The portraits in the board room of St. George's Hospital / by Warrington Haward.

  • Haward, John Warrington, 1841-1921.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The portraits in the board room of St. George's Hospital / by Warrington Haward. 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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    VI. SIR EVERARD HOME, BART., F.R.S. Sergeant-Surgeon. Surgeon to this Hospital from 1793-1827. Prese?ited by Sir Benjamin Brodie, Bart. Painted by J. J. Halls. Sir Everard Home, the son of an Army Surgeon, was born at Hull on May 6, 1756. After finishing his education at Westminster School as a King’s scholar, he was elected to a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge. When Home was a boy at Westminster, John Hunter was paying his addresses to Home’s sister, whom he afterwards married,* and Home has recorded the kindness with which Hunter treated him.f Subsequently Hunter offered to make Home his pupil, and bring him up to the profession of surgery, “a proposal,” says Home, “ which I readily accepted.” This led to his giving up the Cambridge scholarship and going at once to Hunter, in whose house he lived for six years. He thus received his professional education chiefly from his illustrious brother-in-law, with whom he was intimately associated for many years, and whom he succeeded as surgeon to St. George's Hospital. Home commenced practice in 1778 as assistant-surgeon to the Naval Hospital at Plymouth, which received the whole of the wounded men from Admiral Keppel’s fleet; he thus had many opportunities of active and operative surgery. His residence at Plymouth also enabled him to send Hunter additions to his museum collection, “ the sea furnishing curious fish and other marine productions, and the hospital practice preparations of morbid parts.”]: At the close of the war he was sent as Staff-Surgeon to Jamaica, under the Governorship of Sir Archibald Campbell, with whom he t returned to England in 1784. In 1787 Home and Keate were appointed Assistant-Surgeons to the Hospital at the request of Hunter and Gunning, and in 1792 Hunter “resigned to Home the office of delivering his surgical lectures, and for this purpose passed over to him all his manuscripts.” “To this foundation furnished by Hunter Mr. Home added a number of new lectures on particular diseases and on the operations of surgery, which he continued to deliver for a few years, but was never a very popular or diligent lecturer.”§ In 1792 there was a very keen contest for the Surgeoncy to the Hospital between Home, who was supported by Hunter and Baillie, and Keate, who had the support of the rest of the staff. Several of the royal Dukes attended in person to vote for Mr. Keate, who was chosen by a majority of 134 against 102. Home was, however, elected Surgeon after Hunter’s death in 1793. In 1808 he was made Sergeant Surgeon to King George III., and in 1813 a * July 1771. She published a volume of Poems, and several of her songs, including “ My Mother bids me bind my Hair,” were set to music by Haydn. t Home’s Life of Hunter, prefixed to Hunter’s “Treatise on the BHod, Inflammation and Gun-shot Wounds,” 1794, p. xxii. + Op. cit., p. xxviii. § “ Life of John Hunter,” by Drewry Ottley, 1835, vol. i., p. 123.