Verney, Ernest Basil

Experimental notes and notebooks, 1921-1966; also lecture notes, correspondence, reports, reprints and press cuttings.

1922-1966

19 boxes 1 folder, 1 box o/s 3 (71)

1 Catalogue of materials while at Cambridge Physiology Laboratory Library

2-4 Published papers

5-36 Experimental notebooks 1921 - 1960

37-56 Box files 1-11, A-K: experimental, lecture and miscellaneous notes 1926-1961

57 'Dog case' press cuttings 1926

58 Obituaries of Verney

59 Tracings from experiments in Australia

60 Instruments used in experiments

61-78 Miscellaneous notes, tracings and correspondence 1942-1966 [previously held as collection GC/72/1-18]

Items 1-60 were deposited at the library at Wellcome Collection as part of the archive of the Physiological Society in 1991. The bulk of that archive is held as SA/PHY but these papers were seen to form a distinct collection and were listed separately.

Items 61-78 were deposited in the library at Wellcome Collection in 1984 by Professor Verney's widow, to whom they had been returned by Ivan de Burgh Daly's son, de Burgh Daly having died suddenly while writing Verney's obituary for the Royal Society. They were previously assigned the reference GC/72.

Professor Ernest Basil Verney (1894-1967), M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S., was a physiologist and pharmacologist.

An outline of his life and career follows:

1894 Born

1913 Exhibition to Downing College, Cambridge

1916 First class honours part 1 natural science tripos

1916-1918 Shuter scholar, St Bartholomew's Hospital, anatomy and physiology

1918-1919 Served in the Royal Army Medical Corps

1920 M.B., B.Chir. (Cantab)

M.R.C.P. (London)

1921 Assistant to E.H. Starling in the Institute of Physiology, University College London

1923 Married Ruth Eden Conway

1924 Assistant to Professor T.R. Elliott in University College Hospital Medical School

1926 Chair of Pharmacology at University College London

1926 Acquitted of charge of using stolen dog in research

1930 Breakdown in health

1934 Sheild Reader in Pharmacology in Cambridge, Fellow of Darwin College

1936 Fellow of the Royal Society

1946 First Sheild Professor of Pharmacology, Cambridge

1956 Honorary DSc, University of Melbourne

1957 Visiting Professor at the University of Melbourne

Baly medal of the Royal College of Physicians

Honorary member of the Physiological Society

1961 Retired, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology, Cambridge

1961-1964 Personal chair at University of Melbourne, work on adrenal secretions

1967 Died

Further details of Professor Verney's life and career may be found in the Dictionary of National Biography, the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol 16, 1970, Munk's Roll Vol VI, and obituaries in The Times, the British Medical Journal, The Lancet and Nature.

At Wellcome Collection: The papers of Professor Ivan de Burgh Daly (PP/DBD) contain notebooks of experiments carried out with Verney.

Whilst the papers were still in the Physiological Laboratory Library (see Custodial History) a catalogue was produced which links Verney's published papers with his notebooks and notes, gives detailed descriptions of the contents of files and notebooks and cross-references them. This catalogue is held as item 1 in this collection. To ensure that the information in this catalogue would still be of use it was decided to keep the original order and references of the papers as far as possible. These are given in Roman numerals in italics. For the most part this makes for a reasonable order, except for the contents of 'Box files 1-11' (37-47) and 'Box files A-K' (48-56) which are of a miscellaneous nature, including files of lecture notes, experimental notes and reprints. (N.B.: the microscope slides, lecture slides and brain sections listed in the catalogue were not amongst the material deposited in the Physiological Society archive and subsequently transferred to the Wellcome Library.)

The abbreviation EBV is used in the catalogue in place of Verney's full name.

These bulk of these papers (items 1-60) were originally housed in the library of the Cambridge Physiological Laboratory. In 1988 Dr R.H.S. Carpenter placed them in the Physiological Society archive at Churchill College Cambridge. (Whilst the papers were still in the Physiological Laboratory Library a catalogue was produced which provieds the basic structure for this catalogue; however, it should be noted that not all material listed in this catalogue was subsequently transferred to the Physiological Society archive. The microscope slides, lecture slides and brain sections listed in the catalogue are amongst this material not transferred.)