James Paget
Sir James Paget, 1st Baronet
- Paget's disease of bone
- Paget's disease of the nipple(a form of intraductal breast cancer spreading into the skin around the nipple)
- Extramammary Paget's disease refers to a group of similar, more rare skin lesions discovered by Radcliffe Crocker in 1889 which affect the male and female genitalia.
- Paget–Schroetter disease
- Paget's abscess, an abscess that recurs at the site of a former abscess which had resolved.
Life
Paget was born in
In October 1834, he entered as a student at
In 1841, he was made surgeon to the Finsbury Dispensary, but this appointment did not give him any experience in the graver operations of surgery. He was appointed lecturer on general anatomy (microscopic anatomy) and physiology at the hospital in 1843, and warden of the hospital college then founded. For the next eight years, he lived within the walls of the hospital, in charge of about 30 students resident in the little college. Besides his lectures and his superintendence of the resident students, he had to enter all new students, to advise them how to work, and to manage the finances and the general affairs of the school. Thus, he was constantly occupied with the business of the school, and often passed a week, or more, without going outside the hospital gates.[3]
In 1844, he married Lydia North (d.1895), youngest daughter of the Rev. Henry North. In 1847, he was appointed an assistant surgeon to the hospital, and Arris and Gale professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. He held this professorship for six years and each year gave six lectures in surgical pathology. The first edition of these lectures, which were the chief scientific work of his life, was published in 1853 as Lectures on Surgical Pathology. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851. In October 1851, he resigned the wardenship of the hospital. He had now become known as a great physiologist and pathologist; he had done for pathology in England what Rudolf Virchow had done in Germany, but he had hardly begun to get into practice, and he had kept himself poor so he might pay his share of his father's debts, a task that took him 14 years to fulfil.[3]
Paget was the father of Sir John Paget (2nd Baronet); the Rt Revd Dr Francis Paget, Lord Bishop of Oxford; the Rt Revd Dr Luke Paget, Lord Bishop of Chester; and Stephen Paget, an English surgeon who first proposed the "seed and soil" theory of metastasis.
Paget was friends with Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley. He was a committed Christian and maintained there was no conflict between religion and science.[4]
He was elected as a member of the
Works
No famous surgeon, not even John Hunter (1728–1793), was likely to have founded his practice deeper in science than Paget did, or waited longer for his work to come back to him.[citation needed] In physiology, he had mastered the chief English, French, German, Dutch and Italian literature of the subject, and by incessant study and microscope work had put himself level with the most advanced knowledge of his time, so that it was said of him by Robert Owen, in 1851, that he had his choice, either to be the first physiologist in Europe, or to have the first surgical practice in London, with a baronetcy. His physiological lectures at St Bartholomew's Hospital were the chief cause of the rise in the fortunes of its school, which in 1843 had gone down to a low point.[3]
His work in pathology was even more important. He filled the place in pathology left empty by Hunter's death in 1793; this was the time of transition from Hunter's teaching, which for all its greatness was hindered by want of the modern microscope, to the pathology and
When Paget, in 1851, began practice near
Paget had for many years the largest and most arduous surgical practice in London. His day's work was seldom less than 16 or 17 hours. Cases sent to him for final judgment, with special frequency, were those of tumours, and of all kinds of disease of the bones and joints, and all neurotic cases having symptoms of surgical disease. His supremacy lay rather in the science than in the art of surgery, but his name is also associated with certain great practical advances. He discovered Paget's disease of the breast and Paget's disease of the bones (osteitis deformans), which are named after him; he was the first to urge removal of the tumour, instead of amputation of the limb, in cases of myeloid sarcoma.[8] In 1869 he was elected President of the Clinical Society of London.[11] In 1870, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.[8]
In 1871, he nearly died from infection at a post mortem examination, and, to lighten the weight of his work, was obliged to resign his surgeoncy to the hospital. In this same year, he received the honour of the
