Midland pioneers - a medical miscellany

The English Midlands may be remembered as the cradle of the Indutsrial Revolution but it also produced its fair share of medical pioneers. Here, Kenneth Hughes explores all kinds of medical characters who had one thing in common, they were all born or based in the Midlands.

In 1607 John Hall married Susanna, Shakespeare's eldest daughter, in Stratford on 5 June 1607 and was by then a well-established physician in Stratford. Hall kept detailed case-notes which were eventually published as Select observations on English bodies, or Cures both empericall and historicall performed upon very eminent persons in desperate disease. The observations cover some 200 cases of treatment and diagnosis and provide a fascinating and historical snapshot of many of the remedies of the old English herbals used at the time. Some of the more bizarre include using a cloth dipped in frogspawn during a March frost to cure a nosebleed, or using dead pigeons to cure arthritis, although in the latter it was important to clarify that while two dead pigeons were seen as optimum three could cause an overdose. Nonetheless, despite some of the more outlandish cures John Hall was medically ahead of his time and was noted for his professional approach to patients irrespective of social background or religion.

Another local medical man, Dr John Wall, discovered a method of making heat resistant porcelain which did not crack when boiling water was poured into it. The discovery of this technique eventually led to the setting up of Royal Worcester Porcelain. Dr Wall also seemed to have a hand in another medical-related piece of trivia involving hydropathy. The water at Malvern was famed for its purity in part due to an analysis by Dr Wall that discovered there was nothing remarkable in it at all, leading to an infamous famous piece of local verse: ‘The Malvern waters, says Dr. John Wall, is famed for containing nothing at all'.

Hydropathy was one of a number of alternative treatments invented by a Silesian peasant, Vincent Priessnitz who in the 1820s was inspired by watching a deer a wounded deer treat itself in a spring, supposedly cured his broken ribs by wrapping himself in bandages doused in cold mountain water. His success spread throughout Europe and led to Dr James Wilson and Doctor James Manby Gulley setting up hydrotherapy centres at Malvern. The treatment consisted of good diet, water, exercise, rest and lots of cold showers where the patient stood under a cascade of cold Malvern water. The popularity of the spa treatment attracted the Victorian great, good and fashionable including Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale.

Another local doctor, William Brookes, was obsessed with improving the lot of the people of his home town of Much Wenlock and reviving the Olympian ideal. Pierre de Coubertain, the man most usually associated with the modern Olympic revival, was invited by Brookes to visit one of his games at Much Wenlock. Inspired by the games, Brooke’s vision and their conversations Coubertain went on to organise the first modern international Olympics in Athens in 1896. Sadly Brookes died a few months before he was able to see his dream come true but many of the Olympic traditions, such as hosting the Olympics in different cities and the pageantry of the opening ceremony, are based on Brooke’s ideas and his games at Much Wenlock, although sadly 30 aside football, cricket, quoits and Penny-farthing bicycle and wheelbarrow racing no longer seem to feature in the modern version. In 1994 Juan Antonio Samaranch, then president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), visited Much Wenlock in 1994 and laid a wreath at Brookes' grave in recognition of the " founder of the modern Olympic Games".

Then there wasHenry Hickman, a Shropshire-based early pioneer of anaesthesia who in 1824, after a number of gruesome animal experiments, advocated what he called ‘suspended animation’ by gas to allow pain-free operations. He would virtually suffocate the animal with carbon dioxide, then amputate a part of the animal to see whether it could feel pain under this 'anaesthesia'. Despite establishing proving that the pain of surgery could be removed by inhalation of a gas he was unfortunate to chose carbon dioxide as an agent, it was left to Sir Humphry Davy to pioneer nitrous oxide as a less dangerous alternative for anaesthesia. Unappreciated at the time of his death Hickman’s work has since been positively reappraised and he is now recognised as one of the fathers of anaesthesia.

Hughes recounted the stories of Gutteridge, an expert surgeon who specialised in opening the bladder and removing gall stones with twenty seconds and Baron Spolasco – a quack who ended up killing one of his patients through his dubious cures. More modern midland medical heroes include John Hall-Edwards who was one of the earliest investigators of X-ray treatment after Wilhem Roentgen first discovered x-rays in 1896. Hall-Edwards took the first radiograph for the purposes of an operation in the United Kingdom in February 1896 and later demonstrated his techniques to the British army in the Boer War. Unfortunately the effect of exposure to radiation was still unknown and his hand and part of his arm had to be amputated, the hand resides at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital as a reminder of the dangers of radiation. In the world of drug trials, Dr Mary Evans and Dr Wilfred Gaisford at Dudley Road (now City) Hospital in 1939 launched trials of the world's first antibiotic M&B (sulphapydrine) for the treatment of pneumonia - and the antimicrobial age was born. Hamilton Bailey’s influential textbooks of surgery have been translated into many languages and are still in use today while pioneering treatment in serious accidents wards led to the development of savlon. And there can be few medics who not make an important medical discovery but also end up as a character in one of the great novels of English literature. Dr Joseph Sampson Gamgee was a Birmingham surgeon who invented a special wound dressing and whose name was given to Frodo's faithful friend in Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings.

Hughes ended his lecture with a poignant recording of Paul Robeson, the American singer and spokesman for human rights, singing Jerusalem, which he sang at the funeral of his friend Ruscoe Clark, a surgeon based at Birmingham Accident Hospital and a staunch fellow communist. Clark and Robeson had developed their friendship through regular correspondence. On a trip to England Robeson travelled to the Midlands to visit his friend for the first time but sadly Clark had died only a few days before. This final story had a personal touch as several members of the audience remembered and shared anecdotes about Ruscoe Clark.

Kenneth Hughes gave his lecture at the IBMS's Annual General Meeting 2006 that took place in Solihull, West Midlands.

Tags: General science, History

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