George Kellie

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Dr George Kellie MD, FRSE (1770–1829) was a Scottish surgeon who, together with

Alexander Monro secundus gave his name to the Monro-Kellie doctrine, a concept which relates intracranial pressure to the volume of intracranial contents and is a basic tenet of our understanding of the neuropathology of raised intracranial pressure
. The doctrine states that since the skull is incompressible, and the volume inside the skull is fixed then any increase in volume of one of the cranial constituents must be compensated by a decrease in volume of another. Previous research about George Kellie (1720–1779) may have been hampered by a widely cited incorrect year of birth, by the spelling of his name as Kellie or Kelly and by confusion with his father, also a surgeon in Leith, with the same name and subject to similar spelling variations.

Early life

George Kellie was born in

Alexander Monro secundus, he had successfully treated by inserting of a cannula into the thoracic cavity.[4] George Kelly senior died at Leith on 3 April 1805, the spelling of his name on the death notice reverting to 'Kellie'.[2]
George Kellie junior followed his father into a career as a surgeon in Leith after serving a five year apprenticeship to the Edinburgh surgeon James Arrott (1760–1818).[3]

Naval service

As Arrott had done before him Kellie joined the Royal Navy in 1790 as a surgeon.[5] During this naval service he published papers in the form of letters to his father ‘Mr Kellie, surgeon, Leith’. A letter to Edinburgh Medical Commentaries dated 21 May 1794 show that he is now surgeon on HMS Iris, a 32 gun, fifth rate frigate. In this letter he records experiments on himself, describing the effects of compressing the arm by tourniquet.[6] In August 1796 he was posted to HMS Leopard, a 50 gun fourth rate warship. In the next month he writes to the Annals of Medicine about the anatomy of the shark [7] and the following year writes with more information about tourniquet compression.[8] In a letter to the Annals in 1801 from a Mr Livingstone, Kellie is described as ‘physician to the English prisoners at Valencienne’, a reference to the town in the Pas de Calais in northern France where British prisoners of war were held during the Napoleonic War.[9]

Return to Leith

When Kellie returned to surgical practice in Leith he maintained his military links by becoming Surgeon to the Royal Leith Volunteers.[10] In 1802 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) and was elected a Burgess of the City of Edinburgh, a necessary prerequisite to practise as a surgeon-apothecary.[11] On 12 September 1803 he graduated MD from the University of Edinburgh Medical School with a thesis entitled ‘de Electricitate animale’, by now obviously able to pay the graduation fee. On 21 November 1805 he married Ann Wight, daughter of Robert Wight of the Murrays near Ormiston in East Lothian, maintaining his family links with that region.[2] He now published a series of papers on a diverse range of medical and surgical topics.[12] In 1805 he was elected a member of the Aesculapian Club.[13] and in 1811 he was elected a member of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh.[14][15]

Paper on intracranial circulation

In the paper which was to give Kellie lasting eponymous fame he describes the post mortem appearances in the bodies of two individuals found dead after lying outside after a storm.

Alexander Monro secundus (' … my illustrious preceptor in anatomy, the second Monro') and John Abercrombie. Monro had stated that since the healthy cranial cavity is rigid and of constant volume and the brain 'is nearly incompressible, the quantity of blood within the head must remain the same'.[17]
Later in the paper Kellie described how Monro, aware of his interest, invited him jointly to examine the brains of executed criminals and sent him descriptions of autopsy findings in other similar cases. He gives Abercrombie particular credit when he writes 'the argument has already been taken up and illustrated by Dr Abercrombie, in his ingenious analysis of apoplexy … '. In 1818 Abercrombie indeed had ‘proposed a doctrine’ clearly setting out the hypothesis. Abercrombie was largely responsible for the doctrine becoming widely known and accepted around the world. His authoritative book Pathological and Practical Researches on Disease of the Brain and Spinal Cord first published in 1828 was a milestone in neuropathology which ran to three British, two American and French and German editions.[18] In it Abercrombie linked the theories of Monro and Kellie and gave them full credit for the hypothesis

