Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Writer

First Title value, for Searching Hussein, Mohamed Kamel (1901 - 1977)

2024-05-10T12:15:24Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2011-12-21 2014-11-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001800-E001899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373991373991
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Writer
Details Mohamed Kamel Hussein was professor of orthopaedic surgery at Kasr El Ainy Medical School, Cairo, and was known in Egypt as the 'father of orthopaedics'. He was born in Cairo on 20 March 1901, the third child of Mohamed Aly Hussein, a school teacher. After his parents died, Hussein was brought up by his older brother. He studied medicine in Cairo, where he was always top of his class, and qualified MB BS in 1923. He was then picked to travel to England for postgraduate studies and gained his FRCS in 1928. Back in Cairo, he was appointed to the teaching staff of Kasr El Ainy Medical School. He was then once again chosen to study in the UK: he studied orthopaedics in Liverpool and obtained his MCh. On returning to Cairo, he began an orthopaedic training programme at the Kasr El Ainy Hospital, Fouad I University, now known as Cairo University. He also founded the Egyptian Red Crescent Hospital and began an accident and emergency service, the first of its kind in Egypt and the Middle East. He was the founder of the Egyptian Orthopaedic Association and was elected as its first president. He served in this role from 1948 to 1967. He was also chief editor of its scientific journal. He was also an accomplished and prolific writer. He studied Arabic in depth and published many poems and short stories, along with studies of linguistics and grammar. His best-known book *City of wrong -a Friday in Jerusalem* (Geoffrey Bles, 1959), translated into English and six other languages, won a prestigious national prize in literature. He was also interested in medical history, particularly the history of Arabic medicine, and wrote about the great Arabic polymath Al-Razi. He also published a translation of the Edwin Smith Papyrus on ancient Egyptian traumatology. He was unmarried, but he shared a home with his sister, whose husband had died young, and her children. Mohamed Kamel Hussain died in 1977.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001808
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Townesend, Stephen Chapman (1860 - 1914)

2024-05-10T12:15:24Z

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/375468375468
Occupation Actor General surgeon Writer
Details The son of a rector in London; educated at St Bartholomew's Hospital and the University of Edinburgh. He was at various times Surgeon on the Orient Steamship Company's line, House Surgeon at St Mark's Hospital, London, and at the General Hospital, Birmingham. He was also a Lecturer on First Aid to the London County Council. For many years he practised in Burleigh Street, Covent Garden, WC, and latterly at 5 Crown Office Row, Temple, EC. He was on the stage for a time under the name of Will Dennis, and played the leading part in *The Showman's Daughter*, 1892; created the role in *Sowing the Wind*, *The Black Domino*, *Dick Sheridan*, *Slaves of the Ring*, and *The Black Tulip*. He was keenly interested in drama and for many years encouraged and assisted the Amateur Dramatic Society of St Bartholomew's Hospital. He was travelling medical attendant to the invalid son of Frances Hodgson Burnett, the authoress who wrote *Little Lord Fauntleroy*, and afterwards married her. With her he was part author of *Nixie* and *A Lady of Quality*. He died at Colney Heath, St Albans, from pneumonia, on May 17th or 23rd, 1914. Publications: *Dr Tuppy*. *Katherine O'Neill*. *A Leaf from. a Hospital Day Book*. *Peep Show Vivisection*.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003285
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Du Preez, Hercules Michael (1935 - 2019)