Besides shorter writings, he also published Clinical Lectures and Essays (1st ed. 1875) and Studies of Old Case-books (1891). In 1883, on the death of Sir George Jessel, he was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of London. In 1889, he was appointed a member of the Royal Commission on Vaccination.[8]
In May 1886, he treated Edward Crowley, father of Aleister Crowley for tongue cancer. An operation was advised, but Crowley declined and died the following year.[15]
He died at home, 5 Park Square West in Regent's Park, London, on 30 December 1899, at the age of 85.[16] The Memoirs and Letters of Sir James Paget, edited by Stephen Paget, was published in 1901.[17][18]
Sir James Paget had the gift of eloquence, and was one of the most careful and most delightful speakers of his time. He had a natural and unaffected pleasure in society, and he loved music. He possessed the rare gift of the ability to turn swiftly from work to play, enjoying his holidays like a schoolboy, easily moved to laughter, keen to get the maximum of happiness out of very ordinary amusements, emotional in spite of incessant self-restraint, and vigorous in spite of constant overwork. In him, a certain light-hearted enjoyment was combined with the utmost reserve, unfailing religious faith, and the most scrupulous honour. He was all his life profoundly indifferent toward politics, both national and medical; his ideal was the unity of science and practice in professional life.[8]
Sir James's reputation remains high due to his work as a surgeon and medical research and work, but he also had an apparent interest in criminal matters. In 1886, he followed the Pimlico Mystery, the poisoning trial of Adelaide Bartlett for the murder of her husband Edwin. After a spirited defence by Sir Edward Clarke, Bartlett was acquitted. The key problem of the trial was that Edwin was poisoned by liquid chloroform, which was found in his stomach, but liquid chloroform burns the throat if swallowed, and the drinker would be screaming. Edwin Bartlett never screamed the night he died. As a result, an alternative theory of suicide was considered and helped get the acquittal, but it left the public unsatisfied. Paget, upon hearing the result, made the comment for which he is best remembered: "Now that she has been acquitted for murder and cannot be tried again, she should tell us in the interest of science how she did it!"
See also
References
- PMID 20896492.
- ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original(PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
- ^ a b c d e Paget 1911, p. 451.
- ISBN 978-1-4128-1027-2.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
- ^ Ludmilla Jordonova, 'Portraiture, Biography and Public Histories' Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (2022) 32, 159-175 (p.171) https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transactions-of-the-royal-historical-society/article/portraiture-biography-and-public-histories/1DED9047F942A4FA69C23F21AA51A1A3
- ^ Paget 1911, pp. 451–452.
- ^ a b c d e f Paget 1911, p. 452.
- ^ Paget, James (August 2005). "The entry-book" (PDF). The Lancet. 366 (9484): 510. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
- ^ Sievier, Robert William (1794-1865)
- ^ "Transactions of the Clinical Society of London Volume 18 1886". Clinical Society. 1868. Retrieved 23 October 2012. archive.org
- ^ "No. 23763". The London Gazette. 4 August 1871. p. 3465.
- ^ "Paget, Sir James, Bart. (PGT874SJ)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ "Paget, Sir James". Royal College of Surgeons. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
- ISBN 0-7100-0175-4. Chapter 3.
- ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original(PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
- ^ "Review of Memoirs and Letters of Sir James Paget, edited by Stephen Paget". The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art. 92 (2399): 499–500. 19 October 1901.
- ^ Paget, Stephen, ed. (1901). Memoirs and letters of Sir James Paget. Longmans, Green, and Co.
Sources
- public domain: Paget, Stephen (1911). "Paget, Sir James". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 451–452. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Power, D'Arcy (1901). Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co. . In
- Peterson, M. Jeanne. "Paget, Sir James, first baronet (1814–1899)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21113. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
External links
- Sir James Paget History of Surgeons – surgeons.org.uk
- Lectures on Surgical Pathology (New York, 1860)