Sir William Collins, surgeon and statesman / by Arthur Salusbury MacNalty.

MacNalty, Arthur Salusbury, Sir, 1880-1969.

Date:: 1949

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sir William Collins, surgeon and statesman / by Arthur Salusbury MacNalty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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1875 they went in similar fashion through Winchester, Salisbury and the New Forest to Bournemouth. In 1878 Dr. Collins with his two sons and a friend, J. A. Ingpen, rowed down the Thames from Oxford to London in glorious weather; “ with my father in his best of spirits the trip was a very happy one.” In 1879, William, then a senior medical student, accom¬ panied his father to Ireland to a meeting of the British Medical Association at Cork. They travelled from Dublin to Cork with the famous Dr. Charcot of the Salpetriere and Dr. Sigerson, who translated into English Charcot’s earlier works on diseases of the nervous system. Dr. Collins, like Tennyson and Gladstone, had a very large head, and he could not resist one of his favourite tricks. He measured Charcot’s cranium by putting his hat on the French savant’s head, which, to the dismay of the neurologist and his friend, enveloped him to the shoulders. This meeting of the British Medical Association was notable for Savory’s oration directed against Listerism and antiseptic surgery. This was the last public expression by an eminent surgeon of opposition to the method of modern surgery, which soon afterwards became universally adopted. Father and son were rather bored by the medical atmosphere and escaped to St. Ann’s Hydro at Blarney, where they duly visited the Blarney stone. In the following year, 1880, Mrs. Collins died after a long illness. By the middle of 1881 her two daughters were both married, and the Albert Terrace home contained only the doctor and his two sons. Sir William wrote of the years from 1881 to 1884 : “ We lived together like three brothers ; he devoted to us in all affection and pride, and we doing what little we could to make up for the losses the old household had sustained. As strength and health were restored, visits to Up Park were resumed with Edward and myself; and occasional shoots were undertaken, or a cricket-match with a village gathering at which my father did the honours, helped to restore his spirits and renew something of his youth.”