Abstract
SIR RICKMAN GODLEE'S memoir of Wharton Jones, reprinted from the British Journal of Ophthalmology, March and April, 1921 (London: Geo. Pulman and Sons, Ltd.), is a most admirable short study. It gives us in close compass not only the man's work, but also the man, from 1808 to 1891-a long life in the service of physiology and ophthalmology. Wharton Jones's work on the capillary circulation and on the processes of inflammation is memorable, and was recognised and honoured by all men of science: but the advance of the medical sciences carried the younger men far ahead of him. From Edinburgh, where Wharton Jones was one of Knox's assistants, and suffered a share of the public hatred which flared up over the Burke and Hare murders, he came to London in 1838 as lecturer on anatomy and physiology at Charing Cross Hospital; among his pupils were Huxley and Fayrer. In 1840 he was elected to the Royal Society. From 1851 to 1881 he was professor of ophthalmic medicine and surgery at University College. His thirty years of teaching and writing failed to shield him in later life from miserable poverty; he fell out of the running. He was found at last, in the bitter winter of 1880-81, "crouched over a fireless grate, his shoulders hunched up under a mass of shawls and shabby wraps, the picture of destitution . . . not only very ill, but penniless and starving."Friends saved him, and collected money for him; Huxley and Fayrer obtained from Mr. Gladstone a Civil List pension for him; Jenner obtained a Tancred pension for him. The work was ended in London, and for the last ten years he lived in a couple of tiny rooms in a cottage in Ventnor.:
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Thomas Wharton Jones, F.R.S1. Nature 107, 829–830 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/107829b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/107829b0