Thomas Hodgkin
Thomas Hodgkin | |
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Hodgkin's Disease | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Pathologist |
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Thomas Hodgkin
Early life
Thomas Hodgkin was born to a
Medical training and travel
In September 1819 Hodgkin was admitted to
In 1821, Hodgkin went to France, where he learned to work with the stethoscope, a recent invention of René Laennec. He also took account of the exacting statistical and clinical approach of Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis.[8] He associated there with British expatriates including Robert Knox and Helen Maria Williams.[9] In 1823, he qualified for his M.D. at the University of Edinburgh Medical School with a thesis on the physiological mechanisms of absorption in animals.[10]
In Paris Hodgkin met Benjamin Thorpe, a banker for Rothschild's at the time, who was suffering from tuberculosis. Hodgkin became his physician for a while, and Thorpe was cured.[11] This contact led to another appointment as physician to Abraham Montefiore, married to Henriette, daughter of Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Once graduated at Edinburgh, Hodgkin joined the couple for travel in Italy. Abraham was seriously ill with tuberculosis (he died in 1824) and the position proved unsatisfactory for both sides, with Hodgkin dismissed. But the relationship he built up with Moses Montefiore, Abraham's brother, proved a lifelong friendship.[12]
Staying in Paris for an extended period from September 1824 to June 1825, Hodgkin made significant medical contacts. The Edwards brothers,
Career at Guy's
Hodgkin found a position at Guy's, first as a volunteer clerk in 1825, and then in 1826 as the curator of the museum there, also carrying out autopsies. He built up his reputation on the work his posts brought him in morbid anatomy (anatomical pathology as it is now called).[15]
Hodgkin's hospital career came to an end, however, in 1837, when he clashed with the autocratic
Lecturer at St. Thomas'
Hodgkin had a further period of involvement with hospital medicine, when in 1842 he was asked to take charge of teaching at
Last years
In around 1847, Hodgkin became guardian to an Aboriginal Australian youth, Warrulan, who had been brought to England in 1845 by Edward John Eyre,[20] arranging for him to be educated at the Quaker Sibford School.[21]
Hodgkin married in 1850 Sarah Frances Scaife, a widow; they had no children.[2] When Lady Montefiore died in 1862, Hodgkin promised her to travel with her husband on future journeys.[22] He accompanied Moses Montefiore to Palestine in 1866. There he contracted dysentery and died on 4 April 1866. He was buried in Jaffa.
Interests
Hodgkin like many other Quakers was concerned both with the abolition of slavery and the reduction of the impact of western colonization on indigenous peoples around the world. He stood aside from the Anti-Slavery Society of the 1820s and 1830s, however; the society took a different line on emancipation and colonization in Africa. It refused in the early 1830s to publish his views.[23] Hodgkin began to take multiple initiatives of his own.
Ethnology
Hodgkin had an interest in both the
For Hodgkin, language was a
Colonization in Africa
Hodgkin was a supporter of Liberia in the early days of its foundation; and he compared it favourably to Sierra Leone.[32] In supporting Elliott Cresson and the American Colonization Society, he put himself outside the mainstream of Quaker and abolitionist thinking. When the American abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, toured in England in 1833, Hodgkin tried at first to mediate between Garrison and Cresson. The formation, however, of the British African Colonization Society by Cresson had Hodgkin's support, and he found himself isolated from natural allies who were Quakers or physicians. There were personal attacks on Hodgkin from the Garrison camp.[33]
Hudson's Bay Company
Hodgkin became involved in campaigning concerning the
Hodgkin's concerns over the indigenous peoples in the Hudson's Bay Company territory in western Canada continued. They were pursued both by correspondence with
Work in medicine
Hodgkin collaborated with Joseph Jackson Lister, who in 1830 enunciated design principles for the achromatic microscope.[38] By that time Hodgkin and Lister had already published research on tissue samples, based on observations made with Lister's innovative microscope, in particular on the "globule hypothesis" of the time which was held in particular by Henri Milne Edwards.[39] They denied the existence of globules in tissue; Ernst Heinrich Weber in 1830 contradicted them, and the debate continued for a decade.[40] For a while microscopy suffered in its reputation, but by 1840 histology was a recognised discipline, and in time the view of Hodgkin and Lister that "globules" were optical artefacts became accepted.[41] The 1827 paper they published has been called "the foundation of modern histology".[42]
Hodgkin described the disease that bears his name (
Hodgkin published as a book his Lectures on Morbid Anatomy in 1836 and 1840. His major contribution to the teaching of pathology, however, was made in 1829, with his two volumed work entitled The Morbid Anatomy of Serous and Mucous Membranes, which became a classic in modern pathology.[citation needed]
Hodgkin was one of the earliest defenders of preventive medicine, having published On the Means of Promoting and Preserving Health in book form in 1841. Among other early observations were the first description of acute
Hodgkin also translated with Thomas Fisher, from the French of William-Frédéric Edwards, On the Influence of Physical Agents on Life (London, 1832; Philadelphia 1838).
