Tag: Royal College of Physicians
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The death of King George V
Seamus O’Mahony London, England Fig 1: Lord Dawson of Penn. Photograph by D. Wilding. Wellcome Collection. Copyright © National Portrait Gallery, London. Public Domain. Bertrand Dawson, Lord Dawson of Penn (1864-1945), was the most eminent British doctor in the years between the two world wars. He was both a skilled medical politician (twice president of the…
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John Caius, the polymath who described the sweating sickness
Philip Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States John Caius (1510-1573), Master of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. 1563. Unknown painter. Credit: Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. Imagine being a physician in a rural community in England in the mid-sixteenth century, always concerned with the reappearance of the Black Death. Late one summer you…
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Sir John Pringle, public health and military medicine pioneer
Sir John Pringle. Oil painting. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) At the end of the eighteenth century, Scottish doctors were more popular with patients than English ones because “their useful knowledge contrasted with the ornamental learning of English physicians who were Anglican or Oxbridge trained.”1 By 1825 almost 70% of all fellows…
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Derek Ernest Denny-Brown
JMS Pearce Hull, England Figure 1: Image in the public domain. Credit: The National Library of Medicine. Source Amongst the titans of medicine, it is not easy to pick out those whose footprints will not fade with passing time. Derek Denny-Brown (Fig 1) was one. He was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. After his…
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Thomas Sydenham, “The English Hippocrates”
JMS Pearce East Yorks, UK Fig 1. Thomas Sydenham. Abraham Blooteling after Mary Beale – portrait of Thomas Sydenham 8-B-47-Med Source Still Fever burns, and all her skill defies Till Sydenham’s wisdom plays a double part, Quells the disease and helps the failing Art. -from a poem on plague by John Locke, 1668 …
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Charles Richard Box: physician, pathologist, and infectious disease pioneer
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK Charles Richard Box by Lafayette. Half-plate nitrate negative. 30 August 1928. NPG x42689. Reproduced with Permission from National Portrait Gallery, London. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. The name Charles Richard Box is perhaps not as well-known as some of the medical contemporaries of his time. He had a brilliant career in…
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Richard Mead
Arpan K Banerjee Solihull, UK Richard Mead. Mezzotint by R. Houston after A. Ramsay. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) Richard Mead was born on 11 August 1673, the eleventh child of Matthew Mead, a preacher and somewhat controversial character of his time.1 Matthew Mead was a scholar and Fellow of King’s College Cambridge,…
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The membership examination—then
The examination for membership in the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) is considered to be the British counterpart of the examination for the American Board of Internal Medicine. Its origins, however, are more venerable, being based on a royal charter granted by Henry VIII in 1518. It may also be safely assumed that its format…