Avi Ohry
Tel Aviv, Israel

Benedict Cumberbatch is a well-known English actor whose name appears often in the media as Dr. Stephen Strange (an arrogant and self-centered neurosurgeon) or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes with Dr. Watson.

Recently, we heard that the Barbados National Task Force on Reparations was seeking reparations from wealthy British persons for their ancestors’ involvement in slavery. The present actor, Cumberbatch, Benedict, also had ancestors in Barbados, namely Abraham Cumberbatch of Saint Andrew (d. 1753) and Abraham Parry Cumberbatch (d. 1840), but has explained that by the time of his birth in 1976, most of their original money had run out and he grew up “definitely middle class.”¹

More recently I found two famous physicians, probably remote relatives of the actor and of whose legacy he may be proud:

The first was Alphonso Elkin Cumberbatch (AEC) of Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire (1847–1929), born in Bridgetown, Saint Michael, Barbados. He finished his medical studies at University College London and became an assistant anatomical demonstrator, a house surgeon, and a famous aural surgeon at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.² He was later nominated as the treasurer and president of the Otological Society of Great Britain & Ireland.

Second was his cousin, Elkin Percy Cumberbatch (EPC) (1880–1939), one of the founders of “electrical medicine and physical medicine” (today rehabilitation medicine).^3,4 Born at Queen Charlton, Somerset, he was educated at St. Paul’s School and Keble College, Oxford.⁵ He was awarded a scholarship to St. Bartholomew’s, where AEC worked as aural surgeon. Just before his qualification, he sustained brain trauma in a traffic accident, resulting in hemianopia and in speech and behavioral changes. Nevertheless, he obtained a position at Dorset County Hospital before returning to St. Bartholomew’s as house physician to Sir Wilmot Herringham and a demonstrator in physiology and clinical assistant in the electrical department under Dr H. Lewis-Jones. Appointed medical officer in charge of the Electrical Department at the age of thirty-two, he headed the electrical department of the First London General Hospital (Camberwell). During World War I, he became a well-known expert in EMG-NCV studies, electrotherapy, medical diathermy, and more.

References

1. Benedict Cumberbatch. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Cumberbatch
2. Anon, obituary. A.E. Cumberbatch. BMJ 1929;1:666.
3. Cumberbatch EP. The Electrical Department of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Proc R Soc Med 1917:10(Electro Ther Sect):87-93.
4. Cumberbatch EP. The role of electricity in treatment. Br Med J 1932 ;2(3737):345-7.
5. Trail RR. Elkin Percy Cumberbatch. Royal College of Physicians Inspiring Physicians. https://history.rcp.ac.uk/inspiring-physicians/elkin-percy-cumberbatch