then a house surgeon at King’s College Hospital and Warneford Hospital, Leamington. He then went to China as a medical missionary with the Baptist Missionary Society. From 1907 to 1916 he was a surgeon to the Peking Union Medical College and Hospital. While he was in Peking, he met and married, in January 1910, Emily Gertrude Meech, the daughter of the Reverend Samuel Evans Meech, a missionary with the London Missionary Society, and Edith Elizabeth Bagge Meech née Trankard. From 1917, Wheeler was a professor of surgery in the school of medicine at Shantung Christian University, Tsinan and head of the department of surgery. He was superintendent of the hospital from 1921 and gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1923. From 1918 to 1919 he served as a temporary captain in the RAMC in the No 3 Native Labour General Hospital (Chinese) for the British Expeditionary Force. He returned to England in the late 1920s, where he was in private practice in the High Street in Marlborough and as an honorary surgeon at Savernake Hospital, Marlborough. In December 1929, he was appointed by the Secretary of State for the Home Department as a medical referee under the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1925 for the districts of Bath, Calne, Chippenham, Devizes, Frome, Hungerford, Malmesbury, Marlborough, Melksham, Newbury, Swindon, Trowbridge and Warminster County Courts. Wheeler died at Savernake Hospital on 19 March 1965. His son, Robert Oliver Wheeler, born in 1915, also studied medicine at King’s, was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and became a medical officer at Savernake Hospital.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010239
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Lediard, Henry Ambrose (1847 - 1932)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-08-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004300-E004399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376523376523
Occupation General surgeon Public health officer
Details Born at Cirencester 12 November 1847 the third son and youngest child of Samuel Lediard, a solicitor, and Mary Croft Whatley, his wife. The Lediards were of the same family as Thomas Lediard, FRS, (1685-1743) the historian of Marlborough. H A Lediard entered Cheltenham College at Michaelmas term 1862 and left in 1865. He then went to study medicine at Edinburgh. Here he acted for two years as house surgeon at the old Infirmary to James Spence, became an ardent admirer of Syme and a disciple of Lister. In 1878 he was house surgeon at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, and at the end of his tenure of office came to London, where he was assistant medical officer to the Sick Asylum at Highgate and then to the Central London Sick Asylum at Cleveland Street. In 1880 he joined the firm of W B Page and J A Macdougall at Carlisle, bringing with him a recommendation from James Matthews Duncan. He was immediately appointed surgeon to the Cumberland Infirmary and held office until 1930, when he resigned and was elected consulting surgeon and vice-president. He also became surgeon to the London and North Western Railway, medical officer to the Post Office, and surgeon to the gaol. He married in May 1875 Elizabeth Ann Wright; she survived him with a daughter and died 22 June 1935. His elder daughter died during the war whilst serving as a VAD. He died at Woodview, Chatsworth Square, Carlisle on 31 October 1932 and was buried, after cremation at Darlington, in Crosthwaite churchyard near Keswick. A man of strong character, independent mind, and unconventional manners, Lediard did much for surgery in Carlisle and the surrounding district. He early mastered and practised the details of Listerian surgery and introduced the methods into the Carlisle Infirmary, where in 1897 he was instrumental in causing an X-ray apparatus to be installed. He had a highly cultivated mind and a discriminating judgement in matters of art and music. A lover of animals he detested the motor car and to the last drove about in a horse-drawn victoria, the last of its kind to be seen in the city and district. He excised successfully the artery and part of the vein for the cure of a popliteal aneurysm, but does not seem to have published the case. Publications: Ecchymoses from natural causes. *Med-Chir Trans* 1896, 79, 75-86. Case of successful excision of a subclavian aneurysm. *Trans Clin Soc Lond* 1900 33, 246. Acromegaly and operation for goitre. *Ibid* 1903, 36, 190. Melanotic sarcoma of choroid with metastases in liver and intestine. *Trans Ophthal Soc UK* 1912, 32, 239-244. Also other papers in the *Trans Clin Soc Lond* and the *Trans Ophthal Soc UK*, and articles on archaeological subjects.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004340
