Joseph Frank Payne, M.D., F.R.C.P., consulting physician, St. Thomas's hospital : obituary.

Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Joseph Frank Payne, M.D., F.R.C.P., consulting physician, St. Thomas's hospital : obituary. 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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    L HbDIOAIi J0\7BNA£ / Tbf JOSEPH PRANK PAlfNE|»''M.D., P.R.C;P.;^ CONSUIillNS PHYBIOIAN, ST. 5*^Oiy^S^«OSPII^Ali.. It is with deep regret that we anncft^^ death of Dr. J. F. Payne, which occurred on November 16th, at his residence, Lyonsdown House, New Barnet, Herts, in the 71st year of his age. Joseph Frank Payne was born in Camberwell on January 10th, 1840. His father, Mr. Joseph Payne, was a most successful teacher, the first Professor of Education at the College of Preceptors and the author of many educa- tional works, which were popular in their day both here and in America, one of them reaching its eighteenth edition. Frank Payne pos- sessed in a remark- able degree those four qnahties which, Hippocrates said, are .Indispensable to the 'making of a good physician —learning, modesty, humanity, and probity. Some slight idea of the extent of his learn- ing may be obtained from the brief out- fine of his work given below; to give a complete account of what he has done (or the cause of medicine alone would take many pages. His modesty was such that few even of his friends realize how much he has done in the course of his busy life. Of his humanity and probity there is proof enough in the (act that he was revered and loved by all those with whom he came in contact. At an early age 'Frank Payne was sent to University College, where he obtained a demyship to Magdalen College, Oxford. There he gained a reputation #uong his fellows as I*, zealous student, *jfiiich was fully jMfied by his eb- bing his B.A. degree with first class honours in 1862, ^ Burdett-Coutts Scholarship in Geology in 1863, the pdcliffe Travelling Fellowship in Medicine in 1865, and by his taking, in 1866, the B.Sc. degree at the London Cniversity. He studied medicine for a time at St. George’s Hospital, Wd then (in 1867) took his M.B. degree at Oxford; in the ^ar following he became a Member of the Royal College w Physicians. Soon after, in compliance with the regula- ^ns of the Radcliffe Scholarship, Frank Payne went wroad. He spent a short time in Paris, three months in ^lin, where he attended, among others, the clinical WDtures of Professors Frerichs and Traube, and then pro- pped to Vienna. At the last-named town he came under ^ influence of the great pathological anatomist, Carl \ of Professor Johann Skoda and of Johann I ^olzer; and there, also, he studied diseases of the skin I ®Wer Hebra and Neumann. In 1871 he contributed to the Beitish Medical Journal three articles, entitled. Recollections of the Medical School of Vienna, in which he gives a graphic description of his teachers and of their methods of teaching. On his return to England, Payne was appointed Examiner in Natural Science at Oxford University; Assistant Physician to the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street; and Demonstrator of Morbid Anatomy and Curator of the Museum at St. Mary’s Hospital, where, according to a notice issued by the hospital, post-mortem examinations are made by Dr. Frank Payne at 2 o’clock as opportunities occur.” Leaving St. Mary’s, in 1871 he began his long connexion with St. 'Thomas’s by accepting the Assistant Physician- ship ; he was elected Physician in 1887, and became Consulting Physician in 1900. During his long and valuable service to the hospital, lasting nearly thirty years, he contributed thir- teen papers to the Hospital Reports, of which he was editor. One paper was on Plagues, Ancient and Modern. In 1875 he delivered the intro- ductory address to the students, and in his speech he pointed out, among other things, that “medi- cal studies, properly understood, con- tained many of the elements of a true liberal education,” and that the “ value of medical training as a liberal educa- tion depended chiefly upon its connexion with the physical sciences.” Even in his early days at St. Thomas’s, Dr. Payne’s reputation as a pathologist was such that he was appointed to make a post-mortem exami- nation in the Bravo case. While still at St. Thomas’s, he was made Surgeon to the Hospital for Skin Diseases in Stamford Street, Blackfriars. In 1873 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and was, as one of the four junior Fellows, at once appointed to deliver the Goulstonian Lectures; for these he chose as his subject, “ The Origin and Relation of New Growths.” Later on he delivered the Lumleian and the FitzPatricx Lectures, and in 1896 he was ap- pointed by Sir Russell Reynolds to deliver the Harveian Oration. In 1892 he was asked to act as Secretary to the Committee appointed to revise the “Nomenclature 6f Diseases,” and to edit and to bring out a new edition of the same. In order to investigate and report on the plague then prevalent in Russia, commissioners were sent out to that country in 1879 by most European Governments. The British Commissioners selected for the purpose were Surgeon-Major Colvill and Dr. Payne. They arrived in Russia too late to view the actual epidemic, which, though fatal in its effects, was not widespread. No doubt it was his experience on this expedition which led Dr. Payne to take such a been interest in the plague. He not only wrote a Db. Joseph Fbank Payne.