Abstract
NOVEMBER 16, 1843, marks the centenary of the death of Abraham Colles, the eminent anatomist and surgeon of Dublin. He was born in 1773 at Milmont, near Kilkenny, and received his medical education at the University of Dublin, where he obtained his diploma at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1796. He afterwards went to Edinburgh, where after two winter sessions he became M. D. He then made a journey, most of the way on foot, to London where he made the acquaintance of Sir Astley Cooper, whom he assisted, in his work on hernia and first became impressed with the inefficiency of the older modes of teaching anatomy, in 1797 he returned to Dublin and set up in practice. Two years later he commenced clinical teaching and also lectured 011 surgery in his private rooms. In 1804 he was appointed professor of anatomy and. surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and hold that post for thirty-two years. He was also surgeon to Steeven's Hospital, and was twice president (in 1802 and 1830) of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Selections from his works consisting chiefly of “Practical Observations on the Venereal Disease”, in which he maintained that syphilitic children nursed at the breast often infect wet nurses but never their own mother-an observation afterwards known as Colies' s law-appeared in the New Sydenham Society's publications in 1881 under the editorship of Robert McDonnell. His name has also been attached to a fracture of the lower end of the radius, which he described in 1814 in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Abraham Colles (1733–1843). Nature 152, 559–560 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/152559d0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/152559d0