Abstract
BY the death of Sir John Simon, which occurred on July 23, in his eighty-eighth year, this country has lost one of the leaders in sanitary science who with Chadwick and others made the Victorian period a memorable one. Simon commenced the study of medicine in 1833, when he was seventeen years old, and attended both St. Thomas's Hospital and the recently established King's College. Here he studied under Joseph Henry Green, the first professor of surgery at the last-named college, and acted as assistant to Todd in preparation for his physiological lectures. On the foundation of King's College Hospital in 1840, Simon became senior assistant surgeon, being associated with men so well known as Fergusson, Partridge and Bowman. It was in 1848 that he turned his attention to that branch of medicine in which his name became famous. The Corporation of the City of London applied to Parliament for powers to improve the sanitary administration of the City, and as the result of the passing of the City Sewers Act he was appointed Medical Officer of Health. About this time the epidemic recurrence of cholera in this and other countries began to attract attention, and in 1855 it was decided to create a Central Board of Health, for the medical officership of which Simon was selected. In 1858 the functions of the Board were transferred to the Privy Council. This position made him adviser to the Government on all sanitary and medical matters, and he continued to act until 1876, when he resigned his appointment, and on his retirement the decoration of C.B. was conferred on him. On the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887 he was created a K.C.B. In 1867 he was appointed a Crown member of the General Medical Council, and took an active part in the work of that body until 1895.
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HEWLETT, R. Sir John Simon, K.C.B., F.R.S. . Nature 70, 326–327 (1904). https://doi.org/10.1038/070326a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/070326a0