2024-05-10T12:15:24Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2019-06-28 2022-11-03
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009600-E009699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/382464382464
Occupation Urological surgeon Writer General surgeon
Details Michael Du Preez (he did not use ‘Hercules’) was born in Cape Town on 19 November 1935, the son of Hercules James Du Preez, a company director, and his wife Josephine Florence née Koll. Educated at Rondebosch Boy’s School from 1944 to 1952, he proceeded to study medicine at the University of Cape Town in 1953 and graduated MB, ChB in 1958. While there he was particularly inspired by the work of professors Jannie Louw, Bill Hoffenberg and Christiaan Barnard. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1963 and proceeded to train as a urological surgeon in England, working in London at St Thomas’ Hospital and the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. On his return to South Africa in 1968 he worked as a consultant urologist at the Groote Schuur Hospital and senior lecturer in urology at the University of Cape Town Medical School. From 1970 to 1993 he continued this work part-time and built up a private practice. He also spent four years as a lecturer in anatomy at the College of Surgeons of South Africa. In 1994 he travelled to Bahrain, working as senior consultant urologist and head of urological services at the International Hospital of Bahrain. The following year he became consultant urologist at the Armed Forces Hospital in Khamis Mushait, Saudi Arabia, retiring in 2001. In a *Potted Biography* that he submitted to the college he put that *Virtually all of this time [his working life] was spent in academic activities.....and travels related to his profession have taken him to Scotland, England, the USA, Germany, Portugal, France, Egypt and Turkey*. Of his interests he wrote that they: *include an appreciation of fine art, a lifelong interest in photography, architecture and heraldry – he designed a coat of arms for the medical school as well as for the Red Cross Hospital. Kite flying, music – specifically the cello – the growing and exhibition of roses and the breeding and showing of dogs (chow chows) may....be added to the preceding. In respect of sporting activities, he represented his school in tennis and hockey, and his university at golf, but for the past fifty years it has been sailing, both inshore and offshore racing and latterly long distance cruising....He has been a certificated scuba diver..* In 1986 he sailed the family yacht accompanied by his wife and daughters across the Atlantic via the Azores and also cruised the entire length of the Mediterranean to Turkey. He married Angela Jane née Kay, a public relations consultant and function organiser, on 6 June 1965. They had two daughters; Camilla Jane (born on 26 September 1967) who became an interior designer and Eugénie Josephine (born 17 June 1970) who became an accountant. On retirement in Cape Town he worked for over ten years researching a biography of James Barry. With the assistance of Jeremy Dronfield, the book was published as *Dr James Barry; a woman ahead of her time* by Simon and Schuster in 2016. It was very well received and became, among other acknowledgements, *Sunday Times Book of the Year*. Michael explained that his interest in Barry was kindled by his father during his childhood and reawakened by the research for a paper he presented at a London meeting of the college’s Senior Fellows Society in 2002. He died on 22 April 2019 aged 83.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009618
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Wilson, John Robinson (1919 - 1973)

2024-05-10T12:15:24Z

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/378460378460
Occupation General surgeon Journalist Writer
Details John Robinson Wilson was born in Leeds on 19 November 1919, and was educated at Stonyhurst College and Leeds University where he qualified with the Conjoint Diploma and the University MB ChB in 1943. He held house appointments at Leeds and Sheffield, and then spent two years as a ship's doctor in the Orient line. He returned to Leeds as surgical registrar at St James's Hospital, held a similar appointment at Bradford Infirmary and took the FRCS in 1951. The following year he worked as surgical registrar at the West London Hospital, but for the rest of his life he abandoned clinical work for medical journalism and novel writing under the pen-name of John Rowan Wilson. In 1954 he was appointed to the international clinical research staff of Lederle Laboratories, and in 1958 became medical director of the company in the United Kingdom. From 1962 till 1965 he was assistant editor of the *British medical journal*, but resigned in order to devote more time to his novels and to become international editor of *World medicine*. In 1971 and 1972 he assisted Dr Hugh Clegg to launch the new journal *Tropical doctor*, subsequently taking over the editorship when Dr Clegg retired. Wilson had a unusually critical mind and a brilliant personality, and although he ridiculed human follies he was always so fair-minded that he attracted many friends. He owed a great deal to the devotion and support of his wife Sheila who survived him when he died suddenly on 22 May 1973 while on holiday in Cyprus.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006277
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Le Vay, Abraham David (1915 - 2001)

