D'Arcy Power

“ Sir William Bowman was the father of general anatomy in England, and the brilliant results of his investigations into the structure of the eye, of the kidney, and of the striped muscles were of themselves sufficient to establish a reputation of the highest order. But Bowman had other and equal claims to distinction, for his practical gifts were as great and as fruitful as his scientific attainments. As an ophthalmic surgeon he occupied a unique position. ”

“ In the early stages of a disease so insidious as cancer there are always sufficient grounds to base diametrically opposite views of the cause producing the patient's symptoms. In the case of the emperor, of Germany, Mackenzie chose to take the more hopeful view, stating at the time of his first visit to Berlin that it was impossible to decide on the nature of the disease. The English physician doubtless found on reaching the German court that he was the object of some jealousy, and this feeling was rapidly intensified by the aggressive manner which he assumed in self-defence. ”

“ Clutton was imbued with the modern spirit which bases surgery on pathology and not merely on anatomy. Diseases of the bones and joints more especially interested him, and he was one of the earliest surgeons to recognise the importance of the active treatment of middle-ear disease. ”

“ As a teacher of surgical anatomy Wormald has seldom been surpassed; as a surgeon he was a perfect assistant, while his mechanical genius enabled him to excel in the manipulative parts of his art. His surgical teaching was strictly clinical. ”

“ Roberts was an able physician, whose work covered a wide field, dealing with histology, physiology, and practical medicine. He was one of the first physicians in this country to show that a sound knowledge of physiology might be turned to excellent account in the treatment of disease, for it is to his especial honour that he introduced the practice of feeding invalids with foods digested outside the body a method which has proved of the utmost service and has saved very many lives. ”

“ He lived in Sunderland until shortly before his death, when he took a farm at Bishopwearmouth. He was surgeon to the Sunderland Eye Infirmary and consulting surgeon to the Seaham Infirmary.
Orton, although only locally conspicuous in his lifetime, brought about, by his energy, changes which affected the whole empire. Throughout his life he was a busy medical practitioner and an active reformer. Sunderland owes to his initiative its system of lighting by gas, its water-supply, its public baths, its library, and its institute. But his services were not confined to Sunderland. ”

“ He wished to give every medical graduate of Oxford an opportunity of gaining the wide culture for which the university has long been famed. He maintained that it was the function of the university to give a liberal education in 'arts,' and that all the sciences ancillary to medicine could be well and profitably taught within its walls. He was of opinion, however, that purely professional medical studies could be pursued to greater advantage in the metropolis and other large centres of population than in Oxford. ”

“ As an organiser he formed one of the band who built up the fortunes of the medical school at Liverpool, landing it a provincial school and at a very low ebb Banks and his associates raised it by dint of hard work first to the rank of a medical college and finally to that of a well-equipped medical faculty of a modern university. ”

“ Liston's claim to remembrance is based upon the marvellous dexterity with which he used the surgeon's knife, and upon the profound knowledge of anatomy which enabled him to operate successfully in cases from which other surgeons shrank. Living at a time immediately antecedent to the introduction of anæsthetics, he appears to have attained to a dexterity in the use of cutting instruments which had probably never been equalled, and which is unlikely to be surpassed. ”

“ He not merely came to be facile princeps in his own branch of surgery ; his zeal for hygiene made him a pioneer of cremation ; he was at the same time an authority on diet, a devoted student of astronomy, an excellent artist, a collector of china, and a man of letters.
To the subject of cremation Thompson first drew attention in England by an article in the 'Contemporary Review' in 1874. Experiments had been recently made in Italy, but a cremation society, the first of its kind in Europe, was founded in London, chiefly by Thompson's energy, in 1874. ”

“ Edwin Chadwick [q.v. Suppl.] , Sir John Simon, and George Buchanan raised England to the high position she holds among the nations of the world as an exponent of sanitary science. Buchanan in particular is remarkable for the services he rendered to medicine and pathology as well as to hygiene, by the indefatigable industry with which he collected and the keen criticism with which he sifted facts as well as by the scientific insight with which he interpreted their exact meaning. ”

“ MACKENZIE, WILLIAM (1791–1868) , surgeon, born in Queen Street, Glasgow, on 29 April 1791, was son of James Mackenzie, a muslin manufacturer (d. 1800) . He was educated in the grammar school and in the university of his native town. He then turned his attention for a short time to theology, intending to become a minister of the church of Scotland, but in 1810, abandoning divinity, he began the study of medicine in the university of Glasgow and in the Royal Infirmary of that city. ”

“ Pavy then served as house surgeon and house physician at Guy's Hospital, and in 1853 he went to Paris and joined the English Medical Society of Paris, of which he became a vice-president. The society met in a room near the Luxembourg and owned a small library. It was the rendezvous of the English medical students, where they met weekly to read papers and to report interesting cases. In Paris Pavy came more especially under the influence of Claude Bernard, who was at this time giving a course of experimental lectures on the role and nature of glycogen and the phenomena of diabetes. ”

“ He held a high position among the physicians who devoted themselves to the treatment of insanity, and Sir James Crichton Browne, F.R.S., says of him, ‘For twenty years he was the acknowledged and dignified head of his department in this country, and mingled on an equal footing with all the finest intellects of his times.’ He took an enlightened view of the method to be adopted in the treatment of patients under his care, and thought that the more wealthy among them should be nursed and cared for in houses of their own, that they might enjoy life as far as possible. ”