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Tomkins, John Newton (1812 - 1876)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-12-20
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/375461375461
Occupation Public health officer
Details Born at 76 Lombard Street, the second son of Samuel Tomkins, partner in the firm of Willis & Percival, and Eliza Alicia Isabella Smith, daughter of Edward Tyrrell Smith, a contemporary of Nelson. Tomkins was educated at St Thomas's Hospital, where he entered as a pupil of Joseph Henry Green, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, to whom £525 was paid as premium, and formed a close and life-long friendship with John Simon, afterwards Sir John Simon, KCB (qv). At St Thomas's he won the Cheselden Medal (silver). Through his excellence as an anatomist Tomkins was appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy to the Medical School of St Thomas's. At about this time he travelled in Germany and studied at Berlin and Heidelberg. He was always a good German scholar. In these days he became a fine microscopist, and at different times subsequently acquired some high-power microscope objectives - magnificent according to the standards of the past. His circle at St Thomas's was a very distinguished one, numbering such men as Green, Le Gros Clark, Simon, and J A Gillham (a Blackfriars neighbour, whom he succeeded at the Vaccine Institute). Tomkins held the Demonstratorship till some time before 1840, when he obtained the appointment of Inspector to the National Vaccine Establishment at 8 Russell Square and at 16 Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy Square. This was a Government appointment of importance. The emoluments attaching to his position were considered good £300 per annum, a spacious house, a manservant, coal, and gas. The duties attached were chiefly concerned with the inspection of vaccine. With the help of his microscopes the new Inspector examined specimens of the vaccine which it was his duty to send out for the Government to various Vaccination Stations throughout the country. In these examinations he was assisted by a favourite sister, mother of Victor G Plarr, Librarian to the Royal College of Surgeons of England. There can be no doubt that the comfortable official life now lived by Tomkins dimmed his ambitions, but he continued to be active in the world of microscopical discovery - for such it then was - and was consulted by the College Library Committee about the purchase of histological works, as Mr Chatto's letter-book proves. Whilst he was showing his microscopes once to the Prince Consort, the august visitor inquired of him: "Is that the body of the flea?" pronouncing the word 'body' to rhyme with 'toady'. The last phase of his life was one of melancholy and eccentricity. He continued to vaccinate and to distribute vaccine, but became strangely odd in his habits, spent all his leisure time like a character in Dickens at Jack Straw's Castle on Hampstead Heath, turned night into day, dined at midnight on a chop, took a midnight constitutional round Fitzroy Square, and ended by developing serious symptoms of heart disease, from which he succumbed in 1876. His portrait (a photograph) hangs in the Board Room at St Thomas's Hospital, where it was replaced - after being condemned - by the kind offices of H H Clutton (qv). There is also an admirable tinted pencil sketch, dated 1845, by Mrs Croudace.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003278
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Newman, Sir George (1870 - 1948)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-09-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004300-E004399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376568376568
Occupation Public health officer
Details Born 23 October 1870, the fourth child and second son of Henry Stanley Newman of Leominster, Herefordshire, and his wife Mary Anna Pumphrey. H S Newman edited the Quaker journal *The Friend* for many years. He was educated at Sidcot School, Winscombe, and Bootham School, York, at Edinburgh University, and at King's College, London. He won the Gunning scholarship in public health at Edinburgh in 1895 and took the Cambridge diploma in public health the same year. He was senior demonstrator of bacteriology and lecturer on infective diseases at King's College 1896-1900, and then concurrently medical officer of health to Finsbury and to Bedford county council. He was appointed the first chief medical officer to the Board of Education in 1907, under the Education Act passed by the new Liberal