2024-05-10T12:15:24Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-13 2015-12-16
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008700-E008799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380918380918
Occupation Historian Orthopaedic surgeon Writer
Details David Le Vay was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Woolwich Brook Memorial Hospital, and a writer and linguist. He was born in London on 14 May 1915, the son of Montague Le Vay, a retailer, and Eva née Goldstein. He was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School, in Hampstead, from which he entered University College London as the Bucknill scholar. After qualifying, he completed junior posts at the Royal Free Hospital, demonstrated anatomy at Cambridge, and was a registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He entered the RAMC as an orthopaedic specialist and, on demobilisation, was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to Woolwich Brook Memorial Hospital. In 1960, he was seconded for a year to the World Health Organization in Geneva, and in 1973 spent a year as Visiting Professor of Surgery at the Pahlavi University Medical School in Shiraz, Iran. After retirement, he continued to work for long spells in Australia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Ireland. He was a talented linguist and had a parallel career as a medical author, biographer and historian. He wrote *A history of orthopaedic surgery* (Carnforth, Parthenon, 1990), biographies of Hugh Owen Thomas and Alexis Carrel, and numerous textbooks, including the popular *Human anatomy and physiology*, part of the Teach Yourself series (London, English Universities Press, 1974), which continued to be in demand for more than half a century. He translated innumerable medical textbooks into and from German, Latin, Spanish and French, as well as the novels of Colette and Joseph Roth. His publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, arranged a dinner to celebrate David being their longest continually published author. He married Marjorie Cole in 1940, and, in 1957, Sonja Hansen. From these two marriages he had two daughters and nine sons, one of whom became a research neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School. He was married four times in all. He died on 16 July 2001.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008735
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Keynes, William Milo (1924 - 2009)

2024-05-10T12:15:24Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2010-10-13
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001000-E001099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373218373218
Occupation General surgeon Medical editor Writer
Details William Milo Keynes was an honorary consultant surgeon at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and subsequently a writer and medical editor. He was born on 9 August 1924, the third son of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, a former vice president of the College, and Margaret Elizabeth née Darwin, a descendant of Charles Darwin. Milo was the only one of Sir Geoffrey’s sons who followed him into surgery. (The only other son in a related discipline was Richard, who became professor of physiology at Cambridge.) Milo Keynes was educated at Oundle in Northamptonshire. With family connections in Cambridge – both civic (his paternal grandfather had been mayor) and academic (through his economist uncle, Maynard), the city inevitably became a magnet and Milo chose to study at Trinity College. The cultural and artistic life he enjoyed whilst an undergraduate was cast aside somewhat reluctantly when he went to his father’s hospital (St Bartholomew’s) in London for his clinical studies. There he won the Shuter scholarship in anatomy and physiology (in 1945) and then went on to obtain the Brackenbury scholarship in surgery (in 1948). Following a house appointment on the surgical unit at St Bartholomew’s under Paterson Ross, he spent four years in Cambridge as a demonstrator in anatomy, and then carried out his National Service in the Air Force (from 1950 to 1952). In 1953, he returned to St Bartholomew’s Hospital as a junior registrar. At the end of this appointment, in 1954, he was awarded an Arris and Gale lectureship at the College. He then returned to Cambridge, as a surgical registrar, before leaving on a Nuffield Foundation medical fellowship to Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. On his return to the UK, he was a senior surgical registrar at St Bartholomew’s, a post which was combined with a research assistantship at St Mark’s. He then became a senior lecturer in surgery at the London Hospital under Victor Dix, from which he went to the Nuffield department of surgery at the University of Oxford as a first assistant, and as an honorary consultant in surgery at the Radcliffe Infirmary. In 1973, he migrated back to Cambridge, where he was a part-time clinical anatomist. While in his Cambridge post, he became an editor of medical books for William Heinemann publishers, and developed a career as a writer and historian. He wrote books on, among other subjects, the history of science, on Isaac Newton, and on Mendelism in human genetics. He edited a book of essays on his uncle, John Maynard Keynes, and wrote a biography of his uncle’s wife, Lydia Lopokova. Milo Keynes died on 18 February 2009.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001035
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Abraham, James Johnston (1876 - 1963)