“ In 1894, as president of the psychological section of the British Medical Association, he delivered an address on the prevention of insanity, in wlu'ch he made an important pronouncement on the development of neurotic affections attributable to the increased demands of modern life on the nervous system; he was of opinion that no man or woman should marry who has had an attack of insanity. ”

“ Gradually he became known, first to professional circles as one of the most profound anatomists and best lecturers in London, then as an organiser of rare energy and power, and lastly to the general public as a most accomplished surgeon and admirable operator. ”

“ Throughout life he remained a student, and even to the last week he was at work in the laboratory which he had built at the back of his consulting room in Grosvenor Street. Quiet in bearing, gentle and courteous in speech, and with a somewhat old-fashioned formality of manner, he was generous in his benefactions. ”

“ Thorne ranks as one of the foremost exponents of the science of public health, both at home and abroad, and he worthily filled the position occupied in succession by Sir Edwin Chadwick, Sir John Simon, and Sir George Buchanan. His acumen first proved that, as had long been suspected, typhoid fever was a water-borne disease. It was his energy that gave an impulse to the establishment of hospitals for the isolation of infectious disease, which are now common in every part of the country. ”

“ He was appointed in 1893 Surgeon-in-Ordinary to the duke of Edinburgh when he became duke of Saxe-Coburg. Cooper was knighted at King Edward VII's coronation in 1902.
Cooper, whose social qualities were linked with fine traits of character and breadth of view, gained a wide knowledge of the world, partly at courts, partly in the out-patient rooms of hospitals, and partly in the exercise of a branch of his profession which more than any other reveals the frailty of mankind. ”

“ Pavy was the last survivor of a line of distinguished physician-chemists who did much to lay the foundations and advance the study of metabolic disorders; at the same time he ranks as a pioneer amongst the chemical pathologists of the modern school. As a pupil of Claude Bernard he recognised that all advances in the study of disease must rest upon investigations into the normal processes of the body ”

“ He enjoyed being in a minority, and this led him to champion many lost causes. As a surgeon he simplified and perfected the technique and greatly enlarged the scope of abdominal surgery. The pioneers in this department of surgery had almost limited themselves to the diseases of the ovaries and uterus; but Tait's consummate operative skill, coupled with his power of generalisation, enabled him to extend the range of uterine surgery and to apply its principles, until now nearly every abdominal organ can be successfully explored and treated by the surgeon. ”

“ Paget was a surgeon who advanced his art by showing how pathology might be applied successfully to elucidate clinical problems, when as yet there was no science of bacteriology. He may therefore be fairly considered as one of the links connecting Hunterian surgery with the developments which have taken place during the last quarter of a century, owing to a recognition of the part played by micro-organisms in the production of disease. ”

“ Research was Gamgee's main interest through life. His intimate knowledge of physics and chemistry was linked with experience of German methods which he had gained more especially in the laboratories of his life-long friend, W. Kühne, the professor of physiology at Heidelberg. Whilst lecturing at Manchester Gamgee prepared a translation of Ludimar Hermann's 'Grundriss der Physiologic des Menschen' from the fifth German edition. ”

“ Rutherford was much influenced by the perfect lucidity which was his master's chief characteristic. But he added to it the labour of research and preparation, so that his four years' assistantship established his reputation as a practical teacher, and, combined with his original investigations, procured for him the post of professor of physiology in King's College, London, to which he was appointed in 1869. ”

“ Mitchell Banks deserves recognition as a surgeon and as a great organiser. To his advocacy is largely due the modern operation for removal of cancer of the breast. He practised and recommended in the face of strenuous opposition an extensive operation with removal of the axillary glands when most surgeons were contented with the older method of partial removal. ”

“ In Birmingham he soon made a name for himself as a bold surgeon, an aggressive enemy, and an original thinker. He was a lecturer on physiology at the Midland Institute from 1871 to 1879, where his teaching of the Darwinian theory of evolution excited from time to time much public opposition. He was elected, after examination, a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 8 June 1871, and in the following month he was appointed surgeon to the newly founded Hospital for Diseases of Women, a post he held until 1893, when he was elected a member of the consulting staff. ”

“ Crawford, principal medical officer of the British forces in India, he drew up a report, known as the Crawford-Cuningham commission, for the complete amalgamation of the army medical department and the Indian medical service, which, issued in August 1881, was rejected by the war office. Cuningham left India on 4 April 1885, and on 16 June 1885 he was made C.S.I. He was appointed honorary surgeon to Queen Victoria on 15 Aug. 1888, and from 1891 to 1896 was on the army sanitary committee, representing India in 1894 at the international sanitary conference at Paris. ”

“ An admirable teacher, he did much to convert the Leeds medical school into a worthy integral part of the university. In 1876 he advocated that form of external urethrotomy for impermeable strictures to which his name is given; it has displaced all rival methods. ”

“ In 1872 he left Paris and once more settled as a physician in New York, where he married a second American lady, by whom he had one daughter. He founded at this time the 'Archives of Scientific and Practical Medicine,' in which he published his first paper on the subject of inhibition. Three years later he finally left New York, and resided for a time in London. In 1875 he returned to Paris, and, after declining a nomination to the chair of physiology at Glasgow in 1876, he accepted in 1877 a similar other in the more genial climate of Geneva. ”