James Samuel Risien Russell

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James Samuel Risien Russell
FRCP
Born(1863-09-17)17 September 1863
Demerara, British Guiana
Died20 March 1939(1939-03-20) (aged 75)
Marylebone, London, England[1][2]
Burial placeHighgate Cemetery
Occupation(s)Physician, professor of medicine, and professor of medical jurisprudence
Known forDescription of subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord

James Samuel Risien Russell

FRCP (17 September 1863 – 20 March 1939) was a Guyanese-British physician, neurologist, professor of medicine, and professor of medical jurisprudence.[3]

Early life

Russell was of mixed race, born in Demerara, British Guiana (now Guyana), to Hon. William Russell, a Scottish émigré water engineer[4] and sugar plantation owner, and Hon. Mrs Russell, who was of African descent but about whom little is yet known.[5] He was one of four sons with an older brother John and two younger brothers, William (Junior) and Alexander. His father was one of the richest men in the colony. Russell was sent to Scotland as a teenager to continue his education.[6]

Education and career

After education from 1880 to 1882 at the

St Thomas's Hospital and won a British Medical Association (BMA) scholarship in 1895. After study in Paris and Berlin, he was appointed resident medical officer at the National Hospital, Queen Square.[1] He held appointments there for thirty years,[7] becoming assistant physician, then physician, and retiring as consultant physician and joining the National Hospital's board of management.[1]

Early in his career he also held junior appointments at the

Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) in 1897.[3]

In 1900, he wrote the pioneer description of subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord with his junior colleagues,

Tay-Sachs disease.[7]

He was the author or co-author of a number of research articles. He contributed articles on neurological disease to Quain's Dictionary of Medicine, Allbutt's A System of Medicine, the Encyclopaedia Medica, and Gibson's Textbook of Medicine.[1][8]

Russell served as vice-president of the Section of Psychological Medicine and Neurology at the annual meeting of the BMA in London in 1910. He was elected a corresponding member of the Société de Neurologie de Paris.[1]

From 1908 to 1918 he served as a captain in the RAMC. During WWI he was a leading expert on "shell shock" and "neurasthenia".[9]

He clashed with psychiatrists for his belief that patients with psychosis should not be so readily committed to asylums when they might receive better care at home within their families, with support from general practitioners. He disapproved of the freedoms of the "modern girl", which made them "unfit for motherhood and the duties and responsibilities of married life".[6]

Personal life

Family grave of James Samuel Risien Russell on the east side of Highgate Cemetery

On 28 July 1892 in Kenwyn, Cornwall, he married Ada Gwenllian Michell (1869–1922). Their daughter Marjory Gwenllian Russell was born in 1893.[9] The couple were divorced following a report in The Times in December 1913 that he had spent the night with an unidentified woman at the Great Northern Hotel, King's Cross. The scandal led to his resignation from University College Hospital and his clubs, and led to a decrease in female patients in the following years.[6]

In 1924 in Marylebone, London, Risien Russell married the widow Ada Clement (1882–1971), daughter of a Lancashire JP. Many of the patients in his private practice were from London's high society.

Commemoration

English Heritage erected a blue plaque at 44 Wimpole Street, Marylebone, London in 2021, at the site where he lived and ran his private practice from 1902 until his death in 1939.[10] He died in his consulting rooms, between appointments.[6]

Research by the

Windrush Foundation and medical historians has raised the profile of his life and pioneering medical work in recent years.[6]

Selected publications

References

  1. ^
    S2CID 219995468
    .
  2. ^ "Russell, James Samuel Risien, M.D. Edin. (gold medal); F.R.C.P. London". Who's Who. 1923. p. 2396.
  3. ^ a b c "James Samuel Risien Russell". Munk's Roll, Volume IV, Lives of the Fellows. Royal College of Physicians.
  4. ISBN 978-0-19-993579-6
    .
  5. ^ "Dr J.S. Risien Russell". Windrush Foundation. 30 September 2015. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
  6. ^ a b c d e "Neurologist James Samuel Risien Russell receives English Heritage London blue plaque". RCP London. 7 July 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-1848166684
    .
  8. ^ UCL (23 July 2020). "John Samuel Risien Russell". UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
  9. ^
    Lives of the First World War
    .
  10. ^ "JS Risien Russell | Neurologist |Blue Plaques". English Heritage. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
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