government. When the Ministry of Health was formed in 1919 under Dr Christopher Addison, MP, FRCS, out of the previous Local Government Board, Newman succeeded Sir Arthur Nowsholme as chief medical officer to the new Ministry also. He held both posts till his retirement in 1935. Newman did much by his administrative ability and his fluency and skill as a writer to develop and unify the new health service on wise lines. His official annual reports were inspiring and constructive documents. He also wrote a number of textbooks on bacteriology and hygiene, and in later life on the history of social medicine. From 1919 to 1939 he was a Crown nominee on the General Medical Council. He served on many special bodies, such as the Health of Munition Workers Committee (chairman 1914-18) which developed into the Industrial Health Research Board, and the Central Control Board of the Liquor Traffic; he was medical assessor to the University Grants Committee. Newman was honoured by many universities for his public work, and by the Royal College of Physicians, the Society of Apothecaries, King's College (Fellow), the Medical Society of London, and the New York Academy of Medicine. Though never having practised surgery, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the College in 1928 during the presidency of Lord Moynihan, of whom he was a close personal friend. Besides his medical and official work Newman played a leading part in the affairs of the Society of Friends. He was literary advisor and a trustee of his father's old paper *The Friend* for many years, and anonymous editor for forty years of *The Friends' Quarterly Examiner*, his regular contributions to which journal were very widely read. He took an active interest in the Westminster Adult School, and in the men's and women's clubs connected with the Westminster Meeting House in St Martin's Lane. He helped to form the Friends' Ambulance Units in the first and second world wars. Newman married in 1898 Adelaide Constance, daughter of Samuel Thorp of Alderley Edge. There were no children, and Lady Newman died in 1946. He died at Grims Wood, Harrow Weald, Middlesex on 26 May 1948, aged 77, after long illness. He was a man of forceful personality, devoted to his public duty and to the religious society of which he was a leading member.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004385
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Dyke, Thomas Jones (1816 - 1900)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-03-20
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003700-E003799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375907375907
Occupation General surgeon Public health officer
Details Was articled at the age of 15 years to David Davies, Surgeon to the Cyfarthfa Iron and Coal Works, Merthyr. At the end of the three years he entered as a student at Grainger's School in the Borough and was educated at the Borough Hospitals. He practised throughout his life at Merthyr Tydfil. The Public Health Act of 1848 gave permissive authority to Local Boards of Health to appoint a fit and proper person to act as Officer of Health to the district, but it was not until 1872 that such an appointment was made obligatory under sanitary authorities. From the days of the Health of Towns Commission, Dyke became an enthusiastic sanitarian, and by means of public lectures he succeeded in bringing home to his fellow-townsmen in Merthyr such a sense of their responsibilities in public health matters that in 1849 it was decided to form a Local Board of Health. Throughout the cholera epidemics of 1849 and 1854 Dyke acted as Medical Officer to the Board of Guardians. In the former year there were nearly 1700 fatal cases, and he himself was attacked by the malady. In 1863, nine years before the appointment was made compulsory, he was elected Medical Officer of Health to the Local Board at a modest salary of twenty guineas per annum, and in 1873 he was appointed to similar office by the Merthyr Rural Sanitary Authority, continuing an official under both bodies in their altered titles (Medical Officer of Health to the Urban and Rural Districts of the Borough of Merthyr Tydfil) until the day of his death. Dyke was a Fellow of the Incorporated Society of Medical Officers of Health and the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain, and a Member of the Epidemiological Society, British Medical Association, and Société française d'Hygiène. He was also a Certifying Factory Surgeon. In 1866 and 1867 he was High Constable of Merthyr. At the time of his death he was the oldest Freemason in Wales, having been initiated in the Loyal Cambrian Lodge No 110 in 1839; he acted as Secretary of the