Victor Horsley

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Sir Victor Horsley
Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh (1893)
Royal Medal
(1894)

Sir Victor Alexander Haden Horsley

FRCS (14 April 1857 – 16 July 1916) was a British scientist and professor.[1]

He was born in

Brown Institute
.

In 1886, he was appointed as Assistant Professor of Surgery at the

National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy, and as a Professor of Pathology (1887–1896) and Professor of Clinical Surgery (1899–1902) at University College London. He was a supporter of women's suffrage
and was an opponent of tobacco and alcohol.

Personal life

Victor Alexander Haden Horsley was born in

Kensington, London, the son of Rosamund (Haden) and John Callcott Horsley, R.A. His given name, Victor Alexander, was given to him by Queen Victoria.[2]

In 1883, he became engaged to Eldred Bramwell, daughter of Sir

St. Margaret's, Westminster. They had two sons, Siward and Oswald, and a daughter, Pamela.[2]

He was knighted in the 1902 Coronation Honours,[3] receiving the accolade from King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 24 October that year.[4]

Horsley was a champion of many causes. One of his primary life crusades was the temperance movement. Having observed that many injuries admitted to the hospital were due to alcohol, Horsley threw himself into becoming a temperance reformer. He soon rose up to the position of vice president of the

National Temperance League and the president of the British Medical Temperance Association. In 1907, along with Dr. Mary Sturge, he published a book on alcoholism titled Alcohol and the Human Body.[2]

According to his biographers, Tan & Black (2002), "Horsley's kindness, humility, and generous spirit endeared him to patients, colleagues, and students. Born to privilege, he was nonetheless dedicated to improving the lot of the common man and directed his efforts toward the suffrage of women, medical reform, and free health care for the working class (...) An iconoclast of keen intellect, unlimited energy, and consummate skill, his life and work justifies his epitaph as a "pioneer of neurological surgery".

Medical career

Victor Horsley
The blue plaque to Victor Horsley on Gower Street in London

Horsley specialised in surgery and in

skin flap, the ligation of the carotid artery to treat cerebral aneurysms, the transcranial approach to the pituitary gland and the intradural division of the trigeminal nerve root for the surgical treatment of trigeminal neuralgia
.

As a neuroscientist, he carried out studies of the functions of the brain in animals and humans, particularly on the

electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex, internal capsule and spinal cord became classics of the field. Those studies later translated into his pioneering work on neurosurgery for epilepsy. Between 1884 and 1886, Horsley was the first to use intraoperative electrical stimulation of the cortex for the localization of epileptic foci in humans, preceding Fedor Krause and Wilder Penfield
.

He was also a pioneer in the study of the functions of the

cretinism
, which are caused by a decreased level of the thyroid hormones (hypothyroidism), and established for the first time, in experiments with monkeys, that they could be treated with extracts of the gland.

Appointed in 1886 as secretary to a governmental commission formed to study the anti-rabies

Journal of Pathology
.

In June 1886, he was elected a

Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh. A year later, in 1894, he won the Royal Medal
for "his investigations relating to the physiology of the nervous system, and of the thyroid gland, and to their applications to the treatment of disease".

Horsley, who had been a keen rifle shot when serving in the

Lee-Metford rifle.[6] He concluded that the immediate cause of death that follows was due to respiratory failure, not heart failure.[7]

His best-known innovation is the

Horsley–Clarke apparatus, developed in 1908 together with Robert H. Clarke, for performing the so-called stereotactic surgery
, whereby a set of precise numerical coordinates are used to locate each brain structure. He was a pioneer in neurosurgery and operated on a total of 44 patients.

He authored the book Functions of the Marginal Convolutions (1884) and, as a co-author, Experiments upon the Functions of the Cerebral Cortex (1888) and Alcohol and the Human Body (1902).

Political career

Horsley was a

First World War
started.

Horsley strongly supported the Liberals' welfare state initiative, the National Insurance Act of 1911, despite strong opposition from most of his medical colleagues.[10]

First World War service and death

Grave of Victor Horsley at Amara War Cemetery.

In 1910, Horsley was commissioned as a

hyperpyrexia
, at only 59 years of age.

Namesakes

Horsley was the first neurosurgeon appointed to the hospital in Queen Square, London, now called the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery – the Victor Horsley Department of Neurosurgery is named in his honour.

The Walton Centre for Neurology & Neurosurgery NHS Trust in Liverpool, England, another leading Neurosurgical Hospital, dedicated its intensive care unit to him, naming it the Horsley ward.

At its Annual Representatives Meeting, the British Medical Association has a series of lunchtime lectures entitled The Victor Horsley Lectures. After the Second Gulf War, a British Field Hospital was established at Shaibah Logistics Base, and the area of tented accommodation for hospital staff was known as Horsley Lines.

Horsley is credited with the invention of the "Horsley Hook", a device which he used to avulse the trigeminal nerve.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Victor Horsley.
  1. ^ "Horsley, Sir Victor Alexander Haden". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 876.
  2. ^ a b c
    PMID 13413250
    .
  3. ^ "The Coronation Honours". The Times. No. 36804. London. 26 June 1902. p. 5.
  4. ^ "No. 27494". The London Gazette. 11 November 1902. p. 7165.
  5. ^ "Library and Archives catalog". The Royal Society. Retrieved 14 October 2010.[permanent dead link]
  6. ^
    S2CID 43580043
    . It dates the beginning of the experiments to 1894.
  7. ^ a b Dictionary of National Biography, 1912–1921. Oxford University Press. 1922. p. 271. It dates beginning of the experiments to 1893.
  8. ^ The Newly Restored Bird Bath Memorial near the Thomas Carlyle Statue, Hilda Kean, hildakean.com
  9. ^ Who Was Who, 1916–1928. A and C Black. 1947. p. 519.
  10. ^ Michael S. Dunnill, "Victor Horsley (1857–1915) and National Insurance." Journal of Medical Biography 21.4 (2013): 249-254.
  11. ^ Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes, 1916. Kelly's. p. 782.

Further reading

Academic offices
Preceded by
George John Romanes
 Fullerian Professor of Physiology
1891–1894 		Succeeded by
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