2024-05-10T12:15:24Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-12-20
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004800-E004899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377005377005
Occupation General surgeon Medical Officer Writer
Details Born on 16 August 1876, eldest son of William Abraham JP of Coleraine Co. Derry, he was educated at Coleraine Academy and at Trinity College Dublin, where he was senior moderator and won the gold medal for natural science. At the same time he showed his literary bent by winning prizes for literature and was in two minds whether to take up a career in medicine or in literature. After graduation he came to London in 1901, was appointed house surgeon at the West London Hospital and commenced working for the Primary FRCS. After passing, he was advised by a chest specialist to get away for six months and therefore signed on as ship's surgeon in the SS *Clytemnestra* bound from Liverpool to Yokohama. On his return he was appointed resident medical officer at the London Lock Hospital and in due course wrote a thesis on his experience with the Wassermann reaction which gained him his MD. Meanwhile he had contributed short articles to medical journals and wrote a novel dealing with hospital life. On the rejection of this by Fisher Unwin, he decided to write about his voyage to the Far East; *The Surgeon's Log* was published by Chapman and Hall in 1911 and immediately became a best seller. This led him to revise his original novel *The Night Nurse*, eventually published in 1913. In the same year he was appointed assistant surgeon to the Princess Beatrice Hospital. In the war of 1914-18, on being rejected by the RAMC on grounds of age, he joined the Red Cross in Serbia and worked in hospital at Skopje, having to grapple with, among other problems, a violent epidemic of typhus. On his return to England as a decorated Captain in the Serbian Army he was appointed Captain in the RAMC in 1916, serving first at Millbank Military Hospital and later at a base hospital in Egypt. From 1917 to 1919 he acted as ADMS in Allenby's force and served in Macedonia, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, being awarded the DSO and later the CBE, being mentioned in dispatches three times. He returned to work as surgeon to Princess Beatrice and the London Lock hospitals. Throughout his life he continued his interest in both medicine and literature, writing under the pseudonym of James Harpole. He was chairman of Heinemann's medical publications and of the library committee of the Athenaeum. He retired from active surgical practice in 1943 after a serious operation for duodenal haemorrhage. He was Vicary Lecturer at the College in 1943 and was appointed a Hunterian Trustee in 1954. On 21 April 1920 he married Lilian Angela, eldest daughter of Dr Alexander Francis, who survived him with a daughter. He died at Campden Hill Court, London on 9 August 1963 within a week of his eighty-seventh birthday. Mrs Abraham died on 4 January 1969. Principal publications: *A surgeon's log* London, 1911, subsequently translated into German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. *The night nurse* London, 1913, subsequently filmed in America. *Lettsom, his life and times* Heinemann, London, 1933. *A surgeon's journey, autobiography* London, 1957.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004822
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Spittel, Richard Lionel (1881 - 1969)

