Thomas Barlow, 1845 - 1945

1945 ◽  
Vol 5 (14) ◽  
pp. 158-167

No centenarians are recorded among the ordinary Fellows of the Royal Society. Sir Thomas Barlow fell short by eight months of completing his hundredth year. Physical strength and vigour of mind stayed with him almost to the end. As President of the Royal College of Physicians, and physician to Queen Victoria and the next two sovereigns in succession, he had attained the highest place among consultants in medicine. Even on retirement from these posts he continued for the next quarter of a century to live in the minds of medical men, young as well as old, for throughout this time he was head of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund and through his personal activity for the welfare of that charity made his name happily familiar to both those who gave and those who received. He was justly and proudly spoken of as the Nestor of British medicine; and he loved his profession. Barlow was elected to the Fellowship of the Society in 1909, when sixty-four years old. It is of interest to note the names of the Fellows in the group of active clinical medicine who signed his certificate at that time: Lord Lister, Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, Sir David Ferrier, P. H. Pye-Smith, Sir Victor Horsley, Sidney Martin, Sir Frederick Mott, H. C. Bastian, Sir Lauder Brunton, Sir William Gowers, F. W. Pavy, Sir John Rose Bradford, and Sir Patrick Manson. All these men had passed away before Barlow himself died, and the clinicians who have succeeded to them in the Society are now in smaller number.

2021 ◽  
pp. 096777202110323
Author(s):  
Simon Gray

Dr James Copland (1791–1870) was born in the Orkney Islands and studied medicine at Edinburgh where he graduated in 1815. The following year was spent in Paris to acquire knowledge of the latest developments in pathology and he then travelled for a year along the coast of West Africa gaining practical experience of treating tropical diseases. After establishing his medical practice in London, which eventually became extremely successful, he contributed to medical journals and also became editor of the London Medical Repository from 1822 to 1825. His greatest work was The Dictionary of Practical Medicine written entirely by himself which was completed between 1832 and 1858. More than 10,000 copies of the dictionary were sold and its author became world famous during his lifetime. In 1833, Copland was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and from 1837 onwards he played a prominent role in the proceedings of The Royal College of Physicians. This article shows how his extensive professional and literary work was combined with an unusual private life.


1743 ◽  
Vol 42 (470) ◽  
pp. 559-563

Sir , Making bloody Water is universally esteemed as terrible a Symptom as any that can happen in the Small-pox ; and all who have wrote concerning that Distemper, do unanimously agree, that it is a certain Forerunner of approaching Death.


The late learned and famous Dr. Croune having observed how much the knowledge of the animal oeconomy depends upon the doctrine of the nerves and muscles, and how far the rational practice of physic might be improved by a more Perfect acquaintance with the animal oeconomy, did, for the encouragement of these, studies, form a plan for instituting certain Lectures to be read on such subjects, in the Royal College of Physicians on the nerves and muscles, and in the Royal Society on muscular motion; which was left with his Widow, afterwards Lady Sadleir.


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One day in November 1749, there was delivered to the house of the vicar of Alconbury, near Huntingdon, a recently published sermon, which gave him so much pleasure that he wrote to the author: ‘I was so delighted with it, and indeed so sensibly affected with several observations, that I intend to give it a second reading soon. You have drawn the outlines for future Preachers to fill up.’ The preacher was none other than Thomas Birch, F. R. S., rector of St Margaret Pattens, London, and later Secretary of the Royal Society. His theme was ‘The wisdom and goodness of God proved from the frame and constitution of man’; his sermon was the first to be preached before the Royal College of Physicians in fulfilment of the will of Dr Croone, first registrar and one of the earliest benefactors of the Royal Society


2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-178
Author(s):  
Dugald Gardner

After leaving Glasgow University, Pettigrew joined the Edinburgh Medical School in 1856. Professor Goodsir determined Pettigrew’s entire future by awarding him the Anatomy Gold Medal for an essay on cardiac muscle. The essay was accompanied by dissections of such high quality that they led to the Croonian Lecture of the Royal Society of London in 1860. After graduating, Pettigrew’s time as House Surgeon to James Syme was followed by a position in the Hunterian Museum, London. Intensive studies of urinary and alimentary muscle, and observations of insects and animals, with lectures on flight to distinguished societies, contributed to disabling illness and a long convalescence but in 1869 Pettigrew became Conservator of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and then Pathologist to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. The publication of Physiology of the Circulation and of Animal Locomotion, with its emphasis on aeronautics, ensured international fame. Fellowship of both London and Edinburgh Royal Societies was another factor contributing to Pettigrew’s election to the Chandos Chair at St Andrews University in 1875. The construction and abortive flying of a motor-driven aeroplane came near the end of his life and Pettigrew gave his remaining years to completing his monumental Design in Nature.


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