D'Arcy Power

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1895 he succeeded Sir John Simon as crown nominee at the General Medical Council, and in 1898 honorary degrees were conferred upon him by the university of Edinburgh, the Royal University of Ireland, and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, while his services to public health were recognised by his selection as an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Medicine at Rome, corresponding member of the Royal Italian Society of Hygiene, and foreign associate of the Society of Hygiene of France. ”

“ Carpenter believed that healthy homes made healthy people, and his life was devoted to the conversion of this belief into practice. His activity extended over the whole range of sanitary science. He felt the deepest interest in the application of sewage to the land, which he held to be the proper way of dealing with it, and as chairman of the Croydon sewage farm he made it a model which was afterwards widely copied. He studied the general sanitary conditions of Croydon with great care, he established baths, and ventilated the sewers. ”

“ From June 1889 he was much interested in the question of the internal secretion of certain glands, and, though his conclusions are not generally accepted, it seems probable that they will some day be found to contain the germ of further advances in physiology. Brown-Séquard will always deserve a high place in the annals of medicine for the many facts with which he enriched physiological science ”

“ Hart was before all things a journalist and an organiser. He was also a sanitary reformer, a political economist, a surgeon, and an art collector of no mean capacity. His first and last efforts were devoted to improving the social position of the medical profession. ”

“ The position which Paget occupied as a teacher in a large medical school, his persuasive eloquence, and the classical English of his writings, gave him great authority among his contemporaries, and enabled him to exercise a much wider influence than would have been expected from his modest demeanour and somewhat retiring disposition. ”

“ HEWETT, Sir PRESCOTT GARDNER (1812–1891) , surgeon, son of William N. W. Hewett of Bilham House, near Doncaster, was born on 3 July 1812. He received a good education, which was completed in Paris, where he devoted some time to painting, though he afterwards abandoned the idea of following art as a profession and turned his attention to medicine. He learned anatomy in Paris, where he also became thoroughly grounded in the principles and practice of French surgery, and on his return to England he was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on 15 July 1836. ”

“ In 1854 he became lecturer upon forensic medicine at the Grosvenor Place School of Medicine, where he was afterwards appointed the first lecturer on public hygiene, posts which he resigned in 1857 for the lectureship on physiology. He remained dean of the school until 1865, when it was sold and, with all the other buildings in the old Tattersall's yard, demolished. Richardson was also a lecturer about this time at the College of Dentists, then occupying a part of the Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street. ”

“ Richardson was a sanitary reformer, who busied himself with many of the smaller details of domestic sanitation which tend in the aggregate to prolong the average life in each generation. He spent many years in attempts to relieve pain among men by discovering and adapting substances capable of producing general or local anæsthesia, and among animals by more humane methods of slaughter. ”

“ In his efforts to bring his scheme to fruition he had the sympathy and aid of his friend Ruskin, who assisted him to obtain, and even made some drawings for, the projected building; and Ruskin contributed to a sketch of the museum's objects, which Acland published under the title of 'The Oxford Museum' in 1859. The foundation-stone of the building was laid on 20 June 1855, and it was opened in 1861. It forms a nucleus which, it is hoped, will ultimately be the centre of a cluster of buildings equipped for the study of the whole realm of nature. ”

“ Early in life Clay was much interested in geology and archaeology, and spent much of his time in collecting fossils. He had a large collection of early works on mid-wifery and gynaecology, many of which he gave to the Manchester Medical Society and to the Obstetrical Society of London. ”

“ HART, ERNEST ABRAHAM (1835–1898) , medical journalist and reformer, the second son of Septimus Hart, dentist, was born at Knightsbridge, London, on 26 June 1835. He was educated at the City of London school, where he gained, among other prizes, the Chamberlain Scott theology prize, though, as a Jew, he restricted his answers to the two questions dealing with the Old Testament. He became captain of the school and Lambert Jones scholar at the early age of thirteen, and was thus eligible for election at Queens' College, Cambridge. ”

“ In 1856 he was nominated physician in charge of the skin department of University College Hospital. At University College he acted as substitute for Dr. Edmund Alexander Parkes [q. v.] , the Holme professor of clinical medicine, during his absence at the Crimean war, 1855-6; and when Parkes was appointed professor of hygiene in the army medical school, established at Fort Pitt, Chatham, in 1860, Jenner was confirmed in the chair of Holme professor at University College. From 1863 to 1872 he was professor of the principles and practice of medicine at University College. ”

“ Bucknill died at Bournemouth on 19 July 1897, and is buried at Clifton-on-Dunsmore near Rugby. He married in 1842 Maryanne, the only child of Thomas Townsend of Hillmorton. She died in 1889 and left three sons, of whom the second, Sir Thomas Townsend Bucknill, became in 1899 judge of the king's bench division of the high court. Sir John Bucknill left over 6,000l. to University College, London, to found a scholarship. ”

“ In this effort he was brilliantly successful in the face of the most determined opposition, and especial credit must be given to him for this success, because others, perhaps equally farsighted, had given up the endeavour in despair and without a struggle in the belief that the project was impossible. ”

“ He was elected assistant physician in 1854, and during the next few years he held several teaching posts, being appointed lecturer on botany in 1859, on materia medica inl860, on general anatomy and physiology in I860, on pathology in 1870. In 1860 he was elected full physician, and in 1876 he became lecturer on medicine, a post which he held until his retirement in 1892, when he became consulting physician to the hospital. ”

“ PRIESTLEY, Sir WILLIAM OVEREND (1829–1900) , physician, the eldest son of Joseph Priestley and Mary, daughter of James Overend of Morley, was born at Morley Hall, near Leeds, on 24 June 1829; he was grand-nephew of Joseph Priestley [q. v.] , who discovered oxygen. Priestley was educated successively at Leeds, King's College, London, Paris, and the university of Edinburgh. ”

“ Struthers wrote a large number of papers on human and comparative anatomy. In a pamphlet entitled 'References to Papers in Anatomy,' published in 1889, he gives a list of seventy papers which he had written up to that date, and he subsequently added several more. The most valuable part of his scientific work is a series of papers on the anatomy of various cetaceans. He also published a book of 'Anatomical and Physiological Observations,' part i. 1854, part ii. 1863; and an 'Historical Sketch of the Edinburgh Anatomical School,' 1867, 8vo. ”

“ In 1873 he was decorated with the order of a 'companion of the Star of India,' and after acting as sanitary commissioner for the Punjab he was appointed chief political officer at Cabul. But the cold and hardships he endured at the siege of Sherpvir brought on an attack of illness which obliged him to leave his post. He retired from the service with the rank of surgeon-general in November 1886. He died at Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire, on 26 July 1892, and his body was cremated at Brookwood. ”