Testing the doctrine

As Abercrombie had done before him, Kellie went on to test his theories with a series of animal experiments where he studied the cerebral circulation of sheep and of dogs immediately after exsanguination or death induced by cyanide. He found that in many instances while the tissues outwith the cranium were drained of blood, the brain was not affected in this way, retaining blood volume. He concluded that where the circulating blood volume was depleted, the volume circulating within the cranium remained constant, with the increase in arterial tone and consequent reduction in arterial blood volume being compensated by venous engorgement thus keeping the total blood volume constant. The English physician Dr (later Sir) George Burrows (1801–1887) later tested the hypothesis with CSF included in the equation.[19] He repeated Kellie’s experiments using animal exsanguination and concluded that a depletion of CSF volume was compensated by an increase in intracranial blood volume and vice versa, so validating the hypothesis.

cerebral blood flow (CBF) and intracranial pressure (ICP) have allowed more sophisticated testing of the doctrine and shown that the hypothesis formulated by Monro, Kellie and Abercrombie still holds good.[21]

Later life and death

Kellie went on to achieve local distinction in his lifetime. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in December 1823. In 1827 he was elected President of the

Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society and was succeeded in that office by John Abercrombie
. George Kellie collapsed and died in Leith on 28 September 1829 while on his way home from visiting a patient.[22]

Further reading

Macintyre I. A hotbed of medical innovation: George Kellie (1770–1829), his colleagues at Leith and the Monro–Kellie doctrine. J Med Biogr 2013;22(2): 93-100 https://doi.org/10.1177/0967772013479271

References

  1. ^ Webster Census Archived 22 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ a b c d Scotland's People
  3. ^ a b Wallis PJ, Wallis R, Whittet T. Eighteenth century medics: subscriptions, licenses, apprenticeships. Newcastle. University of Newcastle. 1985
  4. ^ Kellie G., An Account of the Paracentesis Being Performed in the Thorax for the Cure of an Emphysema, Medical and Philosophical commentaries 1774;2:427-3
  5. ^ The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany 1818;81:500
  6. ^ Kellie G. An account of the effects of compression by the tourniquet in stopping the cold fits of intermittents. Edinburgh Medical Commentaries 1794;9:271-83
  7. ^ Kellie G. Some observations on the anatomy of the shark. Annals of Medicine 1796;1:395
  8. ^ Kellie G. Observations on the medical effects of compression by tourniquet. Annals of Medicine 1797;2:127
  9. ^ Livingstone J. Observations on the benefits derived from compression by the tourniquet. Annals of Medicine 1801;1:313-5
  10. ^ London Gazette 23 August 1803 issue 15614
  11. ^ Boog Watson CB, ed. Roll of Edinburgh burgesses and guild-brethren, 1761–1841. Edinburgh: Scottish Record Society; 1933
  12. ^ Macintyre I. A hotbed of medical innovation: George Kellie (1770–1829), his colleagues at Leith and the Monro–Kellie doctrine J Med Biogr 0967772013479271 16 September 2013 doi:10.1177/0967772013479271
  13. ^ Minute Books of the Aesculapian Club. Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
  14. ^ Watson Wemyss, Herbert Lindesay (1933). A Record of the Edinburgh Harveian Society. T&A Constable, Edinburgh.
  15. ^ Minute Books of the Harveian Society. Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
  16. ^ Kellie G. An account of the appearances observed in the dissection of two of three individuals presumed to have perished in the storm of the 3rd, and whose bodies were discovered in the vicinity of Leith on the morning of the 4th, November 1821 : with some reflections on the pathology of the brain. Transactions of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh 1824;1:82–169
  17. ^ Monro A. Observations on the structure and functions of the nervous system: illustrated with tables. Edinburgh: Printed for, and sold by, William Creech 1783
  18. ^ Abercrombie J. Pathological and practical researches on disease of the brain and spinal cord. Edinburgh: J Carfrae; 1828
  19. ^ Burrows G. On disorders of the cerebral circulation and on the connection between affections of the brain and diseases of the heart. London: Longman; 1846
  20. ^ Weed L. Some limitations of the Monro–Kellie hypothesis. Archives of surgery 1929;18
  21. ^ Mokri B. The Monro-Kellie hypothesis: applications in CSF volume depletion. Neurology 2001;56:1746-8
  22. ^ Martine J. Reminiscences of port and town of Leith. Edinburgh: Printed for the author, 1888.
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