Eminent Doctors: Their Lives and Their Work (Complete‪)‬

Medical Biography has not taken its due place in the thoughts of our countrymen, nor has it received deserved attention from literary men. Anecdotes of big fees, brilliant operations, brusque actions, or suave politeness, have too exclusively contributed to form the popular idea of eminent physicians and surgeons. Aikin’s incomplete “Biographical Memoirs of Medicine,” Macmichael’s “Lives of British Physicians,” and Pettigrew’s “Medical Portrait Gallery,” have been the chief collective records of British medical men; and the latter, owing to its expensive form, was inaccessible to most persons. Munk’s “Roll of the College of Physicians” is a mine of information about members of that College, and a similar record of members of the College of Surgeons would be invaluable. In 1865 Dr. Herbert Barker commenced, and after his lamented death Dr. Tindal Robertson continued, a series of memoirs of living medical men, accompanied by photographs. The Midland Medical Miscellany commenced to publish a somewhat similar series of memoirs, with portraits, in 1882. The medical press has been distinguished for the ability and general fidelity of its biographical notices of deceased members of the profession.

There is no book, however, in current literature which supplies medical men or the general public with biographical accounts of the most notable men who in this kingdom have contributed to make the medicine and surgery of to-day what they are. It is the aim of the present book to occupy this vacant place. It is hoped that this has been done in a form neither too technical for the general reader, nor unsuitable for the busy practitioner, who has very little time to read elaborate biographies, but would fain store his mind with the principal facts and lessons of the lives of his great predecessors and teachers.

The difficulty of selection has been great. It was felt that sure ground would be occupied by taking the foundation of the London College of Physicians as a starting-point, and giving a place only to those celebrated men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries whose title to fame none would deny. Paucity of biographical materials has prevented the introduction of some names; others have been excluded because they were rather notorious for their fees, their bonmots, or their fantastic behaviour, than for their solid contributions to medicine.

In regard to men of the present century, the task of selection has been still more difficult. For the most part distinguished physiologists, zoologists, &c., do not find a place in these pages, unless they have also won distinction in medical practice. It cannot be expected that the list of living names will satisfy everybody. Others as worthy might have been included. If in refraining from commenting on the career of his present colleagues at Guy’s Hospital, the author may appear to have done injustice to their great merits, he is convinced that he has thereby best steered clear of the dangers of partiality. The utmost care has been taken to avoid giving details which should be private during a man’s life, and to state only those facts about living men which have already for the most part been made generally accessible.