Volume 4

Treasury of human inheritance / edited by Karl Pearson, R.A. Fisher, L.S. Penrose.

Date:
1909-
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Treasury of human inheritance / edited by Karl Pearson, R.A. Fisher, L.S. Penrose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    its success. Many of his most important papers were read before the society and are published in its Transactions. In 1895, after serving as a member of council and as vice-president, he was elected president of the society and filled this post with distinction for two years. He was interested in the formation of the Section of Ophthalmology of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1912, and was one of the vice-presidents chosen at its foundation. He read several papers before the section and took an active part in its proceedings. In 1881 the International Medical Congress was held in London; the ophthalmo logists had a large and successful section presided over by Sir William Bowman. Nettleship was one of the secretaries of this section (his colleague being the late W. A. Brailey) and contributed largely to the success of the meeting. The Congress met again in London in August 1913; on this occasion Nettleship was a vice-president of the ophthalmological section and took a keen interest therein. He also entertained some of the visiting members of the Congress at Hindhead. Little more than two months later he had passed away. In 1897 Nettleship was chosen as president of the Ophthalmological Section of the British Medical Association for the annual meeting held in Montreal. In 1909 he delivered the Bowman lecture before the Ophthalmological Society “Upon some Hereditary Diseases of the Eye.” In 1910 he was appointed a member of the Board of Trade Departmental Committee on Sight Tests for the Mercantile Marine. After two years of arduous investigation and experiment the Committee’s Report was issued in 1912. From that date until his death Nettleship was a member of a special board which sat at South Kensington for the examination of candidates for the mercantile marine who appealed from the decision of the Board of Trade examiners in colour vision. For some years after he obtained his medical qualifications Nettleship assisted his former teacher Jonathan Hutchinson in his hospital and private practice. In 1875 he began practice independently in Wimpole Street, where he continued to live, although not in the same house, until 1902. His professional knowledge and skill soon became recognised by the public as well as by the medical profession, and patients in large numbers sought his advice. In spite of the demands of hospital attendance and a large private practice he found time (one is tempted to say he made time) to write a students’ text-book on diseases of the eye of which five editions were published. Throughout his professional career Nettleship was a voluminous writer, his papers covering almost the whole range of ophthalmic science, more especially from the clinical side. They were invariably characterised by accuracy of statement and evidence of extreme care in observation. It is a tribute to his ability and to the punctilious care with which he prepared material for publication that there is scarcely a paper among them which even now will not repay perusal and has not some permanent value. His knowledge of ophthalmic medicine and surgery was extraordinarily wide and very accurate; although not very conversant with languages other than his mother tongue, he kept well abreast of French and German ophthalmic literature, and his large clinical experience and retentive memory gave him a familiarity with rare or unusual types of disease which