Address of George Johnson, M.D., F.R.S., President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, at the annual meeting, March 1st, 1886.

  • Johnson, George, 1818-1896.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of George Johnson, M.D., F.R.S., President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, at the annual meeting, March 1st, 1886. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    to his profession, and took a prominent part in public affairs. He was three times elected mayor of Tenby, and subsequently he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for the Borough of Tenby and for the County of Pembroke. He also became Deputy-Lieutenant of the county. In 1863 he was elected Physician to the Queen's Hos- pital, Birmingham, and Professor of Clinical Medicine. About that time the inhabitants of Pembrokeshire pre- sented him with a service of plate at a public dinner, which was presided over by Captain Ramsay, R.N., C.B., after- wards Earl of Dalhousie, the father of the present earl. In 1865, on the death of his aged grandfather, under whose will he obtained an increase of fortune, Dr. Sutton, who had never taken up his residence in Birmingham, resigned his appointment at the Queen's Hospital and retired from private practice. Soon after this he invested largely in a colliery yielding anthracite coal, and as the colliery not long after- wards became flooded and had to be abandoned, he thereby lost the greater portion of his fortune. In 1873 Dr. Sutton was appointed the first Medical Officer of Health, under the Public Health Act, for the Borough of Oldham. There he organised most thoroughly the Sanitary Department, and soon, by his genial disposi- tion, drew round him a host of friends and supporters. In 1877 an epidemic of smallpox having broken out, he made it the occasion for founding the Westholme Hospital for Infectious Diseases, which, having been subsequently enlarged, now contains 100 beds. Dr. Sutton during his ten years' tenure of office is said to have treated in that hospital upwards of 600 patients with great care, skill, and kindness. The subject of infant mortality was one to which he devoted much attention, and upon which he published a treatise, and another on Day Nurseries and their bearing upon Public Health. Dr. Sutton devoted much attention to the means of