Stocks, Percy (1899-1974)

The following is an interim description which may be altered when detailed cataloguing takes place in future.

Research notebooks, case abstract cards and soil sample records relating to an enquiry into 'the genesis of neoplasms' conducted by Percy Stocks in association with the British Empire Cancer Campaign (Cheshire and North Wales branch), the Liverpool and Welsh Regional Hospital Boards, Physicians, Surgeons, Radiotherapists, and Medical Officers of Health.

c.1952-c.1954

Uncatalogued: 15 transfer boxes

The archives were given to the library at Wellcome Collection by Professor Leo Kinlen in March 2002.

Percy Stocks (1889-1974), physician and medical statistician.

Stocks obtained an MD in Cambridge in 1917. When the war ended he added a diploma in public health and entered the public health service as an assistant school medical officer in Bristol. In 1921 he joined Karl Pearson in the department of applied statistics in the Galton Laboratory, University College, London. In 1926 he became University Reader in Medical Statistics.

Whilst at the Galton Laboratory, Stocks published numerous papers in Biometrika and the Annals of Eugenics on statistical and epidemiological aspects of tuberculosis, cancer, goitre, smallpox, and other infectious diseases. The most notable was an early example of a case control study in which he and M. N. Karn compared aspects of the habits, home life, diet, and family history of 450 cancer patients and 450 controls.

In 1933 Stocks was appointed Chief Medical Statistician to the General Register Office, a position he held until his retirement in 1950. After retirement, between 1952-1954, Stocks worked as British Empire Cancer Campaign senior research fellow, in North Wales, Cheshire and South West Lancashire, and subsequently with the Cancer Research Campaign. During this time he undertook an investigation showing that changes had occurred in the geographical distribution of some types of cancer in England and Wales (notably lung cancer) but not in others (notably gastric cancer) over a period of twenty years. The major case control study of lung cancer in relation to smoking and atmospheric pollution and of gastrointestinal cancer in relation to diet confirmed that smoking was by far the most important factor in lung cancer, and that there was a relationship between gastric cancer and trace elements in the soil that remains unexplained.

Stocks was appointed CMG (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George) in 1948. He was also elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (1948), awarded the Jenner medal of the Royal Society of Medicine (1956), and the Bissett Hawkins medal of the Royal College of Physicians. He influenced the work of Richard Doll, Bradford Hill and others regarding the causes of cancer.

Stocks died of coronary heart disease on 18 December 1974.

For further information see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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