Lodge for twenty years. He had filled the office of Grand Senior Warden in the Provincial Grand Lodge of South Wales and Monmouthshire. During the last six years of his life he did not practise, but devoted himself entirely to his public health duties. He died at Merthyr on January 20th, 1900. Publications:- As a sanitarian of high authority and great initiative Dykes published:- *Annual Reports on the Sanitary Condition of Merthyr Tydfil, prepared for the Local Board of Health by their Medical Officer*, 1-14 (1865-78), 8vo, Merthyr Tydfil, 1866-79. *On the Downward Intermittent Filtration of Sewage, as it is Now in Practical Operation at Troedyrhiw, near Merthyr Tydfil*, 8vo, Merthyr Tydfil 1872; 2nd ed, 1872. *Forms for the Use of Officers of Health. No 7. Diary of Applications to, and Visits by, Medical Officers of Health*. 4to, Merthyr Tydfil 1873. *Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Habitations in the Parishes of Vaynor and Penderyn, and in the Hamlet of Rhigos, part of the District of the Rural Sanitary Board of the Merthyr Tydfil Union*, 1873, 8vo, Merthyr Tydfil, 1873. *Annual Reports on the Sanitary Condition of the Rural District of the Merthyr Tydfil Union to the Rural Sanitary Authority*, 1-6, 1873-8. 8vo, 1874-9. "On the Public Health Bill." - *Brit Med Jour*, 1872, i, 390. *The Work of a Medical Officer of Health, and How to Do it*, 8vo, Merthyr Tydfil, nd. A paper with the title "The Work of a Medical Officer in Health" appeared in the *Brit Med Jour*, 1872, ii, 543. "Missing Links in the Sanitary Administrative Service." - Leamington Congress, 1877. "On the Treatment of Cholera and Diarrhoea in 1832, 1849 and 1854." - *Med Times and Gaz*, 1866, ii, 128.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003724
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Murphy, Sir Shirley Forster (1848 - 1923)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-08-29
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002700-E002799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374964374964
Occupation Physician Public health officer
Details Born on May 21st, 1848, in London. He was educated at University College and studied at Guy's Hospital. After holding a hospital appointment in Manchester and being threatened with tuberculosis, he acted for two years as Surgeon on board the Peninsular and Oriental Company's ships. On his return he was appointed Assistant Medical Officer at the Metropolitan Asylums Board Hospital at Homerton, London. The hospital was then full of small-pox and typhoid, and these infectious cases and his experience there gained him in 1875 the post of Resident Medical Officer at the London Fever Hospital, when Broadbent and Cayley were Visiting Physicians, following Murchison and Sir William Jenner. He next succeeded Sir Thomas Stevenson as Medical Officer of Health for St Pancras at a time when typhoid fever raged in insanitary surroundings. Murphy found the Parish Vestries opponents of sanitary reform on the score of expense. Hence in 1884 Murphy resigned his appointment at St Pancras and, with one or two minor appointments, set up as a Public Health Consultant. He acted as Secretary of the Epidemiological Society, and as Secretary of the Society of Medical Officers of Health, and in this position originated discussions on milk infection, small-pox transmission, evidence for vaccination, periodicity of disease, epidemic diarrhoea of children, and the preparation of vaccine at the animal vaccine establishment in Lamb's Conduit Street. On the formation of the London County Council, Murphy was elected the first Medical Officer in 1887. The post required of its occupant the general surveillance of the public health work of other bodies, of the new Borough Councils, the work of co-ordination, consultation, standardization, or action, as complainant, referee, or as Court of Appeal. He instituted an efficient inspection of common lodgings, seamen's quarters, offensive businesses and trades, cowsheds, and insanitary areas. His reports covered a very wide ground. As evidence of the success of his administration during his twenty-two years' tenure of office, the death-rate in London from all causes declined from 20.1 to 14.6, the infant mortality from 152 to 113 per 1,000 births, and the deaths from the principal epidemic diseases from 5.57 to 2.98. Murphy's work was recognized by the Society of the Medical Officers of Health, which twice elected him President, the second time in 1905. In 1908 the Royal College of Physicians conferred on him the Bissett Hawkins Medal, and in 1921 the Epidemiological Society, of which he had been President in 1894-1895, awarded him the Jenner Medal. He retired