2024-05-10T12:15:24Z

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/378290378290
Occupation General surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon Writer
Details Richard Lionel Spittel was born on 9 December 1881 in Tangalle, a town on the south coast of Ceylon, where his father Dr F G Spittel was stationed at that time as Government Medical Officer. He entered the Ceylon Medical College at the turn of the century, and qualified LMS Ceylon in 1905. He entered the Government Service and was appointed house surgeon to the second surgeon of the General Hospital, Colombo, Dr S C Paul. After serving this appointment, Spittel left for England and joined King's College, London and the London Hospital. He returned to Ceylon on 25 January 1910, with the qualification FRCS, and was appointed third surgeon at the General Hospital Colombo. Spittel threw himself whole heartedly into his new duties, but tragedy was soon to overtake him. On 10 April of that year he was stricken with septicaemia. The excruciating pain from cellulitis of his left arm, the reddened tender tag of skin overhanging his left thumb nail gave evidence of the route of the infection, and he recollected with dread that he had dressed a case of erysipelas eighteen hours earlier. He was semi-conscious on the second week of this illness and spent four months on a water bed, in continued pain which only morphia could relieve. He returned to work on 17 February 1911, with an ankylosed left shoulder. He had had from boyhood a disability at his left elbow from a fracture which limited the movement of this elbow. These two physical disabilities would have daunted most men, but Spittel returned to his duties with zest. Although the long list of operations at each session at the General Hospital made severe demands on his strength Spittel never once failed to complete his lists. He was meticulous in regard to his duties and devoted the same care and attention to the cases in his ulcer ward, as he did to what others call the "interesting case". It was in his ulcer ward that he observed the beneficial cleansing effects of maggots in festering sores. This observation long antedated the reports of this in the literature. It was in the ulcer ward that he observed the lesions of *Framboesia tropica*. These observations were set forth in his book *Framboesia tropica* which was, and still is, a standard text. In his teaching, he gave as much attention to the apothecary students who did a short two years course at the Ceylon Medical College, as he did to the medical students. His book *Essentials of surgery* was written for the apothecary students. It is not a synopsis of elementary surgery; it is a masterly account of the principles of surgery and it had a wide appeal. Miss Claribel Van Dort was a fellow student with Spittel at the Ceylon Medical College. After qualification he suddenly fell in love with her, but waited six long years before he proposed marriage and was accepted. They had two daughters, one died at two years of age, and the other, Mrs Christine Wilson, survived him. She inherited her father's gift for writing, and has many books to her credit. Father and daughter together wrote the novel *Brave island*. After his severe illness, needing a break from time to time from his arduous duties as surgeon, Spittel took to making trips to the jungles of Ceylon, and inspired by Seligman's work on the Veddahs, he sought out these people in their remote forests, where they still lived in the bow and arrow age. Spittel lived in the jungle with the Veddahs, he treated their ailments, he learnt their jungle lore. He was loved by them and they looked to him as their white chief. It was Spittel's interest in the wild life of Ceylon and in the Veddahs that brought out his gift as a writer. His novels - *Wild Ceylon, Far off things, Savage sanctuary, Where the white sambur roams, Wild white boy* and *Leaves of the jungle*, a book of poems, gave Spittel a place in English literature. After the first world war Spittel had been to England and Europe from time to time and on his return from these visits, he revitalised the surgery of Ceylon. He introduced rubber gloves, he persuaded the Director of Medical Services to provide shadowless lamp and pedestal operating tables in the operating theatres. Inspired by Gillies's work at Sidcup, he introduced plastic surgery to Ceylon. He introduced the 'no touch technique' and for this designed a combined needle holder and scissors for introducing the cutting sutures. He had successfully fused spines with bone chips, before the advent of the Albee spinal fusion operation with bone grafts, and he enthusiastically took to the Albee operation when it came out. He was a great surgeon. A frail man with the heart of a lion he accomplished a great deal in his life. His name will always be linked with that of his motherland Ceylon. He died peacefully on 3 September 1969, aged 87 years.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006107
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Cope, Sir Vincent Zachary (1881 - 1974)

