Journal of Medical Biography

Rutherford Alcock obtained the MRCS diploma in 1831. During the following year he volunteered for service as a medical officer in the British Marine Brigade, which fought during the Miguelite War in Portugal from 1832 to 1834. After that campaign, he transferred to the British Auxiliary Legion of Spain in May 1835 for service in what later was called the First Carlist War (1835–37). After serving for one year as a surgeon he was promoted to the rank of Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals. He had hoped to return to King's College Hospital, London, to the Chair of Military Surgery, with an associated assistant surgeonship at the Westminster Hospital but, because of a severe bout of what is now believed to have been rheumatic fever, he lost the use of his thumbs and decided he could not continue as a surgeon. Accordingly, he decided not to take up the Chair of Military Surgery at King's on his return to Britain. In 1839 he was appointed to a lectureship in surgery at Sydenham College and, for a brief period in 1842, he was the Home Office Inspector of Anatomy. He then decided to explore other career opportunities and initially was British consul to China, at Fuchow in 1844, at Shanghai in 1846 and at Canton in 1854. In 1858 he transferred to the Diplomatic Service. He retired in 1871 after a successful and distinguished career.

John Coakley Lettsom (1744–1815) regarded his West Indies birthplace and the New England states as integral parts of the colonial Empire, and described himself as Americanus. He had numerous friends in the American medical profession and was generous to them with books, plants and financial support. They travelled to Europe with letters of introduction to him and some of them became corresponding members of the Medical Society of London. This work is a brief profile of some of these academic friends.

A brief biography is presented of Dr Jan Ingen Housz, as written, originally in Dutch, by M J Godefroi, a mid-nineteenth-century Dutch physician who was a friend of a near descendant of Dr Ingen Housz. From being a general practitioner at Breda, his home town, he moved to England to learn smallpox inoculation, was sent to inoculate members of the Habsburg family at Vienna and dedicated his later life to scientific experimentation, notably revealing the fundamentals of photosynthesis.

The pre-eminent achievements of the English physician and physiologist Ernest Henry Starling were his quantitative explanation of the transcapillary transport of fluid, the discovery of the first hormone, secretin, and his formulation of the law of the heart. In some ways Starling was an outsider and he was the centre of several scientific and social controversies. However, throughout his life he stressed fundamental scientific attitudes and ideas with remarkable persistence and power, although also balance, and his scientific achievements have stood the test of time.

George Newman (1870–1948) was a major figure in the development of public health and school medicine in the years between World Wars I and II. From a Quaker background, he became first Chief Medical Officer to the Board of Education and then Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health. In these posts he wrote many reports to the minister concerned and stimulated others. He educated the public in health matters with notable literary skill. He remained an active Quaker all his life.

Joseph Warren Horton graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1914. He became involved in the early development of electrical measurement devices, televised image transmission, and the detection of underwater sound transmission. In the mid-1930s he was appointed the first leader of the newly created Department of Biological Engineering at MIT and in this position he made major contributions to the application of physics to human physiology, in particular by increasing the safety of explosive inhalational anaesthetic agents.

Ferdinand Campion Batchelor was a noted abdominal surgeon, obstetrician and gynaecologist. He was an ardent campaigner for hospital reform and other worthy causes, and had an up-to-date outlook on the future of medical science.

Alexander Ivanov was an outstanding Russian painter who lived in the middle of the nineteenth century, during the romantic period. He did not accept romanticism but instead tried to create his own original style, an ambitious combination of spiritual profundity and a manner of execution unparalleled in Western European art. Ivanov's intention and style are best reflected in his major work The Appearance of Christ to the People, a picture on which he worked for over 20 years. He painted more than 400 sketches of the picture while attempting to bring his masterpiece to perfection. At the end of his life Ivanov became disillusioned, renounced his strong religious conviction and became suspicious. This study examines the influence of his background, life story and personality on the creative process. From a diagnostic perspective, Ivanov's personality featured obsessive, narcissistic and schizoid traits. In his final years he suffered from a delusional disorder.

During the 16 years Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) lived in Bath he was especially friendly with two eminent physicians, Rice Charleton (1723–88) and Abel Moysey (1715–80). They both treated Gainsborough for a severe nervous illness. In return he painted portraits of them without charge. Gainsborough's two daughters were both mentally unstable and when the elder one became very ill he had to call for the services of a third Bath physician, Dr Ralph Schomberg (1714–92), who was also the subject of a fine portrait. In the final phase of his life Gainsborough moved to London, where he suffered his fatal illness, possibly squamous cell carcinoma. For this he was treated by William Heberden (1710–1801) and John Hunter (1728–93).

Clayton Mote had a long career as a teacher, scholar and practitioner of medicine. He was noted for his diagnostic skills and rigorous approach to bedside teaching, with emphasis on the physical examination. The author's attitude towards him was a mixture of admiration for his talents and anxiety that one could never quite meet his expectations. People of his kind still have a place in modern academic medicine: they can be leaders and role models, they can integrate the new and the old, and they can inspire those under their tutelage to return to hands-on medicine.