from office in 1911, but on the outbreak of the War in 1914, as Lieutenant-Colonel RAMC (T), he was attached as specialist Sanitary Officer to the London Command, serving under successive Directors of Medical Services. He organized billeting, transport and arrival of troops, hygiene of quarters, and made provision for night shelters, and also dealt with problems relating to cerebrospinal fever and other epidemics. Soon after the War he began to suffer from attacks of neuralgia, but continued at work until a few days before his death, at 9 Bentinck Terrace, Regent's Park, London, NW, on April 27th, 1923. He married in 1880 Miss Ellen Theodore King, daughter of Henry S King, JP, and sister of Sir Henry Seymour King, KCIE. Lady Murphy, who had been his constant collaborator, survived him, with two daughters. His portrait accompanies the bibliography in the *Lancet* (1923, i, 927). In the *British Medical Journal* (1923, i, 790) Sir W W Hamer gave a full biography with valuable information as to his Reports. The *Index Catalogue of the Surgeon General's Library*, Series II, includes a long bibliography.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002781
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Fremantle, Sir Francis Edward (1872 - 1943)

2024-05-03T14:55:35Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-06-19
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004100-E004199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376294376294
Occupation General surgeon Politician Public health officer
Details Born in London on 29 May 1872, fourth son of the Very Rev the Hon William Henry Fremantle, Dean of Ripon, and Isabella, his wife, daughter of Sir Culling Eardley, 3rd Baronet, the religious philanthropist (for whom see *DNB*). The Dean was the second son of Thomas Francis Fremantle, 1st Lord Cottesloe (see *DNB*), who had been Secretary of War in 1844, and grandson of Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Francis Fremantle, GCB (see *DNB*), who commanded HMS *Neptune* at Trafalgar. Francis Fremantle was educated in College at Eton (King's Scholar 1886 election) and at Balliol College, Oxford, 1891-94, where he distinguished himself as an athlete and took second-class honours in physiology. He entered Guy's Hospital Medical School in 1895, qualified in 1897, and served as house physician under George Newton Pitt, MD, FRCP. In 1942 he was elected a Governor of the Hospital. During the Boer war he volunteered for active service in South Africa as a civil surgeon with the field force. He sent home to *Guy's Hospital Gazette*, which he had edited, trenchant letters on the medical administration of the army. On his return to England he published *Impressions of a doctor in khaki*, 1901, and was appointed assistant secretary to the Departmental Committee on the reorganization of the Army Medical Service. In 1902 he became Medical Officer of Health for Hertfordshire, where he had landed interests and subsequently inherited his mother's property of Bedwell Park, Hatfield; and in 1908 he became also Chief School Medical Officer for the county. In 1903, however, after taking the FRCS and the MCh, he went to India as Plague Medical Officer in the Punjab, and in 1904 was special correspondent of *The Lancet* at the Russo-Japanese war. He held a commission dated 1902 as surgeon-captain in the Herts Yeomanry and took a prominent part in the public life of the county. In 1906 he was adopted as prospective unionist candidate for the parliamentary constituency of Rotherhithe, but at the general election of 1910 was disqualified, as a public servant; this disability was later removed from Medical Officers of Health. He resigned the post of Medical Officer of Health in 1916 and was appointed Consulting Medical Officer of Health for Hertfordshire. In 1919 he was elected Conservative MP for St Albans, and was re-elected at subsequent general elections, for the last time in 1935 with a two to one majority of 17,510 votes. Meanwhile he again saw active service in the first world war, as DADMS (Sanitary) in Gallipoli, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was mentioned in despatches; he was created OBE in the birthday honours ("peace list") in 1919. He was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Hertfordshire in 1926, and was created a Knight Bachelor in 1932. He was a Justice of the Peace and held the Territorial Decoration. Fremantle took a full share of public and professional duties, inside and outside Parliament. He was elected FRCP in 1910 and served on the Council 1930-32. In 1920 he was president of the Incorporated Society of Medical Officers of Health, and in 1928 of the section of epidemiology