2024-05-10T12:15:24Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-20
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/378529378529
Occupation General surgeon Writer
Details Vincent Zachary Cope, surgeon, author, historian and poet was born in Hull, on 14 February 1881; John Hunter's birthday, a coincidence which must have given him much pleasure later in life. He was the youngest of the ten children of Thomas John Cope, a Methodist minister, and his wife Celia Anne Crowle. They had four other sons, one of whom, Gilbert, also became a doctor, and an MRCS. The family moved to London in 1890, where Cope spent the rest of his long life, except for his military service. He was educated at Westminster School, where as head boy in 1899 he was awarded the gold medal, and the next year gained an entrance scholarship to St Mary's Hospital Medical School, soon coming under the influence of Augustus Desire Waller, the inventor of the electrocardiograph, and Almroth Wright, the first clinical immunologist. Other close contemporaries include Alexander Fleming, whose own surgical aspirations, it is said, were checked by Cope's brilliance and energy; Bernard Spilsbury, Charles Wilson, (later Lord Moran), Aleck Bourne, C. Aubrey Pannett, John Freeman and Leonard Colebrook. In 1905 Cope qualified MB BS (Hons), with distinction in surgery and in forensic medicine, and became house physician to Dr David Lees, a deeply religious man, author of a book *The abdominal inflammations* which may have influenced him towards a lifelong interest which was later to bring world fame. Lees advised him to 'Be a physician first, then a surgeon'. Cope rose through the junior appointments, and was elected assistant surgeon in 1911. The following year he joined the staff of the Bolingbroke Hospital. He was a popular clinical bedside teacher, much missed when he joined the RAMC in 1914 in the 3rd London General Hospital. In 1916 he went to Mesopotamia where he was until 1919, for much of the time in Baghdad, being mentioned in despatches. Concern for the troops with dysentery, stimulated him to write his first book *Surgical aspects of dysentery* published in 1921, his masterpiece, *The early diagnosis of the acute abdomen* followed in 1922. This unique contribution went to fourteen editions during the next 50 years of his lifetime and by 1983, there were two more. The secret of its success lay in the simplicity of his clinical observations based on his own experience, recorded in lucid, and lively prose, he was then 41 years of age. Cope's first wife, Dora Newth, whom he married in his qualifying year, died in 1922, there were no children of this marriage. In 1923 he found happiness again with his second wife, Alice Mary Watts, who bore him a daughter. He liked to live close to his work, first near Hampstead Heath, and after his wife's death in 1944, at Chiltern Court, Baker Street, like H G Wells and Arnold Bennett. This need to be near the centre of activities explains his close familiarity with early abdominal cases; for he was within walking distance of St Mary's. He could also walk to the Royal Society of Medicine, where, long after his retirement he was often to be seen researching in the Library, and the nearby Medical Society of London, at which he was successively Lettsomian Lecturer (1933), President (1939) and Orator (1944). In the years between the wars, besides his dedicated clinical teaching and operative work, he was a member of the Court of Examiners, later being elected to Council in 1940. He is well depicted in the painting by Henry Can, at the College: leaning back, and looking up in the serious, good humoured way that endeared him to colleagues, students and patients alike. He was a small man, quieter and calmer than many and used a wooden stool upon which to stand and operate, known as Mr Cope's box. His happy knack of compiling light verse with a serious message led him to write *The acute abdomen* in rhyme under the pen name Zeta. His speech to the Council Dining Club was likewise delivered in verse. The outbreak of the second world war kept him in harness beyond his retirement age, serving the group of hospitals based on St Mary's. When at last he could retire, he was editor of the volumes on surgery and pathology in the medical history of the second world war. As Vice- President of the College he gave the Bradshaw Lecture in 1949. Other works from this later period were his biographies of Florence Nightingale (1958), and Cheselden (1953); *The history of St Mary's Medical School* (1954) and *The history of the Royal College of Surgeons of England* (1959). He was knighted in 1953. Though his later years were clouded by his failing sight, his Oxford family supported his reading and writing, keeping him in touch with surgery and surgeons everywhere, especially those whose own careers he had helped. He died peacefully on 26 December 1974, soon after the last Christmas in which he was able to send his annual poetic greeting to the staff and patients of his ward at St Mary's. The Zachary Cope Memorial Lecture keeps alive his interest in abdominal surgical disease at the College.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006346
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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