Other works
Other works by Hodgkin were Biographical Sketches: of James Cowles Prichard (1849); and of William Stroud (1789–1858), a medical collaborator. He also wrote abolitionist pamphlets and on the British African Colonization Societies (1833–1834).[2][48]
Legacy
There is a blue plaque on his house in Bedford Square, London. The Friends' School, Hobart named one of the four school houses after him.[citation needed]
The
References
- PMID 16252028.
- ^ a b c d Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13429. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Kass & Kass, p. 27.
- ^ Kass & Kass, p. 36.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 61–63.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 70–72.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 89–90.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 92–93.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 109–114.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 101–103.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 117–122.
- ^ Kass & Kass, p. 129.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 323–324.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 139–141.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 279–295.
- ^ BFASS Convention 1840, List of delegates, Retrieved 28 August 2015
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 332–335.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11464. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Wikidata Q105946256.
- Wikidata Q105946570.
- ^ Kess & Kass, pp. 487–489.
- ^ Kass & Kass, p. 227.
- ^ Kass & Kass, p. 167.
- ^ Kass & Kass, p. 183.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 97–100.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 216–217.
- ISBN 978-0299830267.
- ISBN 978-0299830267.
- ^ Kass & Kass, p. 313.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 393–394.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 222–223.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 229–233.
- ISBN 978-0773522534. Retrieved 27 May 2012.
- ^ Kass & Kass, p. 259.
- ^ Kass & Kass, p. 277.
- ^ Clinical and Investigative Medicine, abstract, P. Warren, Thomas Hodgkin. 1798–1866. Health advocate for Manitoba Vol 30, No 4 (2007) Supplement.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16762. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 141–145.
- ISBN 978-1402088926. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
- ISBN 978-1879284173.
- ISBN 978-0940095007.
- PMID 20895597.
- ^ On the influence of physical agents on life (1832), archive.org.
- ^ Edwards, William Frédéric (1838). On the influence of physical agents on life. Haswell, Barrington and Haswell.
- ISBN 978-0801851735.
- ^ Kass & Kass, pp. 192–193.
- ^ whonamedit.com, Thomas Hodgkin
- ^ "King's College London – Thomas Hodgkin", King's College London, Retrieved on 16 May 2014.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Hodgkin, Thomas". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
Further reading
- Kass, Amalie M. and Kass, Edward H. (1988) Perfecting the World: The life and times of Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, 1798–1866, Boston: Harcourt Brace Jovanovic. ISBN 978-0151717002
External links
- Media related to Thomas Hodgkin at Wikimedia Commons
- WhoNamedIt – Thomas Hodgkin
- History and Timeline of Hodgkin's Disease
- Claus Bernet (2008). "Thomas Hodgkin". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 29. Nordhausen: Bautz. cols. 662–673. ISBN 978-3-88309-452-6.