and state medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine, and he was a vice-president of the Royal Sanitary Institute 1933-43. He was also a strong supporter of the Institute of District Nurses. He delivered the Jenner Lecture at Guy's Hospital, and examined for some years in public health for the final Oxford MB. He also took an active part in the work of the British Empire Cancer Campaign, the National Institute for the Deaf, the British Empire Leprosy Relief Association, the British Social Hygiene Council, and the Central Association for Mental Welfare. He served on the Central Medical War Committee and as chairman of its aliens' sub-committee did much for the benefit of refugee medical men during the Hitlerite terror in Europe. He was a promoter of the London School of Hygiene, and a member of its first Court of Governors. In the British Medical Association he was vice-president of the section of public health at the Glasgow meeting in 1922, and vice-president of the section of medical sociology at the Belfast meeting in 1937. He served on various special committees, on the Parliamentary sub-committee, and on the Central Emergency Committee at the time of the second world war; gave evidence on behalf of the Association before the Royal Commission on the Insurance Acts in 1924-25, and in 1938 was one of four medical MPs specially invited to address the annual Representative Meeting. From 1919 to 1921 he was a member of the London County Council and served as chairman of its housing committee. He was also chairman of the council of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association, and a director of Welwyn Garden City. Though personally a Conservative and elected on the party platform, he took an independent and idealistic view of the "doctor's mandate in Parliament" as he called it in his Chadwick lecture of 1936; and held himself to represent the special experience of the medical profession in its knowledge of the nation's health and way of life, with the widest reference to general policy and administration. He liked to think of himself as in the direct tradition of John Somerset, MD, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer and personal adviser to King Henry VI, the founder of Eton, forgetting perhaps that Somerset's advice was chiefly astrological. Fremantle spoke and wrote much on public health questions. In 1927 he published two books, constructively critical of current public health policy: *The Housing of the Nation* and *The Health of the Nation*, both with prefaces by Neville Chamberlain, then Minister of Health. He had previously published *A Traveller's study of Health and Empire*, but he was best known by his speeches and his frequent letters to *The Times*. For eighteen years (1925-43) he was chairman of the Unionist Health and Housing Committee, later called the Conservative Social Services Committee, of the House of Commons, and from 1923 he had been chairman of the Parliamentary Medical Committee, whose business lay very near his heart. He was a most assiduous and industrious Member, and one of the few for whom a special table was reserved in the library of the House of Commons. He was a member of Lord Trevethin's Committee on Venereal Diseases in 1923, served on the Industrial Health Research Board 1930-34, on the Departmental Committees on the Rent Restriction Acts in 1923, 1931, and 1937, and on that on the Midwives Act of 1908. He was a member of the Central Housing Committee of the Ministry of Health and of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Nursing Service. He also served on the Select Committee on Publications and House of Commons Debate Reports. He endeared himself to the House by occasional "spoonerisms", as when in a debate on birth control he mentioned "the sale of conservatives". In one of his last speeches, on 16 July 1943, he spoke earnestly of the causes and effects of a declining birth-rate. Fremantle was an active Churchman, a member of the St Albans diocesan conference and of the Church Assembly. He addressed the Modern Churchman's Conference at Oxford in the summer of 1943 not long before his death, on "The layman's rights and duties". Fremantle married in 1905 Dorothy Marion Travers, only daughter of Henry Joseph Chinnery, of Frigford Manor, Bicester. Lady Fremantle survived him with one son, Lieutenant-Colonel David Fremantle. He died suddenly at Bedwell Park, Hatfield, on 26 August 1943, aged 71, and was buried at Essendon, Hertfordshire. A memorial service was held in St Albans Abbey. His principal writings are mentioned above.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004111
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset