D'Arcy Power

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In early life he allowed the advantages of chloroform anæsthesia to be demonstrated upon himself, his father being the operator. He began to practise in Glasgow, but in 1856 went to the Crimea as a civil surgeon. He returned to Glasgow at the end of the war, and was one of the first to practise there purely as a consulting surgeon. In 1860, when he succeeded his father as professor of anatomy in the Andersonian University, he was also appointed surgeon to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ From Vienna he went to Berlin to study diseases of the eye under Juengken, of the ear under Kramer, and organic chemistry under Simon; finally he passed to Dublin to benefit by the instruction of Graves, Stokes, Corrigan, and Marsh. Having started practice in Liverpool, in 1843 he was there persuaded by Drysdale to study homœopathy. The ‘British Journal of Homœopathy’ was first issued in this year, and Dudgeon translated for it German articles. After a second sojourn in Vienna to follow the homœopathic practice of Fleischmann in the Gumpendorf hospital, he began to practise in London in 1845. ”

“ John Tomes [q.v.] and a few other public-spirited men Turner succeeded in converting the trade of dentistry into an organised profession. In 1872 he visited the United States to study the conditions of dental practice there, and in 1875 he began work as secretary of the executive council of the dental reform committee. The object of the committee was to obtain an act of parliament to regulate dental practice and to provide for a dentists' register, admittance to and removal from which should be under the supervision of the general medical council. ”

“ Elected assistant surgeon to the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street in May 1859, he was full surgeon (Sept. 1861-8) . For twenty years he was chief surgeon to the metropolitan police.
In 1873 Holmes was elected Hunterian professor of surgery and pathology at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. A member of the court of examiners (1873-1883) , he joined the newly appointed board of examiners in anatomy and physiology, and in 1880 he was a surgical examiner on on the board of examiners in dental surgery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Soon after graduating in medicine, Wade was appointed resident physician and medical tutor at the Birmingham general hospital, and he filled this post until 1855, when he settled in practice in the town. In 1857 he was appointed physician to the Birmingham general dispensary, and in 1860 to the Queen's Hospital, Birmingham, soon becoming senior physician to the hospital and professor of the practice of physic and clinical medicine at Queen's College. In 1865 he was elected physician to the general Birmingham hospital, and remained upon its staff until April 1892. ”

“ Ireland, a man of striking individuality, became an authority upon idiocy and imbecility. He had a wide knowledge of literature and history and was well acquainted with the French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norse, and Hindustani languages. His most original and interesting work was the application of his medico-psychological knowledge to explain the lives and actions of many celebrated men. ”

“ A slight but incurable deafness and want of business aptitude hampered Keetley's professional success. A keen athlete in early life, he was well known as a football player, boxer, and oarsman; he was a skilful artist and caricaturist with pen and pencil, and had a gift for impromptu rhymes. ”

“ 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 1883, on the occasion of a severe outbreak of epidemic cholera in Egypt, Hunter at the request of the Indian Medical Board, was sent on a special mission to investigate it. He wrote an able report showing the urgent need of efficient sanitation in Egypt and emphasising the superior value of sanitary measures to quarantine regulations. ”

“ Mapother was elected surgeon to St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, in 1869, and he was also surgeon to St. Joseph's Hospital for Children. He was the first medical officer of health for Dublin, was surgeon in ordinary to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland from 1880 to 1886, and was also president of the statistical society of Ireland. ”

“ A consummate and imperturbable operator, especially in cases of cataract, he soon enjoyed a practice that extended beyond Great Britain. He always operated by artificial light, held chloroform in abhorrence, never employed a qualified assistant, and had no high opinion of trained nurses. ”

“ Blandford was athletic in early life, and belonged for several years to the 2nd (South) Middlesex volunteers. He was also interested in art, literature, and music, showing skill in water-colour sketching and collecting from an early period Whistler's etchings, besides contributing a few unsigned articles to the 'Cornhill Magazine.'
Blandford's chief work was an admirably practical and comprehensive text-book, 'Insanity and its Treatment; Lectures on the Treatment, Medical and Legal, of Insane Patients' (Edinburgh 1871; 4th edit. 1892) . ”

“ Both his father and mother came of a seafaring stock. His father, a shipbuilder and a mayor of Grimsby, fell into financial straits. The son, who was mainly brought up by his grandparents and by his uncle, T. B. Keetley, a medical practitioner of Grimsby, was educated at Browne's school there, and acted as ‘surgery help’ or unarticled apprentice to his uncle during the last years of his school life. He then attended the lectures on botany and anatomy at the Hull school of medicine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gamgee believed that physiology stood in an intimate relation to the practice of medicine and that scientific training in a laboratory was essential to the advance of medicine. An excellent linguist, he could lecture fluently in French, German, and Italian. ”

“ HOLDEN, LUTHER (1815–1905) , surgeon, born on 11 Dec. 1816, in his grand-father's house at Birmingham, was second son of the Rev. Henry Augustus Holden (1785–1870) , who married his cousin Mary Willetts, daughter of Hyla Holden of Wednesbury in Staffordshire. His father, on retiring from the army with the rank of lieutenant, matriculated at Worcester College, Oxford, in 1814 (B.A. 1817) , and held the curacies of Wolstanton in Shropshire and of Warmington near Banbury, where he took pupils, but on being left a small fortune gave up his curacy and lived at Brighton and afterwards in London. ”

“ 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 1854 he received high commendation from the Bombay Medical Board for successfully establishing dispensaries in Raligaum, Ahghur, and Shikapur, and in 1857 the thanks of the government for zeal and skill during a fever epidemic in Shikapur, and for repressing a revolt of eight hundred prisoners in the jail of that station. During the Mutiny he acted as civil surgeon in Upper Scinde and obtained brevet rank of surgeon. ”

“ On resigning these appointments in 1889 he resumed his scientific work at Cambridge for a year, and then left England for Switzerland, residing first at Berne, then at Lausanne, and finally at Montreux, where he engaged in active practice as a consulting physician, devoting all his spare time to research in his own laboratory. In 1902 he visited the United States by invitation to inspect certain physiological laboratories where the work was chiefly directed towards the study of nutrition in health and disease. ”

“ But he was the first to draw attention to the presence of albuminuria in diphtheria, showing that the disease was more than a local affection of the throat and nose, his chief claim to remembrance lies in his active control of the British Medical Association when that body still had its central offices in the midlands. ”

“ He succeeded Nasmyth in 1846 as dentist to Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort, and the other members of the Royal family.
Saunders held that dentistry was a part of medicine. A good organiser and a man of considerable scientific attainments, he was amongst the first to attempt the formation into a compact profession of the heterogeneous collection of men who practised dentistry. ”

“ But unhappily the lectures were neither published nor reported, and only remain in the memories of his auditors or in their scanty notes. His valuable work survives alone in the catalogues of the Hunterian museum. ”

“ At the end of the Chin Lushai campaign he was appointed in 1890 principal of the Lahore veterinary school, where he laboured for six years and laid the foundations of the native veterinary service, being rewarded with the C.I.E. in 1895. Nunn did much to advance the cause of veterinary science in India. Of untiring energy, he was personally popular with varied classes of his comrades. ”