Hubert Maitland Turnbull, who died on 29 September 1955 some eight years after retirement from the Chair of Morbid Anatomy at the London Hospital Medical College, occupied a position of eminence in British pathology. Not only was he greatly esteemed by his colleagues at the London but his influence extended widely throughout the medical schools of this and other countries of the Commonwealth. This was due not so much to his ability as an initiator and director of research, even though he was responsible for a considerable amount of valuable original work during his forty years at the London Hospital, but to a particular genius for accuracy of observation and meticulous attention to detail which he possessed in high degree and applied with almost religious fervour to everything that he did. Entering pathology at a time when many in this country held that morbid anatomy was a dead subject, Virchow, in their opinion, having left little new territory to be explored, Turnbull set himself to revolutionize morbid anatomical practice and to raise the subject to the level of a science. And so well did he succeed that he proved a source of inspiration not only to his fellow pathologists and those young graduates who chose to emulate him, but also to the much wider circle of clinicians who sought the privilege of working for a time in his department as a prelude to specialization in some other branch of medicine.
Hubert Maitland Turnbull, 1875-1955